Editor’s note: This review was written by Thomas Perry, a student at Full Sail University. Thomas was raised in Kasilof, Alaska. Between the ages of 8 and 19 all he did was play videogames. At 17, Ultima Online was released, and his friend Mike came down from Anchorage and picked him up. They spent a week straight playing Ultima Online.

In the last 10 years, Thomas has spent much of his time working full time, either in the U.S. Navy or with Comcast Cable, attending college full time, playing games full time, and somehow along the way, picking up a wife and magically generating two sons. Thomas prefers online games, but some of his favorite games are Planescape: Torment, Ultima Online, Dragon Age, Two Worlds, Fallout 3, Dragon Warrior series for the original NES, and many more. He very much loves the concept of the role-playing game and how they work. As such, Thomas has spent the last six years developing and building Dungeons & Dragons worlds, stories and campaigns for tabletop games, and written a novel.

Presently, Thomas dabbles in C++ programming, learning the Unreal Development Kit, and DMing D&D.

To me, real-time strategies have always been somewhat of an annoyance. I never could get into them, and I found it really hard to actually formulate a strategy, apart from the “build the same unit a gazillion times, fly over to my enemy and sit on him” style that seems very common in this genre. However, The Settlers 7 is a pleasant surprise and a breath of fresh air. In my opinion, this game is underrated and has much to offer in the ways of innovation.

You know that massive army strategy I mentioned? Players won’t find it in The Settlers 7; in fact, it is impossible to do so, and generally the game is long over before players ever reach that point. The Settlers 7 is not designed solely around combat, but combat is certainly part of it. Instead, players have other avenues of victory to pursue, and as they do so, they acquire Victory Points. If players acquire enough Victory Points, they win. That is the simplest way of describing victory in The Settlers 7, but that’s where the simplicity ends.

This game can be easily overwhelming, especially when a player first starts. My recommendation is to play the campaign as it literally walks the player through all the steps of constructing and winning. It will also lead players to a better understanding of how to play the game. It would take a much longer review to actually delve into the incredible depth of this game, but we can cover the basics here.

Players can win by acquiring Victory Points in basically three areas. They can build an army and conquer, research technology through a church, or establish trade routes via an export office. Although each of these offers Victory Points, there are other ways to acquire them by upgrading buildings, completing quests on the map or even accruing more gold than anyone else playing. A combination of the three can really put a player ahead fast if they can manage it.

To even get to that point, however, a player must understand the basic concepts of resource deployment. They have to know how to build their kingdom and support it before they can ever achieve anything. The Settlers 7 is more realistic in the sense that resources need to be structured in a way that is useful and be relatively close. For example, if a player wants to build a house, they would need boards and sometimes stone. Players need a sawmill to produce the wood, but they also need a woodcutter to cut the trees, and if they have no trees to cut, they need a forester to plant them, but it doesn’t stop there. Wood is useful for a number of things and is a needed resource for Coke Plants to make coal, or Paper Mills to make paper, Toolmakers, Blacksmiths, and Wheelwrights for cannons later on. That is only one resource or product, and there are quite a few — all of which have a use and are in fact useful. Have you ever played a game in which you decide not to build something because you think “meh, I don’t need that”?

In The Settlers 7, the developers designed the game to encourage the player to use all aspects of the gameplay mechanics rather than enable the player with the ability, and the only way to really win is to amass an army of the same unit to slaughter their opponent.

*Spoiler: Skip to the next paragraph if you do not want to know about the campaign.* The campaign contained a short but complete story. The daughter of the king, Princess Zoe, is tasked to retake part of the Kingdom of Tandria from an evil lord with the promised reward of becoming queen if successful. During the course of the story, there is some basic conversation and interaction between Zoe and her foes and ultimately a betrayal and reconciliation. However, it is worth the time and effort to play through if a little short to begin with. The cutscene graphics are unique, which is nice but a little short and a little weak on the acting end. Not a major detractor from the fun of the game, however.

A couple of things that did bother me one is the DRM. The only real way to play this game is to be connected to the Internet, even though it is a single-player game. I understand the need to control piracy, but not being able to play a single-player game while offline, though multiplayer capable, is not OK with me. The campaign is critical to learning how to play, and the story is engaging and interesting. It also has a twist to it; however, it is incredibly short. There are only a handful of maps used in the story, and although an expansion is coming with more, I felt the campaign could have been — no — should have been longer with more maps.

With most RTSs, I never play the campaigns because the stories are not interesting; I usually jump right into skirmishes and multiplayer and figure it out as I go. This would be very difficult to do in The Settlers 7, but at the very least, the story is interesting enough to play through if the gameplay is not someone’s cup of tea.

The Settlers 7 was incredibly fun to play; I would absolutely recommend it. I would only take away points because of the shortness and lack of depth to the campaign, which played more like a tutorial, and the lack of maps. However, the music and sound were great, the gameplay was incredibly fun and the replayability is strong.