Game Review - by StormDaemon
The Settlers series continues with a game that combines the elements of games like Civilization 2 and Command & Conquer in a fun package. In Settlers 3, you'll take control of either the Egyptian, Roman, or Asian civilization in a quest for world domination to appease your country's god. While exploring the land and managing your resources to keep the population thriving, you'll also have to worry about and keep other civilizations from dominating by either trade or war. The options and abilities within the game are numerous, unfortunately, the graphics tend to slow all the action down a bit.

Storyline:
In this world, the gods that have ruled over the people are getting fat and lazy. The supreme god, He, has given three of them a challenge to find a leader who can rule over the people and bring them to dominate the entire world. Your role as that leader is to watch over your people and to control just about every aspect of their lives, from setting up their buildings to sending them to war.

Features:
Settlers 3 offers many avenues of play, from either an entire campaign to a single random mission, and also allows for multiplayer capability over the Internet. Within the game, there are so many things to do and build, it would not be possible to list them all here. Needless to say, there are many factors that you have to take into consideration to keep the people thriving, and many things you have to build in order to do that. Not only are buildings needed, but also more people need to be created through building residences, which is an added feature from the previous Settler games. The building of soldiers is also available, with the options of choosing from either a swordsman, a spearman, or a bowman.

Gameplay:
The gameplay is pretty good, with a lot of nice features, such as grouping of the different available things to build and the automation of a lot of tasks by the people. The only downfall is the choppy graphics in even the lowest resolution. Though that is to be discussed more in the graphics section, it really did slow down gameplay and got annoying. Other than that, everything else was fine and sometimes complex because of all the factors that needed to be taken into consideration to properly maintain the people and keep them happy.

Graphics:
The graphics of the game were animated very nicely with the only drawback being the choppyness of the game even at the lowest resolution, as mentioned in the previous paragraph. The animations of each little person were very nice and there were certainly a great number, the game claims a total of 50,000 animations, but I have not actually counted them. Everything seemed to be colorful and detailed, and each different civilization had a unique flavor to them.

Sound FX:
The sound effects in the game are decent, neither detracting from or adding to the game. None of them were very noticeable, and although the music was very nice, it was not the best part of the game. All of the sound just seemed to support the rest of the game rather than adding something to it.

Overall:
The game was done nicely and looked good. With the small drawback of the choppy graphics, everything else worked well and supported the game in a good manner. It was fun and entertaining, and could occupy your attention for a long time. Bottom line- If you like strategy and would like a break from all the military war games, then this one is for you.