I got this on a steep sale so I figured okay fine I'll check it out. Despite knowing it's not really a Settlers game and being a long time Settlers fan (tho they've all been mediocre to bad since #4).

I really tried to like it, even evaluating it as a completely separate entity from the Settlers IP. But there's a bunch of baffling and not so baffling (about what we'd expect from Ubi) yet still bad decisions.

So it's trying to be a more RTS focused game, yet the unit control is really awful. Imagine playing StarCraft but the units reacting 2 seconds after you give them an order, and half of your army standing around doing nothing when attack moving.

Secondly, the game is extremely hurt by there being a 500 max population cap no matter how much housing you build. Now in a game like SC2 this isn't an issue, but here it's a massive problem because units, carriers, engineers (basically pioneers, geologists and all the other specialists rolled into one unit) all take from that shared population. In SC2 all you have outside of your army is some workers harvesting minerals and gas. Over here your entire economy runs on a massive workforce. A medium sized village (by earlier Settlers standards) can eat up almost the entire population cap of 500 just having enough workers to have some going idle. If they want a hard pop cap, it should be applied to the army alone.

Third, defenses are absolutely mind numbingly overpowered for their cost. A tower only costs some rocks and wood, and a few placed together will wipe out armies unless microed around heavily. Armies that cost advanced resources.

Fourth, I don't really agree with what some other people have said that food is optional. You don't need to use it, per se, but doubling the output of your buildings for easily available resources is massive. If it wasn't for the pop cap issues, you could run a fairly huge production line off of just one iron mine (1 iron mine doubled, serving two foundries that are doubled again, serving four blacksmiths). It's optional the same way spreading creep with creep tumors or injecting larva is in SC2 for Zerg. Aka not at all if you want to be competitive.

Lastly, the story is god awful. Extremely dislikeable and irrational characters. Strong independent wamen types. This is the usual Ubisoft release where they're just running down a diversity checklist and not really creating any good characters or story. And characters accept completely unreasonable statements because they just automatically have to defer to whatever the indigenous people/wamen say and so on.

If all of these things were addressed, you'd have at least a decent game on your hands. Although not really a Settlers game.

Worst rating. For the mandatory 'ubisoft connect' account for a game that can be played singleplayer. For the dreadfull account creation process (password is to LONG? Really? Captcha is stuck in an endless loop?). And for the big fail that - when the account is finally created - you are greeted with "Connection Lost, A Ubisfot service is currently unavailable, Please try again later." Horrible.
... Oh and if you think you're through this mess, you can finally start playing, the game asks for a CD KEY or Activation Code. Stuck again. In some post here on steam you will find a dev claiming that its 'fixed': the 'fix' is that you have to restart steam. Smooth...
I know this has nothing to do with the game itself, I was looking forward to see what's come of the game/franchise since it was many years out of my sight. But no, this is not the way these things should be done...

Honest review
The game pretty good for me despite many bad reviews.
From building your economy, build your army and fight the enemy, good for those like this type of strategy + City builder game.

Positive:
- Good game
- Worth the money if purchase during sales price
- Skirmish mode is quite challenging if play alone.
- Sandbox mode for those wanna play just building the city w/o any pressure.

Negative:
- Limited content, hopefully more will come in upcoming update.
- Limited game mode for single player, after finished the campaign the remaining mode can be play is skirmish mode and sandbox. Personally not interested in multiplayer.
- The skirmish mode i wonder why they not allow add AI/computer, they only allow you add your friend from your friend list
- Shop feature inside, ubisoft seems like wanna earn extra $$ by selling some in-game cosmetics item aside selling the game itself.
- Ubisoft connect, sometime is buggy cannot sync data

Settlers is an ageless game, you will not regret buying this. Lose yourself in the games graphics, the story, its a work of art.

Two thumbs up. Sandbox is great.

good game

Good game overall however it is lacking depth and needs some more content adding. I.e. more factions, units etc. Would be better if the food production was mandatory, as opposed to optional (food is used to just boost output in some buildings so it never feels worth investing in to it). A couple of big updates and this game could have a lot more going on.

Saying that I got it for 1/3 price, on sale, so definitely worth the money. For full price not worth it though currently...