Cultures 1+2

I noticed Cultures because it was made by the same guys who made The Settlers 2. Since that is one of my favorite games of all time, I got an eye on Cultures. But it is so much more than that. Image The Settlers with settlements on a smaler scale, but the people acutally matter. They don't come endlessly from some storage house, but have houses, jobs and even relationships. They need food, which is the most imporant thing to produce and secure a stable production. If you want to get the best out of your people, make them happy: provied them with food, houeses company and faith, if the need to. Military is somewhat lacking and not one of the cores of the game, but still necessary. The game focuses a lot on build the settlement and managing your people. Cultures 2 expans the system further, with upgradeable houses and more complex techtrees. Additionally, it has a much expanded single player campaign with better story and missions. I would recommend both games highly to anybody who has a thing for building games. They are not just different from most other games in the genre, but also at the top of it.

This game has a ton of micromanagement. If you like playing Office Unit Supervisor: Viking Edition, by all means play these games. You have to look after every individual, and assign them task such as carrying ,baking, milling, mining, fighting, whatever. I was about to give it three stars, but that isn't really fair to it, considering that the mechanics actually work, but are really dependent on the skill of the player to a very high degree. It is pretty unforgiving. The game depends on realistic population dynamics, so you have to watch your people and how you commit them. It doesn't matter if you have a ton of spears if there is no one to hold them.

I played Cultures on my PC back in 2001 when it came out. It was sold as a Settlers type game, but I found it to be much much more. The micro management is immense, as these vikings do not have a desire to live. It can be summed up like this: A joiner goes into his hut. There is no leather to join, in his house. He gets hungry and goes to the storage room to eat food. He goes back to his hut. He then goes to the hunters hut to get leather. He comes back with 1 leather and makes one shoe. He gets tired and goes to sleep. Rince repeat. If you love micro management and slow city development this game is for you. If you like fast paced, or even slow paced city development, this game is not for you. I remember I calculated roughly 20 food with a steady food gathering/consumption rate, per baby produced, and then about 5 minutes until you got an adult viking. A niche game. I did enjoy it back in its time, though the original disc was flawed, with instruction manual in German, and never ending scenarios, that will end when your tribe runs out of food. Recommended for the hard core micro manager.

Really fun colourful games with a lot of charm. Will take a long time to complete (Iv played it since I was a kid and still have never completed the first game) and is very difficult to master. My one complain is the original cultures doesn't include the expansion Cultures: The Revenge of the Rain God, I believe this is because it doesn't have an English language version (if GOG can add this in some way id be eternally grateful) Other than that this is a grate package and I fully recommend it