Year: 1998
Type: Gamerip
Composer(s): Haiko Ruttmann
Number of tracks: 12

★★★★★

Clever - Lovely - Imperfect

Here you can find the music review for
Quest of the Amazons (1999).

Nowadays, it is not unusual for a game series to reinvent itself. A linear adventure becomes an open-world epic, a shooter series a strategy game. For me, however, the leap from The Settlers II to The Settlers III was the first time that a sequel was not modeled exactly after its predecessor. Instead of connecting houses with flags and paths, I was suddenly able to freely position my buildings and command soldiers across the map. Even though the core of The Settlers series was still the development of a functioning economic cycle, it felt like a completely new game.

In addition to the great graphics back then, the game also featured three campaigns about the different cultures and their gods. The stories revolved around the self-ironic competition between Jupiter, Horus and Ch'ih-Yu in cartoon sequences. It was a great game, but I was probably too young for it at the time and therefore never really understood it. This was to change with the fantastic The Settlers IV - more on that in due course. The third part heralded a new direction for the series, whether better or worse is up to each individual to decide. Personally, I had fun with almost every installment, whether with the gameplay of 1+2, 3+4 or the (unjustly) reviled 5th installment. However, the soundtrack definitely received an upgrade.

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)

The score for The Settlers III (another Gamerip) was once again composed by Haiko Ruttmann, whose artistic development can be seen in every new iteration of The Settlers . While I still had a few grumbles about The Settlers II . While I still had a few grumbles about the second game, a lot has changed in the two years between its predecessor and the battle between Romans, Egyptians and Chinese. For example, the soundtrack of The Settlers III no longer features MIDIs, but synths. This is not to say that MIDIs are necessarily worse and synths/samples are automatically better. In my opinion, the exact opposite is the case when you listen to the soundtrack of the original Age of Empires from 1997 and the 2017 re-orchestrated version of the Definitive Edition . But technological progress often brings with it qualitative developments, in the same way that there are classic cars and rusty junk mills. And so the soundtrack also contains aspects such as different tempos or volume changes that are missing in MIDI compositions.

Ruttmann uses these tools to make his work seem more coherent and at the same time a little more playful. We find many more melodies running through the tracks and instruments that complement each other within the call & response. This makes the music seem much more stringent in direct comparison to its predecessor, also in terms of the choice of instruments. This was one of my criticisms of The Settlers II, whose partly incoherent music created a crude mix in which only one or two tracks really seemed to fit the game.

In addition, The Settlers III is the first time we are dealing with different cultures that differ not only visually, but also in terms of play. This separation is largely captured by Ruttmann in the music, which differs from nation to nation. The Romans, which we will also hear in part 4 in their completed form, have a military, orderly feel and their strings and percussion are reminiscent of the soundtrack to Rome – Total War. In contrast to its serious real-time relative, however, the music is less grave and sometimes seems deliberately silly and childish, which suits the game well but may not appeal to everyone.

The Egyptians and Asians are different. While the latter fit perfectly into the Far Eastern cliché box with panpipes, gongs and zhengs, the Egyptians were culturally more oriented towards the Middle East, which is why we hear Arabic drums and flutes there. The composer does not attempt a historically accurate reappraisal of Egyptian musical culture, yet "Die Ägypter 2" ("The Egyptians 2"), for example, sounds very much like the Romans - that could have been done better. And why Ruttmann quotes Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King", as he did in "Die traurige Bäuerin" ("Sad Farmer's Wife") from The Settlers II only he himself will probably know.

This, and what the last three tracks are all about, which I found as part of another gamerip. Once again, the nameless track "Die Siedler III 1" ("The Settlers III 1") feels like the outro of a 1994 anime in the soundtrack, while "Die Siedler III 3" ("The Settlers III 3") is an Irish jig. You probably don't need to understand that. On the other hand, "Die Siedler III 2" ("The Settlers III 2") is a pleasant surprise with its continuous motif, the rising and falling instrumentation and the relationship to the Viking theme from The Settlers IV , which pushes an average soundtrack even further and whets the appetite for the, in my opinion, perfect music of the sequel from 2001.

Nostalgia warning

The rating of the individual tracks is purely subjective and clearly colored by my own experience with the game. You can find out more in the article About Nostalgia.

Nr.	Title	Interpret(en)	Ratings
01	Die Römer 1	Haiko Ruttmann	4
02	Die Römer 2	Haiko Ruttmann	4
03	Die Römer 3	Haiko Ruttmann	4
04	Die Ägypter 1	Haiko Ruttmann	3
05	Die Ägypter 2	Haiko Ruttmann	3
06	Die Ägypter 3	Haiko Ruttmann	4
07	Die Asiaten 1	Haiko Ruttmann	3
08	Die Asiaten 2	Haiko Ruttmann	4
09	Die Asiaten 3	Haiko Ruttmann	3
10	Die Siedler III 1	Haiko Ruttmann	2
11	Die Siedler III 2	Haiko Ruttmann	5
12	Die Siedler III 3	Haiko Ruttmann	4

Year: 1999
Type: Gamerip
Composer(s): Haiko Ruttmann
Number of tracks: 3

★★★★★

Quest of the Amazons

Oh, how great games used to be. When a game was released and that was it. No microtransactions, no daily patches, no always on. You learned to live with the bugs, played it until your eyes dropped and were happy about every bit of new content - back then in the form of add-ons. At least that's my romanticized idea of the past, of a time before the bug infested Gothic III, which you could only enjoy at all with enough patches. Nowadays, the Quest of the Amazons would probably be a DLC, but it brings with it a whole new playable faction in the form of the warlike Amazons as well as its own campaign. To the best of my recollection, I never played it, because the main game belonged to my cousin, and that was the only time I was able to play it, if at all.

Musically, however, the expansion does nothing wrong. True to the main game, there are also three tracks for the female faction. However, as the aim here was to create background music based on gender rather than ethnicity, the songs are difficult to categorize into a musical trope. Consequently, the music of the Amazons is reminiscent of the Romans, but its waltz-like rhythm makes it more graceful. In general, the desired image of a forest people with whistling birds and a closeness to nature is created and when flutes meet percussion, the whole thing is vaguely reminiscent of Peter and the Wolf. The highlight is "Die Amazonen 2" ("The Amazons 2"), which skillfully balances between light-hearted happiness and seriousness and finds a middle ground worth listening to.

Nr.	Title	Interpret(en)	Ratings
1	Die Amazonen 1	Haiko Ruttmann	4
2	Die Amazonen 2	Haiko Ruttmann	5
3	Die Amazonen 3	Haiko Ruttmann	4