A settlement building and city management game

The Settlers – New Allies is a civilization city-building game where you control a small tribe of humans. It is partially an adventure game and partially a simulation game where you progress your tribe through different technology trees as you build your city.

The exploration, resource gathering, and adventure side are similar to that of the SpellForce franchise. Its city building and resource management have obvious similarities with Age of Empires 2. There is a combat element to this game, but it is less of a focus for the first part of the game.

Build a settlement of your own

The goal is to take your small tribe of settlers and build a thriving city. However, each level has a campaign story behind it, which leads to different goals within each level. Sometimes it is hunting for special resources, and later, it is about taking down your enemies.

Play online with your friends

You can make your way through the story campaign in this strategy game, or you can play skirmish battles with your friends online. You build your settlements and armies as usual, and then you destroy up to seven other players. The game also lets you battle the AI if you don’t want to play skirmish matches online.

Adds enough to keep it interesting

The Settlers franchise has long been mired with poor-quality sequels and terrible ideas. This resource-gathering and battling game cleans up the premise by keeping it simple. In terms of the build simplicity, it is closer to Age of Empires, which is a good thing.

Has personality problems

The game doesn’t have any personality. The graphics do not pop, it is hard to feel anything for the settlers, and the battling system doesn’t have enough nuance to set it apart from its competitors. It isn’t a bad game, but it doesn’t have a unique selling point that would interest hardcore settlement-building enthusiasts.