Settlers 6 Review

Settlers 6 is a Real Time Strategy game, which to be frank does not really reflect at all the Settlers series or rather the original title or its three good successors. It takes the macro management as well as the unlimited expansion of population completely away and leaves the player with a game that mostly plays itself. You still build the old buildings to gain the resources but then you can't do anything really all you can do once you have the complete basic economic base is sending streams of units to the enemy since you have no more population as space to expand further. You can't use you economic power expand further and thus build more units because simply there is not the cap limit all you can do is watch slowly the soldiers be trained and I mean slowly because it is a process that is even slower then in the originals. But in the original games it didn't matter because there was always some economic concern that would keep you busy even when you were waiting on the units to be trained. Basically Settlers 6 is a crippled version of the original series just like Settlers 5. If you are looking to play some old school settlers I suggest playing 2, 3 or 4 all three are good and all three can be played on XP and Vista.
The Graphics are ok and fully 3D but then again if you have nothing to do then even staring at pretty graphics seems awfully dull.
Atmosphere is lost completely and as for AI and Balance well those both don't really matter since you are basically playing a RTS with unit limit, which is slow paced but still C&C/Dawn of War style. So basically you send hordes of units against each other and then do that until one has build the wrong type of units/defenses and the other can actually begin damaging the opponents lair and which point the game is almost over.
The interface is very simple in fact it is so simple that you don't even have to think to do anything...since the little things that you can do are brightly advertised and all the player has to do is click the big button to which for some reason no arrows a pointing but bright colours do the trick just the same.
It is a lot like playing AOE3 utterly boring the game itself has nothing really to offer to the player. The pace is to slow to make the combat interesting and to uneventful to make it worth the wait. Basically you will end up staring at some town in the middle ages then to eventually only watch the soldiers fight in old settlers tradition.

The Score:
Gameplay 3/10 You click some bright buttons and the rest is on auto-pilot.
AI 1/10 AI...yeah well it has way to much control basically the game is a self contained AI.
Graphic 4/10 YAY 3D RTS...wait old news nothing really outstanding here either.
Storyline 4/10 OK Story...but how many players play RTS games only for the story?
Sound 2/10 Pretty uneventful and like the general game dull.
Balance 1/10 Yes it is so balanced that you can send troops against each other for hours...to no effect.
Atmosphere 2/10 Atmosphere...oh you mean that thing from the old settlers games? Yeah that is gone.
Interface 3/10 So simple that a four year old could play this game sleeping...and still win...
Design 5/10 Design is decent.
Overall:2.7/10

Final word
Settlers 6 is another proof that good preceding titles do not make a good successor, like settlers 5 it is not really a settlers game and very boring at the same time. If you feel like banging your head on your desk, staring paint dry or even at a blank screen...grass grow etc. then Settlers 6 might be an alternative but I' am sure you can find something better to do with your time then that. So overall Settlers 6 is definitely one of the worst RTS games I have ever played.

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