Cultures Review

While the Funatics guys are still new to the gaming industry, they've developed a truly amusing product. The game seems naïve at first sight, but it is in fact very intricate and has lots things to look after while playing it. The rather relieving feature is that you will have better chances to succeed through most of the hard missions thanks to the extensiveness of gameplay. This is where the game's low speed will come in handy. Verisimilitude is also astonishing. You're going to find that without bare provisions for your people, life and work simply cannot go on. In case of the average worker, shoes and similar stuff are desirable to increase productivity (wooden tools, iron tools and so on).

One more interesting factor is the scale of religion; in the beginning it is low, but if it boosts up, you will rapidly realize that your spear maker is praying in the fields of beautiful flowers and butterflies, when in fact he should be making large supplies of weapons. And speaking of weapons, there is only a small number of standard weapons present (bows, swords, and spears). FD has enriched warfare with a few options of upgrading your units to a higher level (swordsmen I - swordsmen II requires 2 pieces of gold). Before tempting to form a large military force, you ought to think of a million things first; like advancing your citizens to become goldsmiths, tool smiths, armor smiths and so on. Then again, prior to this you are required to establish a fruitful town industry, whilst making sure that your main supply buildings don't run out of employees. This calls for some serious baby-production: 'Edna, tonight when your husband returns 'chat' with him for a while...and who knows what may pop up!'

Fighting enemy soldiers is quite straightforward, and the routine of unit selection is simplified. The selected units step into a formation of their own choice, therefore not trying your patience with loosing their way or doing something they were not told to do. So, basically, they act on their own account in battles. On the other hand, an average Viking-worker tends to loose his way to work, or even to his home. To fix this, you may have to build a marker, but that may confuse the people who go in opposite directions and have different tasks. I'm not saying this is a disadvantage; on the contrary, it is extremely practical. But, still it's a drag having to look after so many redundant details. However, if you have fun consuming the thrills of colossal games like Cultures then this won't present an obstacle.

Cultures can be commended for its severely enhanced conception of a unique life simulation. In this perspective not a single element had been left out. It portrays a symbiosis of Sierra's Cesar III and of course the very comparable BB's Settlers series. Funatics showed us that they can pull-off some serious game programming. It is in this sense that this game should also be praised (being a review writer, I can surely say that it's much more challenging to praise games than to emphatically criticize them). So these boys just might be back with a game of another genre, and yet thanks to games like these this particular genre will be more appreciated. The first-rate animations of the surroundings, excellent and witty character voices are the very high-qualities of Cultures. Simple user interface and gameplay makes it more approachable to the vast horde of hungry Settlers fans.

Nevertheless, as I stated before, it lacks self-motivating events, which might have added to the game's excitement and suspense. As for the over-elaborate evolution process, players should not consider this to be a drawback, but a welcome refreshment in RTS games. However, the question remains: can this be enough for the wide range of players out there?

Update: Here is what Thomas Friedmann had to say about speeding up the gameplay in Cultures: "Simply press the "l" button while you're playing to get double speed."