As city building games go ‘Zeus, Master of Olympus’ is an extremely enjoyable game with hours of good quality content and a fairly robust series of campaigns plus some sandbox maps. This game has great playability due to the dozens of different maps, continually challenging and enjoyable scenarios and the ability to play in sandbox mode. The liberal amounts of humour such as overly dramatic voice acting and amusing plotlines further enhances it making this game the master of city building games. It can be quite difficult to get the hang of due to all the different elements and conditions that need to be met but, once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s an extremely enjoyable experience with lots of opportunity for perfectionists to build the ultimate city.
Gameplay
The game is all set in Ancient Greece and has a strong emphasis on the worship of the Greek Gods, Heroes and mythological monsters. You’re unable to actually directly control any of those as it’s not an ‘Age of Empires’ type game but instead they’ll lend you a hand if you meet some specific requirements. The campaigns take place across different maps that vary in size and efficiency. Sometimes you’re stuck in a tiny little rocky map with barely any shoreline for fisheries and no farmland. Other time you’ll find yourself in a huge expanse of flat land with rivers, ocean, ore covered mountains and plenty of wildlife and farming areas to use to your heart’s content. There are essentially two types of city you’ll be building; a parent city and a colony. The colonies are built partway through a campaign and are used to support your parent city through trading in resources you couldn’t get before. After you’ve built it up from scratch and you go back to your parent city you’ll be able to continue trading with it, though you can’t flip back and forth between cities as you wish. If you’re not in the mood for a campaign with specific missions and a storyline then you can also play in the open play maps which come in three different modes; open play military, open play economic and open play sandbox that allow you to build up a huge city with all the buildings relevant to which mode you’re playing in. After you’ve picked what it is you’re doing you’ll be plonked into an empty map that will have particular resources, allies and rivals, depending on the map. Sometimes you’ll have a bountiful access to farmlands and rivers overflowing with fish, or sometimes you’ll get barely any means of getting food but instead a rich supply of copper ore and marble quarries, leaving you to figure out how to sustain your population.
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There are 7 campaigns which vary in difficulty and length. Some have only a handful of episodes whereas some have up to 8 episodes and which are generally tougher with more complex challenges. Challenges may include things like having a certain population in a certain type of house, collecting materials to start up a colony city or to send back to the parent city, building a temple to a God or slaying a mythological creature. The objectives of a mission will relate strongly to what the storyline is for that campaign and the reasoning behind the missions will be described in the narrated beginning of each one. You may have accidentally angered the God Poseidon for instance, who unleashes the mythological creature the Kraken. Your mission may then be to build a Hero Hall and to attract a hero to the city in order to defeat the beast. Heroes may include figures such as Achilles, Perseus, Hercules, Odysseus and so on. These heroes require specific conditions different to each individual, once you have met those conditions you can call for him to come and save your city from the monster. On the flip side, by worshiping particular Gods you will gain access to their specific beast who can aid you in protecting your city or invading other settlements. If you’re able to worship Poseidon then you’ll gain access to his Kraken. Who you’re able toworship or not worship varies from map to map and building a sanctuary for Gods is no easy feat due to the sheer quantity of rare resources that go into them such as marble and bronze statues.
There are a lot of different resources in the game but not every map will give you access to them, for instance when placing a farm you’ll likely only get one of several so either carrots, onions or wheat. You can get other food resources by trading with neighbouring, friendly allies. Other food sources include cheese, obtained from goats which you place individually in a field, urchins and fish which are found in the sea or rivers and pork which is obtained from wild boars that roam the forests. You distribute food and other supplies to your citizens via an ‘agora’ which is a building placed alongside a road where you may place 3 stalls on top of it or, if you build a large one that takes up both sides of the road, 6 stalls. There are two distinct forms of housing the game; regular and elite. Regular housing houses regular citizens who make up your workforce whereas the elite citizens are a mix of noblemen and your military. Whilst regular citizens can form a sort of vigilante rabble who throw rocks at enemies, these elite military guys are fully equipped with weapons, armour and horses if you supply them with such. Regular civilians, who live in a simple 2x2 house, require access to different things in order for them to improve their house which increases the number of people within that house and which generally improves the workforce and appearance of your city. By giving them food, fleece, olive oil, water and access to different ‘arts’ buildings you can have them renovate their house all the way up to a large three story townhouse.
