The Settlers Fourth Edition is another strategy building sim that incorporates an immense amount of micro-management. You must perfect your skills to find any hope of success. Unlike Age of Empires, which focused on battle, Settlers is geared toward building your industry, as any veteran to the series knows. You must have your food, and resources firing on all cylinders to progress. This is easier said than done.

The graphics are updated in this version, and there is high-resolution support if your machine can handle it. There is a cool Dark Tribe campaign. This campaign is a nice diversion from some of the others offered. You don’t necessarily need the strongest military to defeat the enemy from turning the entire map into a wasteland. Unfortunately the rest of the missions in the game don’t offer anything new. You can choose to play as three different races. The Roman, The Viking, or the Mayan are all available. Each tribe has unique buildings and units. They can even raise different animals, a cool feature for fans.

The learning curve may be steep for casual gamers. The control isn’t too difficult, but the tedium seems unforgivable. In order for your little settlement to thrive you must be able to support it. Each building however needs to be supported by another, and another, and another. Separate units must be cultivated in order for specific industries to be successful. Most games in this genre have options to streamline all of the micro-management of industry, raw materials, and food production. That way the player can focus on other interesting tasks like battles, or exploring, or researching different weapons and technology. This is not the case for TSFE.

Install: Easy
Nothing much to report here. Typical easy install.

Graphics: 7.5 
Updated graphics don’t really look good until you change to a higher resolution setting. Cool zoom feature.

Sound: 7.5
The sound was fine.

Concept: 7 
By the fourth edition there should be much more to offer in gameplay and content.

Multiplayer: 7
It’s available, but you must visit the web site first to get a serial number in order to play. I also experienced some instability, and slow gameplay.

Overall: 7.5
There’s not much new here, but it’s a decent, if sometimes tedious micro builder.