When I hear a while back that Settlers of Catan was being made for release on Xbox Live Arcade I was pretty excited. Settlers of Catan is one of my all time favorite board games so to be able to play it with my friends over Live seemed like a great idea. I played a couple games today and I’m pretty impressed with how well put together Catan really is. The developers spent a lot of time adding the little customizations that make this a great game. They have an option to learn as you play so if you or your friends don’t know how Catan works you don’t have to try and explain it before hand. They can just start up the demo and learn as the play a game. The addition of Video Chat is a nice feature since the actual game play is turned based you don’t have to just is there between turns. Sure, you may be trading on other people’s turns, but while they build you can chat with the other players. They also included options to customize the rules with your own “house rules” similar to how Uno does. Since I have friends who play with slightly different rule variations this makes it easy for us to setup the game exactly like we would normally.

The computer AI for single player games has three difficulty settings. However, even on easy they are smart enough not to make ridiculously uneven trades. On harder settings they are careful not to trade you the cards you need to win and are much more ruthless in using the robber. Each AI character plays fairly consistently the same way so if you play enough single player games you can figure out the strategies that each character likes to use. I’ve already got a couple of them figured out (at least on easy). I read an interview with the developers this morning and they are going to release some additional AI players. They also are open to adding the expansion packs if there is enough demand.

The achievements have a decent range of difficulty from getting your first settlement to collecting 1000 victory points in online ranked matches. It is going to take some time to get all of the achievements, but if you play that many games it will give you a chance to hone your strategy until it is perfect. Personally, I’ll probably not be getting very many of these achievements. A game of Catan can take 45 to 60 minutes. I prefer to play Arcade games when I have only 20 or 30 minutes. If I have over a half an hour to play I’m going to play Rainbow Six: Vegas.

As a fan of Settlers of Catan I’m pretty happy with how well the made this version for Xbox Live Arcade. If you’re a fan of Settlers of Catan, or board games in general, then this is worth the $10 price tag.