Oh how the mighty have fallen. A lackluster woke agenda with a shop. If you really need a Settler game in this age, wait for the 90-95% discount.

Graphics look good enough and no real problem. There is 3 "factions" that .... don't differ much. The maps look nice.

The gameworld is cenetred around hexagons, just like Panzer General in 1996...why ? who knows. Heavy build limitations. The "AI" is at best sub par. Campaign AI does not expand, it does not build, it never contests or attacks. It send 1 or 2 soldiers every 5 minutes and just waits for the player to come and put it out of it's misery...

The story of the campaign is abysmal at best. 2 strong woman drag around the whiny and largely useless man in command while endlessly yapping. Every few minutes you have to click a building or ruin to see the camera circling around it while the woman is chewing your ear off. The maps have no progress. You do not unlock better tech, new units or anything throughout the campaing. It's literally a collection of lackluster skirmishes with 2 strong woman constantly chewing your ear off for no other reason then "woman needs to speak". Any of the yapping containing anything remotely interesting or useful is ultra rare.

Economy is dumbed down to max. Food is only needed to "boost" production, you can play completely without. The Forester can plant endless trees, even on desert sand. Deer for the hunting lodge enlessly multiplies in a burrow, occasionally on the sand of a desert beach. 1 iron ingot + 1 coal can be turned into an axe, a shield or a bow (huh?!?). A bakery turns water+flour into bread, any form of fire clearly overrated. As long as you have space in your houses new settlers appear out of thin air. The longest manufacturing chains are bread, weapons and oxen/meat each having 3 steps....

Shop, it's Ubislop .... "spend real world money in our game that you already had to buy so we can make more money without effort." Not much else to say.

This only leaves the multiplayer feature that i am not going to touch either way. But I can't see this even being in the same universe as Age of Empire or similar settling RTS.

Why does it exist ? Because Ubislop wants to milk the IP. Clear woke agenda shoved in your face, a story worse then the average p0rn, the campaign couldn't possibly be worse, the gameplay is 1990's level at best and simplified to the point where it might as well be a mobile game from 10yrs ago.

Look the campaign was fun but they used AI for the story vids and the storyline so not that great. Also you can only play 1v1 against AI and no other bigger maps w/o playing with others and no one plays the PVP or Group vs AI either so you can only play on a 1v1 map ever. Other Skirmish RTS games have it to where you can play on big maps for up to 8 people and you can still only have 1v1 on the map but not with this game. There is no customizing the vs in this game if you are playing alone and since no one plays the game online together you are stuck with only playing the campaign or a 1v1 against AI which is way to easy to beat. And if you try their Hardcore challenges, the 1v1 is simple and the 2v2 is easy enough if you set up defenses since you are actually doing a 1v2 at that point. But if you try to do the 4v4 (or since no one plays this it is now 1v4) hardcore challenge you get your face stomped by the AI who starts unfairly with double sized armies and somehow gains access to late game troops within the first 20mins of the match....... so yeah way unbalanced and they seriously should have thought of having AI as a player placement for your allies or at least made it actually doable as a solo player but it is not. It would seem they relied too much on AI for this game and have lost touch with what games were meant to be. I bought this on sale and am glad I did because it is clearly not worth full price.

Yeah it sucks. tedious and fiddly. having to find your builders and send them to build every time you have to build something is bonkers