OUR SCORE: 8.5/10
If you played The Settlers back in the day, it'd be hard not to be excited about The Settlers: New Allies. It marks the 30th Anniversary for the franchise, and is the first game in the series in the last 12 years. But is it enough to revive the once fan-favorite franchise and breathe new life into it? Let's find out.
Starting with the campaign, this one has a pretty interesting story. In addition, there are several elements on the map that motivate you to expand your limits. For example, you can only get certain raw materials and food sources in certain places and your workers will not cut down a tree outside the border. This ensures that you quickly get a fairly large playing area. And that playing area looks excellent. The game is very pleasant to look at and there are many elements in it that make it feel unique. A small example of this is that the houses are not all the same, but there are several variations. Things like this make the game feel dynamic when you're playing.
There are a number of elements that continue to demand your attention and that add a bit of realism to the game. For example, you have to train your special units in a guild hall or training camp. This ensures that you always have to keep a close eye on how many units you have of each to ensure that you don't suddenly run out of carriers or engineers. So you have to keep an eye on what is happening in different places. Sometimes there was a little too much to keep an eye on, so that one part was forgotten. Training new units, discovering the map, sending soldiers, everything has to be done by hand. In addition, you can also choose what kind of weapons he makes at the blacksmith's buildings. If you want rangers, you have to make bows and if you want normal soldiers, really need shields. Especially at the beginning of the game when the resources are not yet abundant, it means that you have to switch production continuously.
Back to the engineers, because they play an extremely important role in the game. Basically, they do everything except carrying resources and fighting enemies. On the one hand, this ensures that you have to pay attention to fewer types of units. But it also means that if you are building, expanding your area and want to discover a new part of the map, you need quite a few engineers. Fortunately, it's not terribly difficult to train more, you just need a toolmaker who makes new tools from wood and stones. These are then needed in the guild hall to turn ordinary carriers into trained engineers. I really liked the fact that you don't need complicated raw materials for this. This ensures that you can almost always train new engineers.
As much as I enjoy the game, it's certainly not perfect. One of the biggest drawbacks for me was the fact that you can't speed up time. This ensures that you sometimes have to wait a long time at the start of the campaign if you only have one goal. The campaign itself is very fun to play, but there is a strange combination between a slow build-up of the possibilities within the game and a limited explanation. You really have to look for the real challenge in the skirmish mode.
All in all, the gameplay is actually pretty good, but the game is held back by technical issues. This problem mainly occurs in online multiplayer. During the game, a player will undoubtedly lose connection and you can start all over again. Very often we received the message that there was an error in the distribution of the rewards after the end of a game. There are also bugs, such as your roads disappearing from view and flickering every now and then. The Settlers: New Allies definitely has the potential, all it needs is a little coat of polish.
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