The Settlers Online is an online browser based game that is apparently based on the series created by das Germans of Ubisoft Blue Byte.
The reason for “apparently” being injected into that previous sentence is that, before this game passed my inbox, I had only seen it advertised on other random sites – and I never knew that it was even remotely playable. So I reluctantly headed over too www.thesettlersonline.co.uk and started the usual annoying sign-up procedure.
So you arrive on the main page and there are 6 fields for you to complete – and you are then immediately thrown into the main game…6 fields – you have to absolutely love and appreciate German efficiency.
The Blue Byte geniuses are responsible for the wonderful annoyance that is The Settlers – My City, which is part of the decaying gaming scurge that is Facebook gaming [which is not decaying at all, incidentally – Ed].
That being said, I reluctantly started to explore The Settlers Online universe – and to be perfectly honest I have to admit, in a rather begrudging fashion, that I really enjoyed my recently-discovered, gaming-driven Messiah Complex!
The good
Okay – it’s highly addictive, I admit it. To compare it to a heroin addiction is a gross understatement.
It’s one of those games that becomes part of your daily routine. You can either jump into the main game immediately, or you can play through the rather long (but exceptionally thorough) tutorial. I would suggest playing through the tutorial because this is where you get to understand and appreciate the essence of the game.
The game is broken up into a few factions: build, discover and conquer; but in order to do that you need to first build up your village.
Building
There are four sub-factions of building:
- Basic buildings – which range from constructing roads to storehouses;
- Intermediate buildings – houses all of your mining and basic weapon-producing needs;
- Advanced Buildings – enable you to become more civil and advanced in the worlds of weaponry and butchering;
- Expert Buildings – which enable you to become the unequivocal “Mac Daddy” of Settlers, which awards you such awesomeness as the bottomless well (which might sound really pathetic, but my gosh, is it awesome) and advanced metal mining and production tools like titanium mines.
Each building is directly linked to the level of your character.
It’s kind of an XP-based levling system – so on level one you can build a wood-cutter, enabling you to start off your little village; once the wood-cutter has been built, you can then move on to the next greyed-out building. As you build the next building, you level up, opening up more complex structures.
Once these structures have been built, they need to produce their raw material so that production can continue elsewhere. So in other words, in order to build a bronze sword, you need a bronze toolmaker; in order to build the bronze toolmaker you need smelted copper – which, in turn, needs to come from a copper smelter, which needs a copper mine to produce the raw copper.
You get the idea.
All of this is fine and dandy, but to build a building takes time – some buildings require a few minutes, and some a hell of a lot more. Again, this is mostly fine since this is an online game and you’re not expected to finish it, well, ever – so you have time on your hands.
The processes can be accelerated but I’ll get to that later.
The graphics are rather refreshing and cute; you have your minions running around on-screen, and they are relativly well-animated – considering that this game doesnt require you to download anything; just log in, load it up and there you go.
All you need is at least a 384kbps connection and you are set.
The Bad
I personally think the idea that it takes me 3 days to build an awesome village is perfectly acceptable – however, you have gamers out there who are about as patient as a cokehead in Columbia; and just like said cokeheads, most gamers who play online games, and dont have patience, normally have money.
I’m not saying online gamers are cokeheads – the reason for my pointless rambling is to lead up to the fact that there is also a “gem” system in Settlers Online.
Let’s say you don’t want to wait the 4 hours for your awesome new building – the minds over at Ubisoft Blue Byte came up with a system which I’m thinking is a very evil and drug dealer-like way of making money.
The system allows you to forego the above-mentioned time-limit and spend a certain amount of gems and – voila! There you have an instant building.
The gem system ruins the game in my opinion; sure it’s sometimes necessary to use them to buy more resources – or pretty unique buildings and super explorers – but not as a part of the game mechanics. It almost comes across as cheating.
That being said, if you choose to pay your way, the gems are available in bundles ranging from 200 gems for 1,99EUR ( that’s about R20,30 – R21,00 ) to 24 000 gems for 99,99EUR (about R1020,47 – R1030.00).
The Ugly
The games sounds are really annoying and very much ‘not there’. There are about three sound bites that repeat themselves – and I’d appreciate a bit more than that if I’m going to keep this open all day.
Other than that, the game seems pretty promising. I’m looking forward to see if anything is going to change in the full version.
