Cultures - Northland

Brilliant, underrated game. This was my first game ever played. I perfectly remember how amazing the simulation and the city building was. Not even Settlers had the intricacies that Cultures has. This is presumably the 2'nd game in the Cultures series although not shown explicitly anywhere. I did not find the original around, unless taking the GOG version. This is the ultimate society simulation and city building strategy game. People live, work, die - of old age, hunger. Each person has a profession. The game also involved standard resource collection but needs specified buildings to produce certain goods/tools. There is also war, combat. It's not terribly complicated, but diplomacy with other people, micromanagement plays a huge role. There is an interesting multiplayer mode. Today it won't hurt to use Hamachi or GameRanger to make it work. The game is totally worth it if you like Black & White or The Settlers series. Games aren't made anymore like this. It's a niche that is appropriately maintained by this old clascic.

Crashes

Great game

Cultures Gold + Northgard are classic city builders with families and small villages. Perfect for young folk to learn foreign languages.

TL;DR: fun for nostalgia if you played this as a kid, but does not hold up otherwise [h2]The good[/h2] It's a casual light-hearted city builder game. Campaign missions typically don't have any time pressure and most hostile factions don't attack you unless you make contact with them first so you can take however long you want building out your settlement and raising an army. Exploration is heavily rewarded, but not necessary, meaning you control the pace of the game. The art style is pretty and holds up well. It's nice and saturated, almost cartoonish and feels magical. Throughout the campaign you travel from the deserts of Africa to the cold and barren landscapes of Iceland and the art and visuals change accordingly, giving a lot of variety to maps. The soundtrack is also pretty good, although a bit repetitive. Upgrading buildings and setting up production lines is fun. Most buildings have several tiers of upgrades which change how the building functions and looks giving a real feeling of progression. There's a surprising amount of depth for a game so seemingly simplistic. [h2]The bad[/h2] Although the campaign is pretty long and the maps vary, you always end up building e…

Too stuffy a game for 2026. Instead of global planning, you spend 90% of your time sending a specific Viking to eat or sleep. The pace is snail-like, the interface is overloaded, constant crashes and no Russian language. Only suitable for fans of the series, nostalgic for their childhood.