Not too long ago I got The Settlers for my Nintendo DS. I always loved Settlers 2 for PC and since this one is a remake of Settlers 2 I couldn't wait to play it. When I finally got to play it I found out it wasn't all great. Starting the game When I started the game I got into a beautiful menu with the old DOS graphics of Settlers 2. You can choose between a few options. The Roman campaign, which is basically the PC version. The thing I liked here was that they added level select. When you progress through the game and enter a new level, it gets added to the list and you can play it whenever you like. Another option is the world campaign. In this mode the maps basically look like real countries, like the UK and such. The last option is freeplay, in which you can just manually choose how you want to play the game. You can choose how many enemies you have, the scenario, etc. Roman Campaign I will be reviewing the Roman Campaign since it's basically the only thing I've been playing and the rest is the same in gameplay, only difference are the maps. If you're not familiar with how the Settlers works, you need to build a civilization on an island. Which means you need a woodcutter to cut down trees and a sawmill to make those into planks and a shipyard to make those into ships. There are a lot of buildings to build, farms, breweries, weapon makers, barracks, etc. You need them all in order to get a working society. Once you've build up your soldier's strength you need to kill off the other tribe on the map. The stronger you trained your soldiers the better chance you have to defeat them. Now you get the basic idea of how the game works. Now I'll tell you a bit about the DS version. When entering the game I noticed the screen was a lot smaller than the PC version. Of course this was to be expected since the DS can't handle as much, but it tends to get a little confusing over time with such a small screen. It's basically 1/4th of the PC screen. Now there is a zoom function in the game which gives you the same perspective as the PC version but there are some problems with that. First of all, you can't really see what anything is anymore. You can really tell it just won't fit on the DS screen. Also, the game runs slower, it's really working hard to get the game to run. And the worst thing, the game sometimes freezes up when zooming out. This can be very annoying when you didn't save. After a while I just stopped using the zoom function because I was too afraid the game would freeze. The game itself works just like the PC version with the difference that you use your stylus instead of your mouse. you can scroll through the map with your D-pad. One good thing about the DS version is the fact that you can use 2 screens and can switch between them with the L-button. For example, you can have a map of the island on the top screen while playing the game on the bottom screen. If you need to go somewhere quickly you press L, tap on some part of the map and you get moved there. It's very easy to use. You can do the same thing with other things like menus and stuff. The PC version My experience Like I said I loved the PC version, but the thing is I never really got very far on that one. Now that I'm playing the DS version I seem to get stuck at the same part of the game. You really need a lot patience sometimes to get through the game. It can take a while untill you got a strong army. To get soldiers you need weapons. To make weapons you need iron ore and anvils. To make anvils you need iron ore and coal. To mine iron ore and coal you need to get the miners food. As you can see there are a lot of things you need to do untill you get to the point where you can finish the level. And it can get kind of aggrevating when there is no more coal in your mine so you need to find another spot to get coal from while your whole little industry has stopped because they all need the coal. So after a while I got kind of bored with it. I'll probably pick it up again in a while, but having to play on such a small screen doesn't really add to the fun. At the start you can look over it but when you're getting frustrated that not everything is going as planned it can really bug you. Final verdict For those who played the old PC version of Settlers 2 and loved it, I would get this one. There's not much better than playing a PC classic anywhere you like. For those of you who don't have a lot of patience, don't get it. You'll probably get annoyed quite a lot by the bugs in the game and the slow pace. 6/10