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I find The Settlers 2 spellbinding. I could watch my tiny happy village dudes for hours as they march back and forth between checkpoints along roads, passing goods and raw materials up and down the chain. One moment they're transporting the flour and water sent off to the bakery to be made into bread to feed the miners who dig iron ore out of the ground for smelting into slabs that are combined with coal to forge tools and weapons. The next, they're hauling logs to the sawmill and ferrying pigs to the slaughterhouse so that they have boards and meat, respectively, for the builders and miners to do their jobs.Everything in The Settlers 2 feeds into everything else in a remarkable economic simulation of village life, and you get to watch it all unfold before your eyes - all made reality by hundreds or thousands of nearly-identical little men in blue who exude personality in spite of their sameness. It could easily be tedious, especially with its pedestrian pace, but the game has soul.
Its many abstractions take on a life of their own. The simulation entrances as its agents entertain. And just as The Sims succeeded by inspiring players to find meaning in actions where there was none, The Settlers - this second entry especially - makes you feel as though that little dude with the cape is a masterful swordsman itching for a fight while this little dude loves his job but the other little dude - the chubby one assigned to a seldom-used patch of road - is bored stiff and would rather be chasing the cute rabbits that hop around the nearby grassland.
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