Despite The Settlers: Rise of an Empire being the sixth game in The Settlers series, I have never played any of the previous games. I’m a big fan of the empire-building genre, and after six attempts, I had hoped there’s sometime right with the series. What I found is The Settlers: Rise of an Empire isn’t a bad game but is fairly mediocre.

Defining the genre of The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is a little bit problematic. Although it is marketed as a empire-building game, the city size limits are extremely low, and the maps contain limited resources with no real ability to expand your empire. The Settlers: Rise of an Empire also contains a military element that is very basic, so it tends to get knocked out of the real-time strategy genre as well. The game includes a single-player campaign, an individual single-player scenarios and a multiplayer mode, though multiplayer feels poorly thought-out and not much of a real option. The lack of a custom scenario generator or map tools really limits replay value.

The campaign mode of The Settlers: Rise of an Empire takes you on what is basically the subtitle of the game, the rise of an empire. You are a new king (apparently a just and kind one, whether you like it or not), and you are determined to stop the evil Red Prince by increasing your allies and controlled territory. Your loyal knights are the people who actually administrate the settlements being built, and each knight has a passive and active ability they can use to assist in that function. To be honest, most of the knights are pretty useless, and I found myself alternating between just two. During the campaign, you’ll get to see the horrible character models and really poor voice acting in the game; it isn’t a large part of the game, but it is noticeable.

Each game starts with your city having a warehouse, castle and chapel, which dictate storage, military capacity and city size. These buildings are critical, and if they are destroyed, you lose. Every building in your city requires wood to build, and every person requires food to eat from the very start; games tend to start the same every time. Sooner or later, you’ll need to collect the more “advanced” materials like stone and iron for settlement advancement and military units. After basic resource-collection buildings come the production buildings (there are no intermediate stages here), which process and “sell” their goods to your townspeople. Each building has three stages of advancement, and each time you advance the building, they add another worker. The more workers a building has allows them to collect more resources faster out of smaller areas or to produce items faster through specialization. Although resource buildings only require food to operate, production buildings need food, then clothing, then cleaning supplies and finally entertainment as your settlement advances. I think empire-building games really should have far more depth and complexity than what we see here.

To build up an army requires you have iron and some cash along with a moderately advanced settlement. Your money is earned primarily through taxes from successful production buildings, because trading isn’t something feasible until later parts of the game, and the options to change your tax levels are pretty much useless. Your army consists of swordsmen and bowmen, pretty basic stuff, huh? Swordsmen are meat cushions. They have a low attack power but can stand up to other swordsmen. Your bowmen have a high attack power but become useless if their range is ever removed. The control over your army is extremely basic. There are no formations, and any attempt at strategy — like putting bowmen on walls to defend — is actually quite horribly implemented and will only hurt you.

The main problem with combat is you have very little control over squads of troops. They are difficult to select and to direct/target. You can also build up wooden or stronger stone static defenses to wall off your city from the enemy. In time, you can even put catapults at the top of your stone towers to destroy enemy siege equipment. To overcome enemy defenses, you can build battering rams, siege towers or catapults, but their use and strategies are as basic as the rest of the military part of the game.

So far, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is shaping up to be a pretty basic and underperforming game, but it does have a bit of flavor to it. After a bit of advancement, your settlement is capable of holding festivals, which brings out a lot of the production building’s workers and lets them party like its 999. I think the idea is they get pretty wasted and end up marrying! Oh no! But wait! This is definitely fantasy, because spouses in The Settlers: Rise of an Empire are actually useful. They don’t add to your official population, but they’ll go get food and clothing, clean the house, and entertain the workers so they can be more productive.

There are also four different climates available in which to build a settlement: hot, warm, mild and cold. As the temperatures of the climates lower, the available fertile land increases, and the length of the winter season increases.

The Settlers: Rise of an Empire has a lot of mediocrity in it. The empire-building is missing a whole slew of options and lacks in complexity. There isn’t a large learning curve, and the building part gets routine quickly. You’ll find the challenge is always in the same spot no matter what you play, so get up your defense/army before the AI attacks. The military aspect of The Settlers: Rise of an Empire is lacking even further when compared to the empire-building part and is actually pretty buggy once you get to see how things work.

The Settlers: Rise of an Empire isn’t a bad game by any stretch. It is very playable and enjoyable up to a point; the problem lies in the lack of depth in pretty much all aspects of the game. For the sixth game of The Settlers series, I really expected a lot more. If you like empire-builders and need another game, $10 isn’t a bad price.