The Settlers: New Allies Review – Waiting Simulator

An incredible 13 years have passed since the release of the seventh Settlers. Few then expected that we would have to wait so long for the next part of this famous real-time strategy series. The Settlers reboot was first announced back in 2018, but development clearly wasn’t going according to plan as Ubisoft reported delay after delay. The game was finally supposed to be released last year, when we even had time to try it in beta, but then it was postponed again. The developers only took the floor a few months ago when they reintroduced the game and added the New Allies subtitle. Now the news is finally here, but was it worth the wait?

• Platform: PC (Verified), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch
• Publication date: February 17, 2023
• Developer: Ubisoft Dusseldorf
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Genre: Real-time building strategy
• Czech localization: yes (subtitles)
• Multiplayer: Yes (online)
• Data to download: 14 GB
• Game time: approximately 20 hours (campaign)
• Price: €59.99 (Ubisoft Store)

Settlers inside out

The new part offers two main modes – the classic match against AI or real players (which, by the way, mostly did not even work due to bad servers) and the campaign, in which I spent the most time. During it, you will try to play for several nations (which differ almost only in appearance) and look at different types of maps. The story is really simple and not very original, the same can be said about the characters. In addition, it is complemented by poor quality cutscenes, although the voice acting is quite good. However, the real problem comes when we get to the gameplay.

If you are familiar with this series, then you know that it has always focused on the construction of settlements and the economic side in general, and the war was more of a secondary issue. But in New Allies, the roles are completely reversed, recruiting soldiers and destroying enemy depots is, in fact, the ultimate goal of any mission, and nothing more. If this part was at least worked out, maybe this could be partially forgiven, but there are three main units + a couple of special ones, and basically you just need to play in the “many of us” style, any attack tactics are superfluous.

The economy is extremely simplified, there is little raw material and the chains for its processing are very short. In general, there is an absolute minimum of buildings, basically the base that you would expect from any strategy, which then adds something extra. But the new settlers stick to that foundation, so you keep building the same buildings over and over again, which quickly becomes obsolete.

This is also helped by the fact that you have access to almost all buildings right from the start. The fact that the savings are kept to a minimum is also evidenced by a very simplified user interface, which at first glance may seem quite clean, but in fact it is not twice as useful. It contains little and no information, such as a construction queue or details about warehouses. Because of this, it happened to me, for example, that according to the UI I had dozens of pieces of coal, but I could not find them anywhere. I finally figured out that it’s in my conquered territory, but it’s out of stock so I can’t use it. The game somehow forgot to tell me about it. Clarity is not helped by a camera that can be zoomed in enough but not zoomed out so you never get the view you want.

Same problems

One of the main problems, of course, is repeatability. I still liked the content of the first mission, but when I found out that the second, third, fourth and all the others were exactly the same, except for the details, I became very bored playing. It wouldn’t be so bad if everything in the game didn’t take so long, but the gameplay is really incredibly stretched out. Before building the main buildings, expanding the territory, finding ore, recruiting soldiers, reaching the target territory… It’s a lot of time, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that about 90% of the gameplay is just waiting for you to take the next small step towards victory. But the solution is simple, what do you think, just speed up the time! Sure, but the game would have to offer that possibility. You won’t find anything like this in New Allies, there’s only one “speed” available, which is incredibly slow.

The experience is definitely not aided by artificial intelligence, which is… strange. On the one hand, it can be really stupid and send soldiers to their towers one by one to literally go to their deaths (I already pointed out this problem in beta impressions, and it has not been fixed in a year), which is constantly warned by the annoying voice of the whistleblower, which paradoxically doesn’t work in situations where you need it most. On the other hand, the AI ​​has no problem with cheating and constantly spawning huge armies of soldiers that will gradually destroy so many towers and soldiers for you that they will eventually defeat you. It’s all the more ridiculous when such a colossus attacks you just a few seconds after the cut-scene tells you that this is a peaceful desert island. And no, it didn’t happen just once. If you don’t know where the attacks are coming from, you don’t have the ability to react in time, so the game basically makes you abandon the mission after a while and repeat it with the knowledge gained.

By the way, while playing, I came up with a really unique tactic that allows you to defeat larger armies when attacking your army, if you already have enough towers. All you need to do is lure the enemy soldiers to you, and then calmly run across the entire map to your towers, which will become a good clearing for the enemy. Yes, indeed the AI ​​is stupid enough to fall for such a simple trick.

If you were hoping that the game would work at least from a technical point of view, then I have to disappoint you. I met quite a lot of visual glitches in the form of flickering, overlaying characters, sticking icons on the screen, and so on. These are mostly just little things, but the problem is that there are much more serious errors in the header. It happened to me several times that I wanted, for example, to save the game, but suddenly everything stopped responding and pressing any button did nothing at all, I had to restart the game. In the worst case, Settlers will fall completely, this is definitely not an exception, this happened to me maybe ten times during the entire game.

A few positive points

Not to speak only of the negative, I have to praise the graphics, which are definitely enjoyable and, like the seventh installment, bet on a modicum of fabulous styling. It is possible from time to time to enjoy the view of a functioning village and watch how the settlers work on their plots. The solid spectacle is complemented by a very enjoyable soundtrack that is relatively unobtrusive most of the time, but can catch the eye at important moments. Aside from a few small things, I also have to praise the excellent Czech subtitles, which make the game accessible to a wider audience in our country, although Settlers doesn’t have particularly demanding English.

Back to the grave

But a great audiovisual design can’t save a title that otherwise fails in just about everything. The Settlers: New Allies is quite possibly the worst strategy game I’ve ever played. The gameplay is simplistic and tedious, the AI ​​doesn’t work as it should, and the game is technically completely broken. I don’t understand what the developers have been working on for so long, and I don’t even understand who this game is for.

Fans of the series will condemn it as it has very little in common with previous installments and it won’t entertain even most real-time strategy players due to its overly simplified and repetitive mechanics. Could this even be a suitable entry point for those new to the genre? Theoretically yes, but why choose such a bad game when there are much better games that are also very affordable? I personally can’t recommend New Allies to anyone, it’s better to avoid the game and try the old parts of the series. After all, nothing but a return to the past will help, I’m afraid that after such a failure, there is no need to wait for more episodes.