The Settlers New Allies Nintendo Switch Review

The Settlers IV Gold was far and beyond my favourite PC strategy title growing up. I remember my friend lending me a copy to try out and due to some very clever countermeasures, I couldn’t produce iron as my steel mill would produce pigs instead. This prompted me to buy my own copy that very same weekend and I never looked back. The appeal was you weren’t just building a huge army to rush the enemy bases, you were building a settlement. Your woodcutter would take felled trees to a sawmill that would produce planks, which would then be carried off to produce buildings, while a forestry expert would replant trees. The complexity of systems at play meant many hours were spent just watching your settlers work their production chains with the ultimate goal of forging iron weapons and paying your soldiers gold to fight for you. It was so easy to get lost in and despite my memory issues, I still remember spending many weekends creating huge economies. There was nothing quite like it, with the exception of “The Colonists” on Switch which was a robotic version of this unique economy/combat style.

Enter The Settlers New Allies for Nintendo Switch. A game that was almost Ghost dropped yesterday morning on digital-only for a hefty price point of $89.95. Despite releasing on PC months before hand, and receiving lukewarm reviews, I decided to take the plunge and do a bit of a unique review on it. Scoring it for the game it is, and following up with my thoughts on the sequel it claims to be.

The story is fairly standard which follows your tribe escaping turmoil to new lands only to get caught up in the new worlds turmoil. It plays it safe but the campaign was still fairly fun with some nice set pieces and the cutscenes did add some depth to the game as well. The different factions all have their own unique style and abilities and are balanced meaning that you choice during skirmish and multiplayer may come down to simply cosmetics.

I’ve actually had a lot of fun while playing The Settlers New Allies for Nintendo Switch and am pleasantly surprised that they have managed to keep the production system a main focal point of the latest entry. It’s not fair to say it’s been “dumbed down” it’s been more simplified. While you don’t have to manage water and food as intensely as before, food is now used to boost the production of your building and systems, and water has been scrapped altogether. I would have liked to see a much more in-depth production system, but also feel like this would be a great entry for newcomers to the series. I still found enjoyment in watching my woodcutters transport logs to the sawmill and did find that poorly managed resources did punish you, requiring a bit of strategy and forethought as to how you want to plan out your settlement. You can create multiple settlements as well, and in one instance I had my main town producing wood and food, which then linked up to an industrial focussed district, which forged weapons and trained soldiers. While a lot of the depth in production systems led to several challenges, I found combat was simply a matter of building more soldiers than the enemy which may disappoint some people. There aren’t a lot of variations in military units unfortunately, and most of the time you can lean on your stock standard infantry and archers to get the job done.

There are, however, some baffling decisions made with the game which seem to range from pointless, to downright confusing. For starters, you can’t select a map to play skirmish on, and quitting to reload for a better map counts as a loss, even when playing solo vs AI. My record was tarnished simply by trying to find variations in environments for screenshots for this review. The other stand-out issue with the game is that it has micro transactions for cosmetic items and boosters. As it’s early days it’s hard to tell how much of a grind it will be to buy new cosmetic options for buildings and real world currency transactions range from $5 to $75 on a digital-only $90 title. The entry price alone for the game is already steep, so I feel like micro transactions have absolutely no place here. Another huge omission is the complete lack of difficulty settings, making the game really easy even to newcomers. I would like to see them ramp up the aggressiveness of the AI in a future update.

Another baffling addition is the need to be connected to Ubisoft servers not only for rewards and unlocks, but to even play skirmish against the AI. I played a 4 hour skirmish for the services to go into maintenance mode, cutting off any chance of rewards for the match. After this happened, I decided to try the campaign again and was prompted that since I was offline (or Ubisoft Connect was anyways) I would not be able to unlock any rewards regardless. Considering the Switch is largely a handheld console designed to be played in places where a network connection may not stable, or available at all, the lack of offline mode or progression simply doesn’t make sense.

The stand-out of the Settlers New Allies on Switch is the performance and visuals. The game looks incredible on both handheld and docked, and runs as a smooth 30 fps which appears to be locked. There we some small resolution switches in handheld mode that were noticeable, but it didn’t really detract from the gameplay. Some animations weren’t very smooth when zoomed out, but taking a closer look at your settlements shows workers and engineers ticking away at their day-to-day jobs and is quite entertaining. The environments are rich and diverse, especially in the campaign missions, and lighting and shadows make the game really have that AAA quality shine so to speak.

Despite the baffling development choices centering around network connectivity and micro transactions, all of this leads to an intricate settlement game that stumbles a little when it comes time to fight. It was still a joy to play and a great starting point for new players. Fingers crossed we see more settler games in the future, and they take a deeper dive into the production system that’s so satisfying to see when it all comes together. Like my mini followers, I really hope to see the developers build on this new foundation and bring more players along to a series that time forgot.

So What’s it like?

A more basic version of Factorio crossed with Age of Empires

*Is it the Settlers really?*

Is this game deserving of “The Settlers” moniker? Absolutely! Despite having a more simplified production chain, the game does stay close to its roots and still has most of its Settlers charm intact after making its transition to modern engines (unlike some of its predecessors.)  The simple fact is this is a great game, hamstringed by some absolutely bonkers development decisions like online connectivity that drop its score down. It’s still a great game and there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had, provided you are online, and the servers aren’t down for maintenance…