The Settlers 3

by Blue Byte

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00002SFLK
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,615 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

GameSpot Review

In the past few months, three venerable empire-building series have all become trilogies. Impressions' Caesar, Bullfrog's Populous, and now Blue Byte's Settlers have seen the release of their third incarnation. Each has tried something different. The designers of Caesar III stayed true to the series' formula, adding a few new features and refining some areas. Populous: The Beginning shares some basic similarities to its two predecessors but is a completely new game at heart. Settlers III, on the other hand, tries to do a little of both. It adds many new features and expands the scope of the series. But while many problems of Settlers II are addressed, many still remain.

Settlers III, like its predecessors, combines city building and combat, focussing primarily on the former. It is a game of complex interdependencies. You must gather wood and stone to build structures. To do so, you must have woodcutters and stonecutters. With these basic building blocks, you then move on to mining minerals, such as coal, iron, and sulfur. With these minerals, you begin to build weapons to arm your military and tools to supply your ever-expanding workforce. Miners require food, though, and a variety of food at that. So you must build grain farms, mills, bakeries, fisheries, pig farms, and slaughterhouses. And all of these require carriers to lug supplies around, so you must make sure you have plenty of houses to keep the workforce plentiful. It's a good system, but it is basically the same as in Settlers II, with the major exception being that you no longer have to set roads for your workers. That in itself is an improvement, but some more changes would have been welcome.

Eventually, you'll be able to expand no more, and you'll have to resort to military might to push back the enemy borders. Settlers II suffered from its rudimentary combat, which simply required you to send as many forces as you could spare to an enemy fort and hope for the best. Settlers III doesn't improve this much. There's a slightly different interface, and the inclusion of new types of units (such as archers and spearmen), but these are surface changes and make only a moderate improvement.

Settlers III is broken into three campaigns to reflect the inclusion of new cultures. You can play as Romans, Asians, or Egyptians. Each culture features a unique building set and a few slight differences in supply needs and building types. But the new cultures and campaigns don't alleviate the major problem of Settlers III's mission structure: Each mission is almost exactly the same. You start off with some supplies and must expand until you encounter an enemy. Building up your city takes a great deal of time, and going through the rudimentary steps at the beginning of almost every mission becomes very repetitive. The missions do become harder, but difficulty is almost always determined by the scarcity of resources or the proximity and strength of your neighbors.

One area that is completely new to Settlers III is the inclusion of gods. You must build temples, which give you access to priests. Priests have access to a variety of divine intervention spells, such as creating resources or destroying the enemy. This area is interesting, but it isn't very well developed. Priests aren't integrated into the existing system, just placed on top of it. And more often than not, you won't even need them.

Multiplayer improves things a bit, as your opponent will likely be more aggressive and won't just surrender territory once you consume it. But the pacing of the game and the length of time it takes to build a decent infrastructure makes multiplayer games time-consuming affairs. On the upside, though, the multitude of options (including Blue Byte's own free Internet server) makes finding opponents easy.

Settlers III looks great and can be played in a variety of resolutions. The cartoonish graphics are colorful and detailed, with the only negatives being the blocky animated cutscenes and the crude interface menus. The interface itself is somewhat confusing as well, and the online-only manual - which details much about the game but does a poor job of actually explaining how to accomplish anything - leaves much to be desired. Luckily, the game is pretty straightforward and can be learned easily through playing. Settlers III features good, if repetitive, ambient sounds, though the clinking combat effects sound like silverware being tossed in a drawer.

The only real problem with Settlers III is that, despite all the additions, it doesn't really play much differently than Settlers II. With some innovative missions and some more integral changes (or at least better-integrated changes), Settlers III would have been a much better game. Those who love the Settlers formula will enjoy it, but those who are unfamiliar with it will likely find it to be a moderately fun multiplayer game and an immensely repetitive single-player game.--Ron Dulin
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better than Age of Empires . . ., April 11, 2000

By 

-Cruinne. (Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Settlers 3 (CD-ROM)

I had Age of Empires first and loved it, but something was always missing. I think Settlers III found it. The game is far more complex in terms of setting up your civilization and actually making it work. While some younger players (and even adults who haven't played games of this type before) may have a little difficulty in learning how it all works, it is -worth it- to sit down and learn the in's and out's of Settlers strategy.

It's more than just a game of who can build the biggest army in the least amount of time.

My only complaint was the complete lack of female settlers in the game--as a girl gamer I love to see women represented in these things. I just ordered the Amazon pack from BlueByte and I can't -wait- to get it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Settlers 3 - Reviewed by a Player, December 22, 1999

By 

A Satisfied Customer (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Settlers 3 (CD-ROM)

This is a brilliant game. The graphics and gameplay are excellent. Its not just a sort of you have to do this to beable to do this type thing, you actually have to think about what your doing, every decision you make has a direct result. When your first start playing there is a lot to learn, but there is also a vast on-line community of settlers 3 players, and an excellent offical web site, as well as a multitude of others. This game really is brilliant, the in depth attention to detail really brings the game to life.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Game, February 27, 2000

By 

Max (Seattle Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Settlers 3 (CD-ROM)

This game is wonderful,fun and brillient. You dont just go around and kill people like u do in some games. You have to think hard because every thing u build makes a difference. You build 1 thing it will make the next thing work.This game is deffintly One of the best strategy games out there. I highly reccomened this game for You strategy game lovers out there its excellent! I've never played a better strategy game.Excellent excellent game. Highly reccomened it!