The Settlers: New Allies review

“How would you describe the game in a few words?” If they asked me, my answer would be firm and clear: If you don’t know how to use resources and you’re a masochist, it’s for you. But a long Settlers New Allies review If you want, please continue.

The Settlers: New Allies review / PC

The Settlers: New Allies is a real-time strategy game developed by Ubisoft Dusseldorf, renamed Blue Byte. Those who know me know that after the Diablo series, RTS games are among my favorite game genres. Don’t be fooled by the fact that I’m also a fan of series like Uncharted and Tomb Raider. RTS has its place. I’ve played Age of Empires, Starcraft or C&C series for many years. I also played the first Settlers game for a long time. But for some reason it didn’t grab me as much as the others.

Over the years, as companies’ interest in the RTS genre dwindled, we hardly saw new products. This caused the interest of the players to decrease. RTS games have become a genre that tends to disappear over time. Although the occasional productions excite me, they do not affect me like they used to. That’s why I was so happy when I heard that Settlers New Allies was coming out. However, after installing the game, I thought that my enthusiasm would remain in my crop. But I continued to play without giving up.

Story

I don’t expect much story in strategy games, but Ubisoft adds a story mode to the game, giving you an opportunity to enjoy the game alone. Our story begins quite tragic. Even though we are peaceful people, our village is raided by bandits and we are forced to flee as the governor of the city. And leaving a lot of people behind. We carry the sadness of this throughout the game.

We decide to go to distant lands and settle in the homeland of our ancestors. But there is a problem, we don’t know where it is. For this reason, we must travel from island to island collecting clues. But wherever we go, there are also bandits or enemies. While we protect our temporary village, which we established while doing research, against their attacks, we also need to provide the resources necessary for our development. Of course, we must continue our research.

Settlers New Allies has all the elements found in real time strategy games. Gather resources, produce soldiers, attack and make your lands big. At this point, though, you may think that we are no different from the bandits who attacked us first. However, it is always hostile communities that come out against us. You don’t need to suffer from guilt.

In the following processes, we come across communities that we will become allies, and we go to war together or take on the task of protecting them from enemies.

I explained all this so that you can see the flow of the game. But the real review part starts after that. Because although it seems to have everything we expect from a strategy game, the way the mechanics are adapted can be very boring.

Gameplay

I’ll start by describing what I lived in the first episode. It will help you understand the mechanics in general, as I have experienced the same situation over and over in the next chapters.

The first level, which is the information section, tells about our progress in the lands we settled after escaping from our village. However, there is a very important information that is not given here. Resource usage. As the first task we need to set up a sawmill. We immediately place our factory next to the woods we first see. Other missions that follow include coal or iron production facilities. By the way, I should point out right away that after you set up these facilities, you do not need to assign workers to them. The game does this for you.

Resource use disaster

As a series of quests continue, your village begins to be built. But before you can complete the next mission, you need to build a soldier training facility and you have enough wood to build the facility. When you go and check your men, you see that the forest is gone. You don’t have the resources to build a new factory next to another forest. At this point, he became desperate and asked the question “How did others overcome this problem?” You start doing research. It turns out that many people are suffering from this problem.

Come on, we didn’t know, when I said let’s start over, the game was locked this time. I had to exit and re-enter, and what can I see, my old village is still there. Luckily when I said reboot this time it didn’t crash and I started the village from scratch. By watching all the intermediate cinematics, of course. However, this time I was more careful and checked the trees. When I realized that some forests had re-emerged, I built my factory next to them.

Now that we’ve solved the tree problem, it’s time for the next. In the game, engineers build structures, roads and conduct research in mines. When I say that they are building ready-made roads, I have to say that all the settlements in the village you have established must be connected to each other by roads. Otherwise, the materials produced in a production facility reach the warehouse. When you decide to establish a new structure, you assign your engineers. Your workers also go to this warehouse and take the materials to the construction site from there.

As your village grows, the problem of transportation to the warehouse begins this time. The time between your workers taking the product back from the warehouse and taking it to the construction site is increasing. The solution to this is either to build another warehouse at a closer point or to turn your dirt roads into stone roads. Of course you will need the stone this time too.

When I reached the fourth chapter by force, I faced the realities of life. It was a tough episode and I was constantly attacked by enemies and I couldn’t improve. I decided to erect lots of towers in the directions they came from to protect them. While they were delaying the arrivals, I calculated that I could increase the number of soldiers and counterattack.

At first my plan seemed to be working. However, I had marked many areas to be able to erect towers, and my villagers were having trouble growing building materials for them. While investigating the reason for this, I realized that soldiers are also consumed from the population. I thought that if I built a few houses, the number of workers would increase and the materials would go from the warehouse to the construction site faster. But the bitter truth awaited me. Workers would first complete the towers and then move on to transporting the materials needed to build the house.

I was stubborn. Because I had spent hours starting over three times in this episode and I was not going to go back to the beginning. I made myself some tea, went outside and got some air. At that time, the game was playing itself. At the end of a process of about two hours, he started to carry workers for the house.

In the systematic of the game, you only need to use the logic established by the developer. Otherwise, a difficult process will wait for you like me.

In the following sections, I also said that you are allied with other communities and you are fighting against your common enemies. Also in one such section, I sent my men to explore a section of the map. By the way, I have to say, there are also units that you can craft just to explore. They sneak around and give information, but I didn’t prefer it much. I wanted to get some of my size.

In keeping with the concept of exploring and leading unknown lands, The Settler: New Alliance has a very long gameplay. Depending on the map, it may take a long time to set up the industrial system listed above. It will take more time as you have to train a large army to attack the opponent’s camp and achieve victory in the battle.

The biggest shortcoming in previous Settlers games was the combat system. Although you have to evolve both technologically and as units to excel in other RTS games, Settlers New Allies didn’t quite give me that feeling. Because in the event I mentioned above, I won the victory when I attacked my enemy, who had beaten me without developing his men, with more soldiers. This is a bad legacy from previous versions of the game.

When the genre of the game is strategy, one inevitably expects a more complex structure. However, the logic of “the one with the most army wins” causes you to attack like a rabid dog after a while, which can be frustrating at times. Considering Age of Empires, you must remember that we had to go through three levels to even get to the Knight’s Level. Unfortunately, a similar situation does not exist in this game.

Conclusion

If The Settlers: New Alliance wanted to position itself as a competitive real-time strategy, it had to consider the genre’s recent evolution. Especially after the game was announced, five years later, I would definitely expect much better. Simplified industrial development, non-developable structures do not seem to be able to meet the needs of the new user base expecting a competitive RTS.

Of course, on the other hand, the point of view of the company should also be taken into account. The game is also coming to consoles. For this reason, simplified interface and ease of use are very important, especially for Nintendo Switch. However, the fact that this situation is also reflected in the PC version will be a bit disappointing for AAA players.

I think that if Ubisoft released this game only for tablets or consoles, it would get much better scores.

I’m not saying “don’t buy” this game. There were times when I had fun playing, but serious patience is required to endure so many mistakes. With the right update, it could come to a much better point. After all, such games can be played for many years. But that’s it from me until that update.

PS: I played for about 3-4 days while reviewing Settlers New Allies. However, multiplayer and store screens did not open. When I searched on the internet, I realized that this situation is not specific to me and the game was closed shortly after it was opened. For this reason, it is not possible for me to write my comments at that point. I will update the post when it opens.