The Settlers® 4: Gold Edition

Settlers 4 is the last from the series that kept any standards. They had a clear vision of what they're supposed to look like and what kind of game they should be. It's also one of the last games of the previous world of not-enmassed entertainment, from before the times of "next-gen" that broke through and took over in 2006. Aside from being an almost perfect Settlers game - which I don't have to elaborate on - this game has class. I'm not even talking about the pinnacle of creativeness developers achieved here with their overall art design and music score. I'm talking about their attitude towards a player. It's the attitude of a human being before the meme-ality, delusional superiority or retard's pretentiousness. If you don't know what I'm talking about - play the tutorial to the Settlers 4 and see for yourself. It's wonderful to play this magnificent game after more than a decade and see that it's not the nostalgia - the Settlers 4 are indeed a magnificent, well put together, thought through and designed video game that aged really, really well.

So Settlers II was the first game I bough. And I think Settlers 4 is the best in the series (I've tried 2, 3, 4 and 7). Really great and sometimes challenging game. It is simple and perfect.

I had this game years ago when it was new and played it for hours. It is a bit slow but still fun. I actually prefer slow games. With this game I was able to study for school and play at the same time. i learned more studying that way then studying alone. Mainly because I didn't end up getting bored or frustrated with either the game or studying. Any way I had lost the disk and after playing several tablet games like it I wanted to play it again so was happy to find that GOG.com had it. Although I was not sure which settlers game I actually played years ago so got 2 and 3 as well as this one. I played all 3 last night and this is the one that I had. 2 was way different then what I remembered, 3 was close and this one is exactly like I remember.

Just opened the installation directory and set compatibility mode to Win7. Started it, and had the good old Settlers 4 experience.

Looks great and sounds great. I have played this game many times. There is however one big thing that keeps me away from it, the AI. I like playing a single map against the AI, I never play the campaign. When starting a single map, the AI always knows your stats. This means that the AI will attack you when it knows your military strength is low. Once you reach a point where the AI thinks you are strong, it will stop attacking you. For me there is no challenge in this game anymore. Once I figured out how to quickly gather resources and power, the AI not even attempts intelligent tactics, it just stops. Maybe there are mods out there that can improve this, I don't know. It is such a shame for me, I love the building and expanding part of this game, but the fighting is a serious letdown. 3 out of 5 stars for me.