This thread has no point whatsoever other than to sate my curiosity and maybe spark a little pointless chatter. :D

When I played the original S2 it was taking me 11 to 12 hours (sometimes more) to finish off some of the later missions and when I talked to other players (and no doubt better players than myself) I heard that this wasn't uncommon. Of course it's one of the reasons I love the game. :D Anyway, when I read up on the 10th anniversary I found a lot of stuff complaining the game was too easy and a step back from the original, I however am totally not finding this the case. I just finished mission 8 after three days of toil and while fun as hell it was exhausting. XD Does anyone else need this sort of time to pull these missions off? (I'm of course talking about first time playthroughs). Did the designers have it in mind to keep people on singe missions for 10 hours or more? Or of course, do I just suck at it! :P Like I said, I'm just curious.

Yeah 10th is basically a 3d remake of 2 using the old mechanics, so in my opinion it should be about the same difficulty. I played the original s2 back in the day a lot, but now I only really use 10th, it's s2 enough to satisfy and graphically held up a lot better. In fact I became such a fan of 10th I did a full translation of the vikings addon, just because I loved the extra campaign and improved mechanics so much. (it's in the ubi forums)

The levels are very well designed and can take a long time or a couple of attempts, even if you replay them it only goes as fast/slow as it does. You need time to build up an army and all the supporting structures. I've had levels take over 20h but after I'm settled ;) I tend to play at higher speed.

The later ones I just don't like as much, adk is doable if you understand German, but it went south from there imo.

Regards, Darkje (aka Mjorky)

I read the other thread about Vikings but I'm a little confused. Is it still not available in English? I would assume it's only available as a download correct?

WAIT...I just found an older post of yours. I couldn't find it on Amazon without your link because it's German. :D

it was never released in english, but only german, polish, czech and russian. but it's possible to install it on the english version with a workaround and I made an unofficial, but true to original storyline - translation of the 9500+ words german story, and have google narrate it in english too.

edit: http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/203258-Vikings-add-on-How-to-Install-Play-on-English-Version?p=1832447&viewfull=1#post1832447

If I'd known I'd become addicted to these I would have taken German over French in high school.

I completed Settlers II 10th anniversary, mostly played on the fastest setting and complete mission in 1day spending like 5~10hrs(i think) or less then 10h each day, some mission r fast to finish, i got annoyed with 1 of the mission and used a cheat:(.