Today, the long-awaited installment of the legendary strategy series was released on consoles, but no matter how much I wanted to love it, it turned out to be very, very disappointing.

The third installment of The Settlers was one of the first games on my computer. I can't say that I spent hundreds of hours playing it and mastered all the intricacies, but I often got lost in building a beautiful city with an advanced economy.

When Ubisoft announced the long-awaited reboot in 2018, my heart skipped a beat and nostalgic memories flooded in.

It seemed like they had delayed the release by a whole year, and all they had to do was fix the bugs - a ready-made hit. Unfortunately, the developers didn't fix anything at all. The Settlers: New Allies is a disappointment.

The first few hours in The Settlers: New Allies are promising. You choose a faction, each with its own unique features. The Elari are good at farming and building mills. The Maru are good at defense and adept at working with gold. The Jorny are deadly in attack and save on weapon crafting.

Then the faction lands in a pleasant location, and the player is immediately enveloped in coziness. The color palette is pleasant. The buildings, units, and locations are detailed. The background music is beautiful. So you instantly immerse yourself in the world and enjoy developing your settlement.

The characters have a lot of tasks. You need to build sawmills and quarries, expand the territory, intelligently lay roads, and so on. Don't forget about production chains either. Unlike Age of Empires, you can't just build a barracks, click on an archer, and get a new soldier.

First, obtain a bow. To do this, bring the basic resources and iron to the blacksmith. The metal is in the mines: find it, add it to your possessions, and feed the engineers to quickly extract the goods.

And then make sure there are free settlers in the settlement who will come to the training camp and learn to shoot. Are all the settlers busy? Then build another house and make sure there is enough for everyone.

At the same time, the units perform tasks beautifully. Need to load goods onto a trading ship? The settlers will start stacking resources in chests and carry them to the ship.

Unfortunately, figuring out the production chains is only interesting at first. Soon, you notice that Ubisoft has greatly simplified all the processes. The settlers no longer need water, and the lack of food only reduces productivity. The path from sowing grain to a finished loaf of bread has been shortened. Motivating soldiers with gold is no longer possible.

As a result, you thoroughly learn the mechanics on the first evening, and then you wait to see what else the game has to offer. But Ubisoft has already played its trump cards: besides the attractive visuals and superficial production chains, there is nothing interesting in The Settlers: New Allies.

The Settlers series used to captivate players with its intricate economy and focus on settlement development, but in New Allies, the concept has changed. Now it's a game about endless battles. Unfortunately, fighting is not as interesting as in games like Age of Empires.

The main problem lies in the terrible AI. It seems that even in the early days of the strategy genre, computers did not command troops so poorly.

The AI's main tactic is to calculate the shortest route to your base and send a handful of warriors there. If you place a dozen fighters and guard towers on defense, you won't even notice the attack.

Sometimes the computer does manage to gather a more formidable force. However, it is still not enough to break even a weak defense. It's even comical at times: you can enter the enemy's camp from any side, but the opponent always charges from one direction, which is fortified with towers.

The enemies also don't bother with defense, sending all their fighters to attack. So, repel the assault and counterattack. If you gather 50 strong warriors, you can quickly destroy an unguarded base.

In the end, the simplifications make developing a settlement quickly tedious, and the war against the AI is tiresomely dull. The opponent never poses a challenge and consistently makes foolish decisions. This applies to both the campaign, which lacks innovation, and the battle mode.

Perhaps defending against three enemies at once would have been interesting, but unlike previous installments, New Allies does not offer this option. The "2v2" and "4v4" modes are only available for multiplayer. However, it's almost criminal to invite friends to this game, and finding a real opponent is rare.

Moreover, there were instances where I joined a match against another player, but the network code ruined everything. Crashes, freezes, and bugs killed the fun.

It's hard to explain what Ubisoft managers were hoping for. They greatly simplified the economic system that the series was known for and instead offered RTS mechanics from Age of Empires, which don't work due to the brainless AI.

And to think that this game was in development for over 10 years - it's frightening to imagine what was happening in the production workshop all that time, resulting in such a pitiful installment for a great series.