Fans of Impressions Games' previous titles, Caesar III and Pharaoh, have plenty to cheer about.  Zeus:  Master of Olympus, Impressions' latest offering, takes the best of what their previous games offered and simplifies things a bit, resulting in an experience that's at once familiar and refreshing.  The familiar parts are the city-building aspects:  As the mayor of a Greek city, you must provide housing and structures, roads and marketplaces, and a simplified system of government for your people.  You'll also have to provide for your city's defense (with walls and towers), and for its prosperity (with resources, such as sheep and olive trees).  The refreshing parts are the seven creative campaigns (called adventures) and three sandbox games, the high-quality graphics and humorous animations, and the elements of Greek culture and mythology that make up the gamescape.

In addition to having a streamlined interface, Zeus reduces the level of depth and complexity by which previous games have been bogged down.  Everything you need for controlling your civilization is available from a control panel on the main game screen, with multiple tabs for things such as Aesthetics (gardens and parks), Military, Husbandry (food), Hygiene, and so on.  Under each tab, you have a clearly limited amount of information you can access, so getting a handle on and managing everything that's taking place in your city is easy to do.  A Pan-Hellenic map is included, too, so that you can keep tabs on your neighbors and set up trade relationships.

Zeus' mythological elements come into play quite nicely.  In accordance with the goals of the various missions that make up the campaigns, you'll build your city in ways that will either please any of the twelve gods you're supporting, such as Zeus and Artemis (by building sanctuaries dedicated to them), or attract certain heroes (six total), such as Hercules and Perseus (by building Heroes' Halls).  Much like Wonders of the World in Civilization II, the gods confer special bonuses on your city.  However, if you offend them, the gods can also pose obstacles to your city's progress.  The heroes are useful for defending your city against the great monsters of mythology (such as Medusa and the Kraken).

Ultimately, though, Zeus is a game of simplified resource management and mission-based city development.  One key improvement of the mission system over Impressions' previous titles is that your cities stay exactly the same from mission to mission, after you achieve your designated goals, thereby giving you a sense of continuity and progress (not to mention a real sense of achievement upon completing an entire adventure—each of which can take a good few hours).  The adventures are all based on taking your city from a basic settlement up through years of growth and defense, including dealing with gods and heroes and establishing new settlements, and ending with your city as a permanent fixture not only of Greece, but of history.  In many ways, the Greek elements do seem secondary to the city-building aspects of the game, but the stories of each adventure proffer a better appreciation of the setting and the Greek-specific notions that underlie your city's success, such as the ideas of the college and the gymnasium for increasing your city's culture, or the heavy reliance on sculpture for trade with other cities.

Another noteworthy Greek feature of the game is the fact that your citizens make up your army.  When it comes time to defend your city from enemy invasions, you'll have to pull your people from the houses and jobs, and, accordingly, the well-oiled machine of your city's day-to-day functionality will start grinding down the longer your citizens are at war.  Unfortunately, in making the game more basic and straightforward, Impressions also oversimplified the combat system.  Forget about full-fledged military campaigns; battle in Zeus consists of placing standards where you want your soldier units (rabble, hoplites, horsemen; triremes for sea battle) to move toward and attack or defend.  You do have a few more attack options, but this part of the game is nowhere near as fully developed as the actual building and maintaining of cities.  You should think of Zeus' combat more as a diplomatic element of the game, such as trade, that either raises you or lowers you in the eyes of your neighboring cities.

Lastly, it's worth noting that Zeus contains one of the best manuals and tutorial systems available for any game in any genre.  The manual has been creatively written as a story of Democrates.  As he learns how to build and maintain his city, so do you.  The tutorial system is made up of many different "missions," each of which teaches you a little more about the game.  Zeus is most recommendable to fans of Impressions' other games.  Gamers unfamiliar with the city-building genre might have to invest more time in learning the ins and outs of Zeus' unique resource-management/city-development system, but anyone who does invest that time will be rewarded with hours upon hours of entertainment.

Installation:  Easy.  Choose the installation size and off you go.

Game Play:  9.1.  Barring the "secondariness" of its military aspects, Zeus offers a completely entertaining, relatively bug-free experience from beginning to end.  The interface, manual, and tutorial demonstrate Impressions' dedication to providing gamers with a top-notch, mature product.  The fun factor is high, based on the game's incorporation of popular mythology and the continuity of adventures from mission to mission.

Graphics:  9.4.  A lot of Zeus' fun comes from its colorful, funny animations (vendors in the agoras bustle about their shops, rabble hurl stones at enemy soldiers, the lookout's robes appear to be on fire unbeknownst to him).  The static art is also very stylistic . . . comic book-like, even, but in a good way.  All the artwork combines to generate an enthusiasm for the game's subject matter and story lines.  Watching everything take place on your screen in bright detail is so much fun because what you're seeing is unmistakably a Greek city brought back to life.  Perhaps the only thing missing is a zoom function.

Sound:  9.3.  Impressions invested in some quality music for this game.  You can almost see a toga'd musician strumming a lyre up on some mountain somewhere, as the non-invasive tunes work to relax you.  And the voice acting is both funny and appropriate.  There should have been more of it, however.  The sound effects are also well done and functional:  whether selecting between a workshop, a fountain, or some sheep, you can tell which item you've selected based on how it sounds.

Difficulty:  8.9.  The brilliant manual and tutorial go a long way in making up for the game's somewhat steep learning curve.  There's simply so much information that's available to you, although the interface is deceptive in that it appears to make every bit of that information no more than a click or two away.  Difficulty levels are present and can be used to good effect as you become more familiar with your surroundings, and even after you've mastered the adventures, you'll still find the open-ended sandbox games captivating.

Concept:  9.1.  Zeus is an original game based on an original time in history.  So much work appears to have gone into making this title the best in Impressions' city-building series, as it offers plenty for novice and experienced gamers alike.  The stylistic artwork is unparalleled for this type of game, and while the notion of building cities/civilizations has been around awhile, it's never been so easy to experience fully.  Perhaps the only glaring omission is the absence of a multiplayer mode, which should have been an obvious inclusion in a game like this. . . .  Imagine a Civilization II:  Multiplayer Gold Edition-type of Zeus game, where you have to balance your diplomacy and combat efforts against human opponents, as both (or all) of you race to improve your cities and win the favors of gods and heroes.

Overall:  9.3.  Impressions Games' Zeus:  Master of Olympus is, in its simplest form, a complete game.  Its total package is made up of great game play, great graphics, great sound . . . just an overall great experience.  It's a lot of fun and it hardly ever gets bogged down in details or technicalities the way that so many other resource-management-based games tend to do.  It's addictive, too:  From your first wharf, hut, and trading post, up through all your wine, armor, and levels of elite housing, you won't be able to quit playing until you've built your city into a thriving economic and cultural stronghold.  Keep your eye on Impressions for more thoroughly satisfying games in the years to come.