Colonization is one of my favourite games, so the following review might be a more biased then reviews usually are. Adding to that, I have to admit, that I haven't played the game for about 5 years now, wich undoubtly dilutes my memory of the game. Nonetheless, here's why Colo is awesome:
- It had the fountain of youth, which made people in the old world mass-migrate to your colony!
- The economy reacted to what you bought and sold.
- You realy had to take care what settlers you'd transfer to your colony. You had to either pay money for a specialist, or train your free settlers at a natives village.
- Take a prisoner, arm him with a rifle, give him a horse and you have a dragoner. How awesome is that?
- Get a priest to build a mission at a native village, and if you have enough crosses in your colony, converts will come to the colony.
- You can get a license to bucaneer, and hunt the other nations ships, scavenging their cargo.
- When you discover the new world you can give it a name you like. That might not sound mind-blowing at first, but ever thought about migrating to "Awesomenia"?
- You sign the Declaration of Independence. I am not even american, and thinks thats exciting :)
- You get something named after you! It's a deadly disease at least...
I could go on with that list, really, but I think my point is proofen: Colonization is awesome. If you remotly like Turnbased Strategy Games or if you ever played a Civilization-Game - give it a try. If you can find it somewhere. Or you wait for the new one, they just make with the Civ4 Engine.