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.

I bought this game despite many negative reviews, and when it was on sale. I usually don't bother writing reviews, but I'm making an exception here because I feel bad for Ubisoft and think this game deserves a better rating. For people who played the latest editions of Settlers, this game could be a surprise because it's very different in terms of graphics and multiplayer options. As someone who played one of the first editions of Settlers in my teens, I actually think Ubisoft goes back to the original Settlers very much in this game (engineers broaden the boarders manually, there are cute blue houses etc.) For me, it's the editions in between this one and the first one (like Settlers 7) that were a wild variation and a different game all together. That said, I enjoyed it just as much, it was at times really challenging strategically, especially with the ressource management which is an element not present in this game. New Allies is a different story all together, for now (29h in the game) it's slower-paced and relaxing, with the design really a pleasure to look at and a strong woman characters featured as leaders. I haven't experienced any bugs either, except for one when I had to click on a video twice for the game to move to the next stage. Overal, I'm really enjoying the game so far. I hope it will get more challenging as the story advances, but even if it doesn't, I won't regret my purchase for sure.

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...