Zeus + Poseidon (Acropolis)

By far the best citybuilder, and best overall game, I've ever played. Bought it several times since 2000, and it was difficult to get hold of a fresh copy with full features until GOG.com brought it back to life. The highly detailed graphics of each building and person is amazing, with four directions to oggle at them from. Each individual type of building and worker, trader, god, hero, has something different to say depending on your city's quality and their role in it. All voiced fantastically. The AI and continuity of your workers allows you to micromanage where you want, then leave the city to keep ticking over without any problems. The UI is in theme and easy to use. The only faults in this game are the lack-lustre battles and how its replay value is slightly diminished after several thousand play throughs... If anyone can up the difficulty of Olympian for me I'd be grateful ;) But it's still rewarding to see how many rich estates and cavalry squandrans a tiny city can support.

An absolute treat to play, even decades later. The engine is aged, yes, with sprites but the game still functions and is very stable, even in Windows 10. The game consists of multiple campaigns with a variety of levels and challenges. The levels are extremely fun to play and have you facing economic and social challenges. One of the best aspects of this game was the manner in which it was crafted. The developers blended humour, excellent ambient sounds along with a super memorable "soundtrack". The music alone makes this game worthy and every time I hear it, it transports me to a time decades ago when I first played it, when life was easy, safe, fun with less responsibilities. To be young again... Some of the most memorable RTS games created back in the day were by Sierra and Impression Games. I have replayed this game time and time again and it never ceases to interest me and challenge me. Long live the classics!

I owned this game at one time and absolutely loved it! Nothing like coming home from a rough day at work to slay mythological monsters. This is far and away the best city building game - that includes the Sim City series. There is enough challenge to make it exciting, but not so challenging as to make it impossible or frustrating. Thank you, GOG, for making it possible to play it again on the newer Windows platforms. The biggest hint I can give is to lay out your cities very carefully, as you need the entire area to access everything you put there. Always start small and work your way up to greatness. I hope everyone will enjoy this wonderful adventure into mythological Greece!

Impressions put out a lot of themed city building/management sims in the late 90s and early 00s. The Caesar series is probably the most famous, if only because there were four of them. Zeus puts all the rest to shame. The mechanics are polished and largely uncomplicated. The art is stylized, but pretty. The difficulty curve is fair (except for Tenedos!). And every in-game character, from god to olive grower constantly cracks wise. If you don't like self-aware puns, though, you might play with the sound off. And for a great as Zeus is, I probably enjoy the scenarios in the Poseidon expansion even more because the map design forces you to get creative--like when you realize that the only viable way to build Elite housing in Atlantis is to use a narrow, circular, ring of land. I spend countless hours on Zeus in the early 00s, and countless more over the past few weeks. The differences between this bundle and the original experience are miniscule. For example, my only complaint is that the opening cutscene does not render on my pc. If anything, though, the gameplay is better today than it was in '00-'01. Faster processor speeds and more memory means less lag when building truly enormous cities (ca. 20,000 virtual people). Buy it. Love it. p.s., There is still a somewhat active online community at the Zeus page on Heaven Games. The admins seem to be gone, but there' still activity on the forums and with custom adventures.

I love this game. It brings a lot of humour to the standard Ceasar/Pharoah formula which were themselves fairly amusing. In a brilliant change from the rest of the genre the gods will activley enter your cities. Build a great temple to Athena and watch her patrol your city and protect you from invaders and other lesser gods, or build a temple to Poseidon and watch your maritime industries flourish. These games take the city builder genre and mix it up allowing you to follow the infighting of the city states and the quests of legendary heroes. A fantastic game that I come back to time and again even now, so many years after its release.