Rating: 
Summary: A gift from the gods!
Review: I bought this on a whim, during summer break but didn't play it until after the semester started, for some reason. Bad move! I found myself sitting up through the night and nearly missing a class because I was so absorbed in this game! I finally had to put it away and promise I would only use it on the weekends. Still no good, because I apparently bypassed Sunday, a friend told me. So the next decision was only during school breaks. With that, I've been able to keep my GPA at a decent level (I'm off double secret probation, for you Animal House fans) and if I accidentally miss a day or two, it's all right. (^_^) A friend of mine, who owns Caesar III and Pharaoh, pooh-poohs Zeus as "too easy" and not worth his time, but I love it. The Greek aspect is what drew me to it originally, but the creators have done their homework and know their myths, so I repect them for that. A fun game to play, I recommend it to all. Just don't start it unless your homework is done.
Rating: 
Summary: Haven't spent much time with it
Review: I haven't made it through the game yet, although as far as I have played it, I did enjoy it. Maybe I will be able to finish it, maybe not. If I don't I still had fun playing it as long as I did. Since I DIDN'T play all the way through, though, is why I can't give it 5 stars. If it was a 5 star game, something would have made me want to keep pressing forward until I had gone all the way through.
Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining!
Review: Having bough the game only a couple of days one would think that I still have not got the right feel for it, i.e., Zeus: Master of Olympus by Sierra Studios. However, nothing could be further from the truth. I find this game to be intriguing, challenging and foremost allot of fun. The lack of overt violence is definetely a plus and the the interface is awesome. Two thumps up for Sierra Studios. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific Game
Review: I love this game! Zeus Master of Olympus is a hit. The graphics on this game are terrific. The building selection is humongous. It would take you days to build them all. You'll need to keep your villagers happy by building stadiums and gymnasiums along with many more buildings. This game is a great challenge. You will be trying to bring heroes(such as Jason of the Argonauts) to your city to fight evil monsters(such as the Hydra and Cyclops). While trying to boost your economy up you will engage in warfare. This is the only drawback of this game, warfare that is. It's a very complicated process in which you have to provide food and/or horses to your people so they can fight. Also very hard to make people happy. But I still gave this game 5 stars for it's great graphics and amazing gameplay.
Rating:
Summary: Not as serious as maybe "Pharaoh", but just as fun
Review: Zeus is more than Pharaoh moved to Greece. The entire game has been changed to fit ancient Greek culture in the Heroic Age. Another change is the introduction of mythic characters directly into the player's city building. Add a streamlined interface, and you get probably the best city-building game to date. In this game, one starts an adventure covering an historical city-state's development over time. Each adventure is made up of "episodes". The episodes all have certain goals to reach: population, political/military/economic power, religous goals. These mini-games link together, so that what is accomplished in the previous one continues on to through the rest. Depending on victory conditions, and how well you did last game, each episode can run 15min - 2hours. Although somewhat cartoonish (not that this is a bad thing), there are historical bases for how the game plays. Unlike Pharaoh where one takes orders from on high or gives them to the entire country, in Zeus your city-state is an entity unto itself-you answer to no one. Unless, your city is taken by another independent city-state. Thus diplomacy is an important facet of city development. Another historical "engine" is the role of religion. Here the gods have very human personalities: they hold grudges and try to get you to worship them promising blessings on your community. Again, very Greek in the relationship and "ethos" of religion. The raising and employment of your military forces is also quite historical. In Zeus there are four basic types: "Rabble", "Hoplites", "Cavalry" and "Triremes" (navy). Rabble closely model "Peltastoi"-Peltasts light infantrymen who did basically throw rocks as depicted in the game; they are defensive troops only. Hoplites are the guys depicted on vases. They formed the famous Phalanx and did come from the wealthier classes; Cavalry are mounted Hoplites in game terms. Both can be used (as can the navy) to raid/attack your rivals. As in actual Greek cities, whether to mobilize your forces for offensive or defensive operations is a weighty decision. These are citizen-soldiers, so while mobilized their civilian jobs are not being done. If you choose to defend your city every time it's being attacked, the result can be economic disaster, even if you win militarily. Overall, this is a great game, and probably a better history lesson than most folks realize...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent City Simulation
Review: Impressions Studios is the developer responsible for this game as well as Pharoah, Cleopatra, and Caesar 3 before it. These "City-Building Simulations" allow you to build and govern fantastic cities. Unlike the Sim City series, these games allow you much greater control over your domain. You don't merely zone for housing and lay roads; you control what your citizens eat and drink, where they live, and how they work. Your city comes alive as each citizen walks the streets, going to and from work or perhaps to the theater to take in a show.Zeus is loaded with improvements over earlier games in the City-Building series. Even if you haven't played any of those games, you will still benefit from the more streamlined operations that Zeus features. For example, buildings are now a more uniform size, making it easier to place them. The number of buildings has also been reduced. Although this may not seem like a "feature", it does simplify the game and allows players to concentrate on other tasks. Commonly-used tools such as the shovel are now placed on the main taskbar. And your walkers -- those hardy citizens whose job it is to deliver goods and services -- are smarter than ever before. Even the buildings received an AI update to help you manage trade and city services. This is a challenging game with a lot of replayability, but it isn't too complicated for new players to enjoy. Zeus comes with a lengthy, multi-mission tutorial that gradually introduces the relevant concepts to novice players. The games includes a half-dozen scenarios, each with multiple missions, that progress in difficulty and offer various levels of challenge. Zeus is clearly Impressions' best work to date.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing.
