TEST – The Settlers: New Alliances – the first stone has been laid

Whenever a strategy and building game like The settlers When a console version is announced, skepticism is initially high. Can it even work? Is the control scheme feasible and effective, or does it really only work on PC? Year A major game in the genre has already successfully demonstrated how to develop a console version; now, others are following suit. The Settlers: New Alliances We've thoroughly tested whether this was successful and how the game performs overall.

All beginnings are rocky.

First, let me state that if you're new to Settlers, I don't recommend jumping in at the deep end and launching straight into the campaign. Instead, I suggest you first play through the basics of the tutorial. Various introductory scenarios will guide you through the game, explaining the most fundamental mechanics, such as building, training, and commanding, in separate chapters. These are divided into smaller, selectable chapters, allowing you to easily fill in any gaps in your knowledge without having to read unnecessary explanations of mechanics you already know.

After the initial explanations and tutorials, I was finally ready to tackle the campaign again. Since it starts with an attack that you have to defend against, it's definitely helpful to know how to command troops and build structures. This can be a challenging entry point for beginners, but for experienced players... Settlers-Players, however, are certainly part of everyday business.

What you Settlers I have to admit, it looks fantastic. The characters, houses, landscape – the entire game is lovingly crafted. The music skillfully underscores the gameplay and lends the game a pleasant charm that lingers long after you've finished playing.

The game principle and the units

The Settlers: New Alliances It's a real-time building game, so simply speeding up time if something is moving too slowly isn't an option. It can happen that absolutely nothing happens for minutes on end. Well, then all you can do is wait it out.

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Broadly speaking, you have two different types of commandable groups at your disposal. These are your engineers and your military, consisting of your various units. You need engineers to construct buildings and roads, and to collect rewards. Furthermore, you can use them to expand your territory and to analyze rock formations for useful elements like coal or iron ore.

You can select all units, individual units, or just those that are currently idle, ensuring others aren't interrupted. Automatic building is enabled by default. This means you only need to place a building or road, and the engineers will then independently begin constructing it. This greatly simplifies gameplay and creates a smoother flow than having to command units individually. This allows you to focus on other tasks while the engineers do their work.

Not all mechanics are intuitive and obvious, and quite a few things are hidden in the menu. Of course, The settlers This is definitely one of the classic PC games, and a console port like this can have its quirks. It was noticeable time and again that there weren't as many keys available as on a keyboard. Some things just aren't implemented intuitively enough, and when you want to find the right key bindings, they're not easily found in the settings menu like in many other games, but are hidden in the history. You can access this by holding down the right button. A short press, however, takes you to the menu. There's also no "Save" tab; instead, it's located under "Game Saves." Overall, this could be implemented better.

The military and the fight

The battles are purely a war of attrition; whoever has more units wins. You train different units, such as archers and guards. To do this, you have to produce the corresponding weapons and then train the units in the academy. However, precise fighting or maneuvering is impossible, and consequently, battles in the game are rather unexciting. If you fail, you simply recruit new units, this time more of them, and then attack again. If you don't want to defend against attacks manually with units, you can simply build towers that will do it for you and protect your territory. Sounds simple, and it is—perhaps even too simple.

The in-game notifications are sometimes strange, or rather, it's strange what you don't receive notifications about. For example, I received a message that I had discovered a new area, but not that my engineers were simultaneously attacked and killed one after the other. This is annoying, as production can take a while, and without engineers, practically nothing is possible in the game. So make sure you always have enough available at the same time, also to be able to progress your construction projects quickly.

This brings us directly to the point of resources and buildings. Of course, you always need to make sure you have enough of the basics for the various production processes, such as wood, coal, etc. Otherwise, your production will stall. Some production processes are so efficient that you slowly run out of resources. For example, at one point during the game, I stopped tool production because I had already produced more than enough tools but was gradually running out of stone.

The production chains are no longer as long as in previous years. Settlers-games and certainly not as complex as other building games, such as... Year This is the case. Often only one building is needed, and all the foodstuffs serve solely to increase production and are otherwise not required.

Meat, for example, significantly increases the efficiency of weapon production, allowing you to build two weapons at once. Alternatively, you can simply construct multiple buildings of the same type to increase production. Some buildings even perform the same function. For instance, lumberjacks produce wood for you, but once they've cleared a forest, it doesn't regenerate. There are two types of trees: regenerating and non-regenerating. You can easily solve this with the Forester's Lodge, which both plants and harvests trees, making lumberjacks largely redundant after a certain point. You can view your current inventory by clicking on the warehouse. The most important items are also permanently displayed at the top of the screen. In total, there are approximately 18 different types of goods.

The type of play and the choice of game mode

You are in The Settlers: New Alliances Two game modes are available: the campaign and the online mode. In the campaign, your biggest and most annoying opponents are the barbarians, while in the online mode, they are the other players, or you can defend yourself against the AI ​​in co-op mode. The Settlers: New Alliances However, it only offers one difficulty level, so you can't choose, you just have to live with this preselection by the developers.

The campaign, similar to the tutorials, is divided into individual sub-chapters. Keep in mind that the chapters don't necessarily take place in the same location; the beautiful village you built in one chapter will usually be useless in the next, and you'll have to start building all over again.

You'll receive tasks that you need to complete to progress. The next task will be unlocked after you finish the previous one. Congratulations on completing them all, and you can continue! Typical tasks include exploring an area, building a specific structure, and so on.

Conclusion