The game could have been lukewarm enough for a positive review. However the Steam overlay and Ubisoft connect conflict turns this into a thumbs down.

The Ubisoft crash launches often, often enough that Ubisoft's technical support has it's own dedicated advice site to solving the problem by deleting the Ubisoft folder at the local app data. However that treats the symptom, not the root cause. Usually I can expect anything to +10 crashes a day, worst being blue screens. This conflict only seems to happen when playing the settlers through steam. Then there's the choice between the pest and the plague, as I noticed that disabling the Ubisoft game overlay allows me to play the game indefinitely without crashes. However then It is replaced with another bug where I cannot exit the game . So when I hard quit the game the saves are not synched, as I found out after losing few hours of ingame progress more often than once. So hopefully I get to proceed the game usually in 10-15 minutes intervals before I get the message about ubisoft detecing an unresolvable error, and having to shut down.

Gameplaywise. I remember how older installments of the game used to have this philosophy of certain professions having to be easily recognizable. Like (meat) smokers house would look like smoking house, with the worker looking like walking cigar with singed black hair and all that. Most of the buildings in THIS game look generic and similiar to each other, with uniform color themes and bland worker routines. The game has 3 - different biomes, where the professions are still the same, but building "skins" are different, at least there was a little bit of creativity in creating 3 - different styles for same type of building, but in a different surrounding.

The combat Ai meets the minimum, though it has these silly moments where I target enemy, and the enemy and my units bumb to each others trying to run past each other.

Following the movement in the settlement itself is satisfying enough. With one settler being for each task, or idling. On other games like Anno 1800 you can have the lively city population with alot of population going through this "theater" of daily live. In this Settlers everyone occupied is doing excactly that, which I like to follow. Though sometimes it feels a little bit silly to look at this idiot conga line spanning through my settlement, when for example I sell 200 units of wood , and 200 settlers start moving the wood, one piece each, leading to this long line where they politely wait on one road to the harbor to unload that one piece of timber. Granted you will be able to get donkey carts that can move 8 - units of anything, which helps to avoid congestion like that. But sometimes I still don't use them because I simply enjoy watching the Hell's traffic jam that is suddenly having several hundred settlers moving several hundred products at the same time.

Speaking of delivering. If the delivery is interrupted, it is not picked up from where it is interrupted. I had build a watchtower relatively far from closest storage, and it would take roughly 3 - minutes for a settler to deliver the stone needed for construction. Only the settler got intimidated by enemy military unit and runs away. So when they start re-carrying the material, it's a different settler, and all the way from the storage all over again from the start, not for example from where the carrying process was previously interrupted.

Also other lacking life quality improvements. Like It would be nice to be able to queue research, and not having to click them one by one everytime research is finished.

I waited for good sale for this one to give it a chance. And maybe it really deserve it..

But I was already annoyed being forced recover and use my old Ubisoft account.

Disappointed this game has no Steam achievements..

And after taste of the gameplay.. why the heck not just play Settlers 2 Gold instead?

Refund.

Trochę za kolorowo ale i tak fajnie jest się móc pobawić w nowych osadników