Review: Comparing to this game, SimCity looks extremely boring. The only technical problem with this game is that you should not try to install it into directory, other than default. Tutorials are perfect and fun! Don't ignore them! The biggest problem with SimCity is that it is hard to understand what is going on. Zeus is very clear, very accurate, very handy... This game has been created by the guy who've been testing Caesar and Pharaon. He've spend thousands of hours playing city-building games and ... well ... Zeus is just plain brilliant. Disclaimer. I'm not a troll. I really like this game!!! End of disclaimer.
Rating:
Summary: Awsome, but kinda complicated...
Review: I think that this game had great graphics, a great theme, and was fun. The only downside I found was that this game was kinda complicated. It does have an easy help menu, but who wants to have to go to a help menu every 3 minutes? Other than that, this is a great game.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply Absorbing
Review: I'd never played a city-building game before Zeus, and I had no very specific expectations: I've read a lot of Greek literature and history, and I'd enjoyed the city-building aspects of RTS games like Age of Empires, so I thought Zeus was a good bet. I learned the system quite quickly, thanks to a thorough, well-paced tutorial and a complete, well-proofread manual (both increasingly rare these days in computer games). I liked the game, and played it all the way through; it wasn't exactly exciting, not often, anyway, but it gives you absorbing, very complex projects to manage as you go through. At first I was a little annoyed by the tongue-in-cheek asides and one-liners that give the game much of its flavor (I guess I was hoping for epic Greece rather than comic Greece), but they quickly won me over. Even at the very end of the last campaign, I was discovering new ones. Click on a philosopher or an athlete returning from losing the Olympic games, for instance, and he will make excuses; click on him while the Hydra is chasing him and he'll start to say something but then will start screaming. Military play was both my favorite aspect of Zeus and the most disappointing. I got a lot of satisfaction from surveying my rows of elite housing filled with cool-looking hoplites and cavalry, and my trireme fleets, but the interface for controlling troops when enemies land on your shores leaves a lot to be desired. Troops follow their company banner, but to move the banner you have to click on the tiny base of its pole, and often the base is blocked by buildings, people, or the troops themselves. They're also not very responsive fighters. Even when set to "aggressive" they'll often just stand there looking stupid when enemies are only steps away. But they hold formation well, unlike their counterparts in Age of Empires, and that contributes to the feeling of generalship. And the enemies are fun: Persians have wicker shields and headdresses, Amazons have archers and spearthrowers, and the centaurs...are centaurs. Having monsters and gods involved in the combat definitely adds interest, too. Some scenarios do a better job than others of fitting Greek sources into the game. The Peloponnesian and Trojan Wars are great...but exactly what does the wedding of Pyramus and Thisbe (or whoever it was) have to do with me saving up 24 skeins of fleece? Well, never mind --- it's still fun. A few days before I sat down to write this, a Zeus expansion was announced: Poseidon, in which you rule Atlantis and set up colonies around the (mythical) ancient world. I put Zeus away some time ago, but I'll definitely be picking Poseidon up --- and the expansion is just one more reason for you to give Zeus a try.
Rating:
Summary: Puts to shame other CBGs
Review: I've played a lot of CBGs, city building games, such as Caesar 2 & 3, the Simcities etc. and none even compare to Zeus. The point that made it better to me is that you don't just build the city to get people, you build it to get people to accomplish the goals. With different goals every level it makes for a very diverse, fun game. A couple other keys I found different (and better) than Sierra's previous game Caesar 3: you could never send armies to attack distant places you had to wait for them to attack you; you had no foreign relations other than trade, the foreign country interactivity is very fun in Zeus because they'll ask you for things like a hero, an army, goods, etc. and you can ask them as well; and overall Zeus is a much more lighthearted, funny game while Caesar 3 was very serious and a little boring. In the end Zeus is very fun with long replayability.
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