For those who look for lots of military action in a city building game I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. There’s basically no strategic military action and, with the inclusion of a Hero, mythological creature or divine troops that some Gods may grant you, there’s very little chance of losing your city to the opposition. By bumping the difficulty level up you’ll find a lot more challenge in defending your city but you’ll only be invaded if you’ve really irritated a rival or if it’s pre-set in the mission you’re playing. Invading rivals basically includes building up a large army using the elite housing, not an easy task admittedly, then navigating to the map and selecting which city you want to invade before selecting which troops will be sent there. Then they’ll travel off by themselves whilst you wait to hear how it all went, if you win then you’ll receive goods or money every month from the conquered city and open up a trading route with them. If you lose you’ll just really irritate them and they’ll sometimes retaliate back whilst your troops are still recuperating. Overall, the military side of the game is lacking but it depends on what you’re looking for in a game.
Graphics and audio
For a city building game of the 90s it looks really nice. You can see a lot of detail such as people walking with their unique appearances, crops and grain growing in the fields, stall vendors walking back with a trail of workers ladened with goods following along behind and hunters killing wild boat in the forests. The buildings are highly detailed and lovingly crafted to look as close as possible to traditional Greek architecture whilst the people who inhabit those buildings such as the workers are visibly working or waiting to work.
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The audio is great with some really funny one liner’s on most buildings and people such as, by hovering over a theatre you’ll hear a dramatic actor exclaiming, “Has anybody seen my spear? How can I be a spear carrier without my spear?'' The narrator is a continual source of amusement for me but genuinely the voice acting is really well done and everything has a lovely sound with no irregularities anywhere. The music is very faint, subtle and relaxing and is quickly muffled by the increasing loudness of your bustling city and farmlands but for what it is, it’s certainly pleasant.
Overall
This game is rather like a balancing act between all sorts of elements such as the number of jobs, the population size, how much food you’ve got and how much money is in your coffers. It can be difficult to get used to but the tutorial is very substantial and detailed for new players and, if you’re already a veteran of city building games, you won’t find it difficult. It also helps that there’s a toggle-able difficulty level if you’re finding it too hard or too easy. This is my favourite city building game due to the unique position of it being set in Ancient Greece and without too much emphasis on fighting which, for me, should be reserved for games like ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Age of Empires’. This is the type of game where you can drop in, spend a couple of hours building something absolutely perfect, then drop back out again and leave it alone for a few weeks. It’s a nice, challenging but casual game that’s very easy to fall in love with and which looks and sounds great. If Zeus doesn’t have enough for you still then it also has an expansion pack called Poseidon which basically adds a new game onto it with a more ‘Atlantis’ theme running through it which doesn’t detract from the original game and really only enhances it.
Score: 9/10
To discover more of my old PC game reviews, check out this page here.
Alternatively, if you're currently playing this game then you might want to check out the list of cheat codes for the game, found here.
Gameplay
The game is all set in Ancient Greece and has a strong emphasis on the worship of the Greek Gods, Heroes and mythological monsters. You’re unable to actually directly control any of those as it’s not an ‘Age of Empires’ type game but instead they’ll lend you a hand if you meet some specific requirements. The campaigns take place across different maps that vary in size and efficiency. Sometimes you’re stuck in a tiny little rocky map with barely any shoreline for fisheries and no farmland. Other time you’ll find yourself in a huge expanse of flat land with rivers, ocean, ore covered mountains and plenty of wildlife and farming areas to use to your heart’s content. There are essentially two types of city you’ll be building; a parent city and a colony. The colonies are built partway through a campaign and are used to support your parent city through trading in resources you couldn’t get before. After you’ve built it up from scratch and you go back to your parent city you’ll be able to continue trading with it, though you can’t flip back and forth between cities as you wish. If you’re not in the mood for a campaign with specific missions and a storyline then you can also play in the open play maps which come in three different modes; open play military, open play economic and open play sandbox that allow you to build up a huge city with all the buildings relevant to which mode you’re playing in. After you’ve picked what it is you’re doing you’ll be plonked into an empty map that will have particular resources, allies and rivals, depending on the map. Sometimes you’ll have a bountiful access to farmlands and rivers overflowing with fish, or sometimes you’ll get barely any means of getting food but instead a rich supply of copper ore and marble quarries, leaving you to figure out how to sustain your population.
