Cultures PC game [2000] - playable?

[kiddingguy]

I just got reminded on Cultures 1 and 2 after playing the new Settlers game.

It was quite a fun game back in the 2000-ies. I kinda remember not playing it anymore because of compatibility/driver-issues, stutterings and all because of newer OS's (Win 8 & 10).

Just wondering... since I guess I still have the CD's from back than, and it's for purchase on gog... it this game playable without stutterings and hickups on a Windows 11 machine?

[ThaCrip]

Pretty much the oldest 3D windows game I replay here and there as the years pass is from 2002 (Mafia (2002)(still my #1 video game experience to this day as it's now over 20 years since I first played it)) and that works on Linux through Lutris etc (I did have some crashes back to desktop but not enough to stop me from completing the game). but it worked on Windows 10 the last I knew (this would have been sometime in the year 2018 or before since I have moved to Linux in Jan 2019). but... you had to enable 'DirectPlay' on Windows 10 for it to work as that's disabled by default. with Win11 it might be more of a crap-shoot especially since I would assume if you are running Win11 that means you got newer hardware (which I speculate a bit about newer hardware with older games below given what I heard).

I also use some other tweaks on it like a 'd3d8.dll' file (i.e. https://github.com/crosire/d3d8to9/releases ) which converts the games DirectX8 into DirectX9. but most notably gives a noticeable performance boost. I also used some other tweaks to restore original music etc but I won't get into this for now since I don't want to drift too far away from your question.

anyways, from comments I read here and there it seems some older games are more likely to have issues on modern hardware as I would not be surprised if modern CPU's are more problem prone with somewhat older games as even a slightly older game I replay here and there as the years pass, Mafia II (2010) (my 2nd favorite game experience) works fine on my i5-3550 CPU (I had many hours on it and not even a single crash through Linux and Lutris etc), which is 2012 CPU tech, but that tech is close to when the game was released where as with newer CPU's I would not be surprised if potential problems arise.

bottom line... it's hard to say whether those specific games you mentioned will work on Windows 11 or not without trying it. so you will just have to try it. but I see the GOG version is 'available' and it's only about 186.16MB (Cultures) and 283.73MB (Cultures 2). I could try it, but it probably won't be of any real value to you given I am using 2012 CPU tech and I am running Linux. but I do have a old machine with Win7 (I used a Jan 2023 ISO to install it not long ago) (main boot SSD is running Linux, but I got Win7 on a old IDE hard drive) that I suspect would work without issue since it's hardware is basically mid-to-late 2000's.

Edited February 24, 2023 by ThaCrip