Year: 1993
Type: Gamerip
Composer(s): Haiko Ruttmann
Number of tracks: 2

★★★★★

The land before my time

After Anno now comes the second of the probably best-known strategy game series from Germany: The Settlers. However, as with the Heroes of Might and Magic-series, I have to start with a handicap. I've never played the 1993 forefather, but only started with part 2 because the predecessor was initially only released for the Amiga and later also for MS-DOS (DOS, imagine that!). On the other hand, this gives me a neutral view of the game, which is almost as old as I am.

Briefly about the simple game principle. This was limited to establishing cycles of commodities, expanding and then, with luck, not being beaten up by the AI. While this still worked in The Settlers and The Settlers II with the familiar flag and path system, this unique selling point was dropped again in The Settlers III and the scurrying citizens began to trample their own trails. The fifth installment, at the latest, finally broke with the accustomed conventions and is still considered a lowlight of the series by many fans... which I can understand. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun with it. But more on that in due course. Now to the soundtrack of The Settlers.

The Settlers (1993)

The Settlers II (1996)

The Settlers III (1998)

The Settlers III: Quest of the Amazons (1999)

The Settlers IV (2001)

The Settlers IV: The Trojans and the Elixir of Power (2002)

Which is surprisingly good! The fact that the game doesn't take itself one hundred percent seriously can be seen from the first glance at the cover: a fat knight on a long-haired pony gives a thumbs-up to the viewer, the duo is watched by a red-haired boy in shorts. Even if this does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the quality of the actual game, this attitude is reflected in the music. The Intro is light-hearted, we can literally see a somewhat corpulent man wobbling happily through the streets and waving to his neighbors, a childlike performance in brightly colored candy. The second track, the actual game music, is a continuous 12 ½-minute song courtesy of the technical limitations.

At the beginning, the main theme chirps in a catchy melody that sounds like a MIDI version of the Pirates of the Caribbean-theme in places, which is perhaps why I like it so much. Towards the end, on the other hand, there is a fairground feeling, sounding more like the sequel. And then it's already over. The journey lasts a total of 14:20 minutes, back to a time before epochal orchestral bombast, before full-length track lists and cinematic staging. When an ice cream scoop still cost 50 pfennigs and Mattis had not yet learned to speak (the good times!). And I enjoyed this short journey.

That's why the first The Settlers-soundtrack scores a very respectable rating even without the nostalgia bonus and would probably come off even better if the individual tracks had been split up. So it's 'only' enough for four stars and the surprising realization that I almost like this soundtrack better than that of The Settlers II, the game I actually played. I'll explain why it doesn't come off so well in retrospect in the accompanying review.

No.	Title	Artist(s)	Ratings
1	Intro	Haiko Ruttmann	3
2	The Settlers	Haiko Ruttmann	4