Serf City: Life is Feudal

"Who'd of thought such an old DOS game could make todays strategy games look bad?"

To be honest I think this is one of the oldest games I have ever played. I remember this being on a friends computer a number of years ago when Windows 98 was still the OS to go with. It was just another one of those things that was on a computer. We didn't have nearly the amount of knowledge about it then, but none the less we played it because it sucked us in. The game looks like any old school NES game you might've played as kid growing up, however behind the old clunky pixels is a very VERY deep strategy game. The only way to find this game these days is either downloading it or finding someone crazy enough to know what this game was, hoping they have the original copy. Your best bet is online though. You may or may not need to download a DOS emulator as well. I know it sounds like I'm encouraging illegal activities and all, but really I'm not. It is just what is required to play a game like this. If you have an extremely old OS like 95 or 98 it would probably run fine. But I had to go through tedious work to get it run properly on my computer. And it was rewarding to eventually save my games unlike on my friends computer!

Gameplay - 9/10
First things first, I HIGHLY recommend any first timers PLEASE read or download the manual to this game. This game has a manual over 120 pages long. I bet you weren't expecting that, were you? I wasn't joking when I said this game was in-depth. It'll tell you everything you need to know from icons, what buildings are, which settlers to look out for and how to keep your city prospering.

So you start off by picking the game setup. How many opponents you want (1-3), if you want any specific enemies(yes you can choose), what size map you want to play on and either pick or let the map generator do its work. You can actually use a map for future use if you want based off the numbers generated for the map. Some maps really strike gold for your city and others fall into the crapper.

Picking a prime location to setup your castle is the key to getting a good start. You can get a hint to what kind of resources are in the area by clicking on the little guy that pops up on the menu bar box when you select a spot on the map. He'll give you a rating from poor to perfect on gold, iron, coal and stone. The main things you probably want to look for are gold and iron. Good deposits in those pretty much mean you are set. Coal is important as well, but it is pretty much abundant on any map. Stone not so much because you can actually harvest stone on the map, just like you can with trees for wood.

Once you pick your castle, special click the far left circle icon on the menu bar and you'll get a little helpful note on what can be built on every section of land. This is very helpful for deciding where you want to place buildings because not every spot will let you build a large building. A large building is anything not on the first page that comes up when you scroll through something to construct. Spots are scarce on land that isn't even or flat. Mines can only be built on the mountains for obvious reasons and snow is never buildable. Water isn't either, but you can run boat routes through them if they are big enough and you require more transportation.

In a sense, you might think this game sounds like a rip off of Sim City, but trust me, it is not. For one, money doesn't exist(technically). And roads don't cost money to build. You harvest resources to help build your city. You start out with a good chunk of stock when you start any game, so there isn't much need for a little while.

As you progress through the game building lumberjacks to get the trees and sawmills to make wood, you'll get to some of the more important buildings such as a gold refinery and a blacksmith. These are crucial things you want later on or early, depending if you want to engage war with your opponents. You need gold for bunkers and Guard houses so the soldiers have a better reason to fight. Which is fighting for the riches. Blacksmith is to build your swords and shields. There are other important buildings that help lead up to better soldiers and such, but I would say those two are the more important ones.

And probably the most important part of all is managing your city with charts and growth customization. You can do anything from control the amount of food your miners get, which either increases or decreases the amount of resource they mine to how many tools you want to build for your workers to have ready when they need them. You can pick to have more settlers and workers in the city or more soldiers to have trained and ready. Don't want any more boats made? Don't give the boat maker anymore wood. Need less gold and more steel? Don't give anymore coal to the gold refinery. Aside from controlling just about every aspect of your city you can also just few charts for easy reference as to how much work your people have or don't have. One thing leads up to another and not having enough pigs can mean not having enough meat for the miners, which means less resources you get harvested that doesn't get to the gold refiner to make you gold bars which in the end means low class soldiers to defend your city. I bet you regret not reading the manual if this happens to you. But hey, can't say I didn't warn you. I went pretty deep in detail about a small aspect yet VERY important part of the game. I'll leave the rest for you to discover. :P

Control - 5/10
Ok, I'll be flat out honest, for a PC game, these are some HORRIBLE controls to get used too. Ok ok, for the most part it is click, click, click. But there are "special" clicks you have to perform in order to access some of the higher end commands in the game. Special clicks, when you read the manual, is simply left and right on the mouse at the same time. However, since right has no real function, holding it down and left clicking is much better to do. I have messed up way too many times trying to do one thing, then accidentally doing a special click or not doing one and destroying a building or having the wrong thing made and it gets irritating when you are in a feud with an enemy or trying to surpass them in sheer power. So ladies and gents, watch your clicks!

Graphics - 7/10
You know, for an old PC game such as this one, the graphics really aren't too bad. For the kind of game this is, they are acceptable because you really don't need to rely on them for anything. For the time, I'd say they were pretty kick ass. Unless you are blind, there is no excuse for the crappy pixels confusing you for one thing or another. Oh by the way, this game is played from birds eye view, just thought I would mention that.

Sound - 6/10
A little repetitive. The music is... well, is music plural or singular? Because I'm pretty sure I've only ever heard the same re-occurring song over and over the entire time you play this game. I guess it's a little catchy, but not something you'll be throwing speakers across the room to silence it out. I usually listen to music or completely forget it's even playing.

Overall - 8/10
Good game for an old game. Replay value is high because of the infinite map possibilities coupled with map size. It will take you more than one go around to understand a game of this depth if you didn't at least skim through the manual. I wouldn't put it against the younger generation of gamers to pass up, but definitely something an old schooler could appreciate. Give it a shot, you never know what you're missing from the history of video games.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/07/07