The Settlers: Rise of an Empire Demo

City builders have become quite popular ever since SimCity was first released, although most of them try to integrate entirely different mechanics in their formula, to appear unique. Hence, there are many clones and look-alikes out there, but very few manage to be as intricate or as addictive as the SimCity series was, with a few exceptions, of course.

The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is part of a pretty old series itself, since it has been around for quite a few years now. As such, this new edition aims to improve on the original idea as much as possible, in order to provide the players with a more immersive experience and plenty of new content to keep them busy and satisfied.

Building and maintaining a medieval city is not as simple as it sounds, because it takes a lot more work than just erecting a bunch of buildings here and there. Economic issues must also be taken into consideration, as well as the overall happiness level of the population, or the defensive strength against enemy attacks. You must keep all of this in mind at all times, or at least remember to check on them as often as possible.

If a city is not enough to satisfy your ego, the game provides you with the possibility to train an army and use the resources you’ve worked so hard to acquire in order to sustain the troops. New areas can be conquered and added to your empire, which means more money and a lot more territory to watch over. Obviously, this makes it that much more difficult to defend against enemy attacks, so everything evens out in the end.

In order to create the proper atmosphere, the game uses a state-of-the-art engine to render the graphics, although you should not expect too much detail when you zoom in to street level. Even so, you are still able to watch the characters in your cities live their lives and go about their daily routine, or take a look at your mighty war machines as they march toward the enemy city.

The Settlers: Rise of an Empire may be pretty and quite complex when looked at from afar, but once you get closer, you see that it’s not that complicated and everything can be figured out rather quickly. Hence, expert strategy fans may not be impressed, but everyone else can have a good time with the game, as long as they can turn a blind eye to a few flaws.