A good return to the origins, with some less and some more element…
With this new chapter we do a step back, and the origins of the game are revalued.
It is not, obviously, a game photocopy: the Blue Byte changed a lot of things, from the resources produced to the needs, from the buildings to the introduction of the “heroes”, but the base is always the same. A kingdom must have a solid economy. The battles, however present, are only a contour, and it is correct and realistic that it be this way.
The graphic is well made and we can find a lot of those things that characterize the precedents games as the small furry creatures, as the bunnies, that wander for the map, and at the same time enjoy of new elements that actively participate at the game as wild animals that interact with the settlers, for example wolves and bears.
The interface is clear and is not difficult to take familiarity with the keys or the mouse, even if in effects to have certain results you needs to remember some non immediate combinations of keys, and sounds and music succeed in involving the player.
About the gameplay, there are various changes, that if on one side they make some things most realistic, from the other they simplify the game: if, in fact, on one side he focus a lot on the marketplace and on the economy of primary goods for the citizens, from the other some interesting dynamics of the preceding games are ignored.
I speak, for example, of the forester from previous games, that planted the trees for the woodcutter and that has disappeared… the trees rise spontaneously, and at unnatural speed.
Equally they are had some resources that are "centralized" in some defined points and they don't cover vast areas, as it was for the stone, or for the iron. The mountains in fact are inaccessible now, while in the precedents games were devoted to the construction of the mines… and so also the dear geologists disappear. Or still the game, that lives and reproduces only in some parts of the map and it seems endless, while before the player was often forced to move his own hunter to look for new preys in the map, and it was only a poor substitute of resources “renewable” to build as soon as possible, as the farms and the breedings.
It’s obvious that keep everything would have made the game extremely complex, almost unplayable (for most players), but the nostalgic ones will drop a little tear… (fortunately we still have “The Settlers II: 10th Anniversary”)
Despite everything there are however new challenges and, if the untrained settlers and the tools have disappeared, there are the new “sanitary goods” and the religion as the entertainment with theaters and tavern.
What it misses a bit, is the humor that had characterized the III and IV. A shame, because it had brought some diversion in a game that, for its own nature, it’s potentially inclined to the "too much serious" if not to the boring.