If I had an hour to live, I would spend my time playing this game.

Why?

It felt like an eternity.

I had to play this game. After all, I bought it with my own money and had to review it.

I regret every last bit of it.

The Settlers 7 looks promising: the cover looks cool, the trailer looks sweet, the graphics look awesome, and it’s part of a long-running series of RTS city building games. When I first opened it, I was met with what looked like a computer desktop sort of thing. Especially with a link to Facebook?!? Anyways, I clicked the “campaign” button to start the game.

I expected a LOTR-style intro from the cool box. But no — I was met with a Shrek-style fairytale book. The characters looked extremely Pixar-like: cartoonish, untextured, and kid-friendly. What? I wanted a cool-looking game, not this kiddie stuff. Nevertheless, I watched the intro hoping for the best.

We then arrive at my little settlement, and little people roam the beautiful landscape — one of the best looking RTS’s out there. Not bad, I thought to myself and was immediately relieved of the $45 I almost thought I wasted. But my happiness was short-lived. I was asked to construct a quarry and was immediately plagued with hints.

How am I supposed to build when you keep annoying me?

Every time you close a hint box, another one comes right back up! There’s already a perfectly working hint system in the bottom left; why do you have to annoy me! I eventually did manage to get rid of all of the hints and eventually built my “mountain shelter” with a sort of field next to it where I built my stone quarry. Instead of a large number of building types, apparently you must construct a sort of “parent building” and construct the building you want in a “work field”. It doesn’t make any sense to me — for example, why do you have to build a house to build a bakery? I mean, they’re work and leisure, right? Shouldn’t the bakery be built in a working area and a house build in a residential area? This game tries to be different by doing this. It’s not a good thing.

Then we have to make troops to defeat the horrible Ramirez, our main enemy which happens to be super easy during the tutorial and super hard during the endgame.

Almost everything about this game is horrible. First of all, it’s not a true city builder. You do build houses, etc, but your citizens don’t really require them. Sure, they may be useful for trade and all, but it’s basically just 20+ forms of currency. Food is an exception — it is needed for troops, but other than that, it’s for the most part pointless. The differences of this game make a learning curve like the Burj Khalifa — it’s just so hard to learn.

Second, for optimal (or even medium-quality) graphics, you must have some uber-gamer computer. My computer has a 1GB ATI card and rates a “6.2″ on the Windows experience gaming graphics scale. Unfortunately, this game forces me to play at the lowest quality, looking extremely blocky and 16-bit. (The shot taken above was at medium, but I changed it after uber lag.) Also, if you are some hardcore-serious gamer, chances are you won’t be playing a kiddish-looking game, exception maybe Maplestory. (Even World of Warcraft looks less cartoonish.)

The mouse controls are extremely hard to use. The zoom doesn’t zoom to the mouse cursor, a standard for RTS’s and city-building games since around 2005′s Black and White 2, and because of this, you cannot easily select items. You must drag your mouse around to adjust where your view is, then move the landscape around to be able to see your building. Not very intuitive, eh?

To expand your settlement, you must capture individual “sectors” which mark your territory, and there are random pikemen living inside of those places with no houses in sight. This could be a good idea except for the fact that battles look super stupid. It’s just a turn-by-turn “Runescape-like” battle which looks very primal and horrible for a game like this.

The game has a good community and plenty of multiplayer if you do like it.

Campaign mode progresses very slowly as many cutscenes can’t be skipped and lips don’t sync with the sound coming from them.

This game would be better if it was completely serious or completely cartoonish. The game has a split personality and a bad interface which makes everything confusing. The only two things good with this game are the graphics — very realistic down to each blade of grass moving in the wind — and the soundtrack — haunting vocals which make you feel grand.

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT GET THIS GAME! It is a complete waste of time, effort, and money, unless you are looking for a game to publish to Facebook.

5.8