There are 7 campaigns which vary in difficulty and length. Some have only a handful of episodes whereas some have up to 8 episodes and which are generally tougher with more complex challenges. Challenges may include things like having a certain population in a certain type of house, collecting materials to start up a colony city or to send back to the parent city, building a temple to a God or slaying a mythological creature. The objectives of a mission will relate strongly to what the storyline is for that campaign and the reasoning behind the missions will be described in the narrated beginning of each one. You may have accidentally angered the God Poseidon for instance, who unleashes the mythological creature the Kraken. Your mission may then be to build a Hero Hall and to attract a hero to the city in order to defeat the beast. Heroes may include figures such as Achilles, Perseus, Hercules, Odysseus and so on. These heroes require specific conditions different to each individual, once you have met those conditions you can call for him to come and save your city from the monster. On the flip side, by worshiping particular Gods you will gain access to their specific beast who can aid you in protecting your city or invading other settlements. If you’re able to worship Poseidon then you’ll gain access to his Kraken. Who you’re able toworship or not worship varies from map to map and building a sanctuary for Gods is no easy feat due to the sheer quantity of rare resources that go into them such as marble and bronze statues.
There are a lot of different resources in the game but not every map will give you access to them, for instance when placing a farm you’ll likely only get one of several so either carrots, onions or wheat. You can get other food resources by trading with neighbouring, friendly allies. Other food sources include cheese, obtained from goats which you place individually in a field, urchins and fish which are found in the sea or rivers and pork which is obtained from wild boars that roam the forests. You distribute food and other supplies to your citizens via an ‘agora’ which is a building placed alongside a road where you may place 3 stalls on top of it or, if you build a large one that takes up both sides of the road, 6 stalls. There are two distinct forms of housing the game; regular and elite. Regular housing houses regular citizens who make up your workforce whereas the elite citizens are a mix of noblemen and your military. Whilst regular citizens can form a sort of vigilante rabble who throw rocks at enemies, these elite military guys are fully equipped with weapons, armour and horses if you supply them with such. Regular civilians, who live in a simple 2x2 house, require access to different things in order for them to improve their house which increases the number of people within that house and which generally improves the workforce and appearance of your city. By giving them food, fleece, olive oil, water and access to different ‘arts’ buildings you can have them renovate their house all the way up to a large three story townhouse.
For those who look for lots of military action in a city building game I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. There’s basically no strategic military action and, with the inclusion of a Hero, mythological creature or divine troops that some Gods may grant you, there’s very little chance of losing your city to the opposition. By bumping the difficulty level up you’ll find a lot more challenge in defending your city but you’ll only be invaded if you’ve really irritated a rival or if it’s pre-set in the mission you’re playing. Invading rivals basically includes building up a large army using the elite housing, not an easy task admittedly, then navigating to the map and selecting which city you want to invade before selecting which troops will be sent there. Then they’ll travel off by themselves whilst you wait to hear how it all went, if you win then you’ll receive goods or money every month from the conquered city and open up a trading route with them. If you lose you’ll just really irritate them and they’ll sometimes retaliate back whilst your troops are still recuperating. Overall, the military side of the game is lacking but it depends on what you’re looking for in a game.
Graphics and audio
For a city building game of the 90s it looks really nice. You can see a lot of detail such as people walking with their unique appearances, crops and grain growing in the fields, stall vendors walking back with a trail of workers ladened with goods following along behind and hunters killing wild boat in the forests. The buildings are highly detailed and lovingly crafted to look as close as possible to traditional Greek architecture whilst the people who inhabit those buildings such as the workers are visibly working or waiting to work.
The audio is great with some really funny one liner’s on most buildings and people such as, by hovering over a theatre you’ll hear a dramatic actor exclaiming, “Has anybody seen my spear? How can I be a spear carrier without my spear?'' The narrator is a continual source of amusement for me but genuinely the voice acting is really well done and everything has a lovely sound with no irregularities anywhere. The music is very faint, subtle and relaxing and is quickly muffled by the increasing loudness of your bustling city and farmlands but for what it is, it’s certainly pleasant.
Overall
This game is rather like a balancing act between all sorts of elements such as the number of jobs, the population size, how much food you’ve got and how much money is in your coffers. It can be difficult to get used to but the tutorial is very substantial and detailed for new players and, if you’re already a veteran of city building games, you won’t find it difficult. It also helps that there’s a toggle-able difficulty level if you’re finding it too hard or too easy. This is my favourite city building game due to the unique position of it being set in Ancient Greece and without too much emphasis on fighting which, for me, should be reserved for games like ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Age of Empires’. This is the type of game where you can drop in, spend a couple of hours building something absolutely perfect, then drop back out again and leave it alone for a few weeks. It’s a nice, challenging but casual game that’s very easy to fall in love with and which looks and sounds great. If Zeus doesn’t have enough for you still then it also has an expansion pack called Poseidon which basically adds a new game onto it with a more ‘Atlantis’ theme running through it which doesn’t detract from the original game and really only enhances it.
Score: 9/10
To discover more of my old PC game reviews, check out this page here.
Alternatively, if you're currently playing this game then you might want to check out the list of cheat codes for the game, found here.
