It's with sadness that I have to join the chorus of users on here experiencing the same problem. Constant game breaking video glitches that make any ongoing game play literally impossible. Having never played this game before I was really enjoying the experience, so I find it quite frustrating that I will never get to properly play what is clearly a classic. I have literally no problems like this with any other games I play on my pc, and my wife and I have played probably at least 40 odd games off of GOG without too many issues, so it's clearly a problem with the game itself. Some people are reporting no problems, and it's very cheap, so it's probably worth a punt.
The game play for Settlers 2 is excellent, and really quite enjoyable. As my title points out, it's bordering on totally ruined by two very large problems. 1. From disappearing catapult boulders, to workers going mental for no apparent reason, to ships getting stuck in ports full of goods and not going anywhere for HOURS and many more problems, after the first 3 campaigns there was always at least one major close out and restart, or simple break the campaign and have to do a restart. I'm only up to the sixth campaign, and the amount of bugs already is off the chart. And no, they're not my gameplay problems, many of the problems simply disappeared upon the program being reopened. 2. The game has two speeds. Unplayably slow, and soul-crushingly slow. You WILL spend half an hour at a time staring at the screen waiting for things to be finished. It's as though the game designers almost got a kick out of making people waste hours watching growth at an unnecessarily slow rate. Of note that many other people on hear have complained about, and I must agree, the lack of a tutorial is pretty poor in a strategy game. And for the people who seem to believe the Roman Campaign is one, the game telling you to go and do things, without giving you the first clue of how to do them is NOT a tutorial. This game would be buckets of fun, if 1; it had some speed options other than "massive pointless time wasting", and 2; it wasn't buggier than Herbie Goes Bananas. Shame.
I was unsure about this based on the screenshots and how old it looks. Having read the reviews I took a punt. And yes, I concur, this game is amazing. If you want a game that plays like Civilisation but in a fantasy setting then this is it. I only have one small criticism, it is a bit buggy (issues with saved games disappearing and occasional crashes), but not enough to warrant stopping playing. What actually baffles me the most is how this game has never had an upgrade, I would absolutely love to see a newer bigger version based on the civ 4 engine. Be warned, it's another in the "just one more turn" category, and it will suck you in.
This really should be one of the greatest RPGs ever made. The world is absolutely beautiful (better than anything in the Elder Scrolls series), the plot line is very immersive, and the faction idea brilliantly set up. It's a game you really want to finish and keep exploring, But, Believe what everybody says. It is horrendously (for me personally, unacceptably) buggy. It has THE worst map in any RPG game in history. Seriously, the map is useless. Which can make finding things you've already been to a dozen times still very difficult, even in the late game. The frustration caused by this is immense, and it's a baffling oversight by the game developers. The combat mechanics are AWFUL. You'll still be swinging merrily at a creature nowhere near you while a creature quickly pegging down your life is ignored (despite best attempts to change the view to it). This should be such an amazing game, but it's faults end up outweighing it's positives, especially as the game wears on and you just become exhausted on searching on forums for bug issues and how to find locations (seriously, nobody in this kingdom has come across the concept of marking something on your map?! Go and kill the monster outside the town? Fine. WHERE THE #$#* IS IT!). Seriously, despite 3 stars, I would probably say don't bother, especially if like me you don't have a great deal of patience for blindingly obvious flaws in game design.
Very simply, this game doesn't have a great deal of longevity. I got bored with it quite quickly. The quests seem to be all based around 1 of 2 scenarios. Take your time, build up a city, but make sure you have super strong defences, or survive as best you can, without much infrastructure. The latter in particular are annoying in that you either nail the scenario very easily, or it's bordering on impossible (some of them you can get stuck on for quite a long time only to feel like you've fluked it when you finally win).
This is one of those rare games, that even when you're treading water ploughing through turns, you're still enjoying yourself. Highly addictive, occasionally a little simple, and hitting the cities/units limit was always going to be a problem in a game this old, but those things pale into insignifigance against the overall quality of gameplay. Build your civilisation, manage your resources, trade with your neighbours, fight with your neighbours, then eventually kick the ass of whatever European power you started under. Up there with any other Strategy game i've ever played for sheer time-chew. Love it.
