Champions of Anteria Hands-on – The Settlers-like RPG

The team at Blue Byte is one of the most distinguished dev teams when it comes to contributions to the strategy game genre – of that there can be absolutely no doubt. If not for them, we would never have witnessed the advent of the cult series The Settlers, especially its first iconic iterations, fondly remembered by many fans to this very day. Now, however, memories are the only thing that’s left of this once great brand, as in the recent years the German team was working on some completely different projects – like the latest entry in the Anno franchise, subtitled 2205, to name just one. Currently, the experienced team has its hand full with Champions of Anteria – a production aiming to revive, at least partially, the magic of The Settlers. Partially, because after everything has been said and tested, it seems like we are dealing with a game that's still not entirely sure what it wants to be.

Watch it! This guy looks like he's all out of bubblegum.

The elements of Anteria

It may seem a bit strange, as the new production from Blue Byte has come a long way and it certainly wasn't paved with roses. Champions of Anteria started out as the next entry in the aforementioned Settlers franchise, subtitled Kingdoms of Anteria. Not everything worked out with the project, however – the title was cancelled and what was left of it was used to make Champions, a game which, in terms of gameplay, lands far off the classic strategic premise focused on development of a settlement. First and foremost, this game is an RPG, and the elements characteristic of Settlers-like games are featured only as a supplement.

The city's bustling with work!

The main axis of the game revolves around the heroes; for each skirmish we can choose as few as three of them, each representing one of the elements. We plan our actions on a straighforward world map that clearly shows the extent of our influence in the world of Anteria. The player's task is to conquer subsequent lands, taking over more and more territory – we achieve this through a variety of missions and – mainly – clashes with enemy forces. Our main objective is to capture the capital of a given region, but before we can do that, it will be necessary not only to gain authority over individual provinces, but also to keep them in our possession – from time to time our opponents will try to recapture their former properties, launching attacks on our defensive positions or fortifications. Nothing can be taken for granted in the world of Champions of Anteria – hegemony must be constantly reaffirmed in combat.

In the presented demo version we conquered subsequent lands by completing various missions. One of them had our heroes escorting a caravan carrying goods and supplies necessary to establish a new settlement on foreign land, while in some other case we were made responsible for rebuilding some watchtowers and – consequently – taking control of the land. This impression of variety, however, doesn't change the fact that it all boils down to battles with regularly emerging groups of opponents representing different elements and level of advancement; and the former turns out to be extremely important when it comes to this game. The susceptibility of a unit to fire, water or any other given element significantly alters the power of the attack we can deliver. Furthermore, there are also some special abilities that, under certain conditions, can incapacitate a unit in combat, making it completely useless and doomed to certain death.

Active pause? Ok people, we going for the special attacks!

A tactic used twice becomes a pattern

The gameplay itself appears to be – at least for now – rather schematic and predictable. Our journey around the board where we undertake our missions, looks roughly the same wherever we go – going from point A through point B, while moping up consecutive small groups of opponents along the way, to point C, where the key objectives are defended by some slightly stronger adversaries or a mini-boss commanding enemy forces in the region. Combat is based primarily on a system of active pause and the characters' additional abilities – winning a battle without either of those two, especially late on in a mission, may turn out impossible. The pause is what enables us to execute moves that give us tactical advantage on the battlefield, namely the aforementioned additional combat skills. Their use can result in a wide variety of effects – the most popular are of course those that deal significant damage. Among them, however, are also those which can deprive opponents of the ability to heal themselves, disable enemy defenses, or trigger weakness to a selected element. A victory in a duel by using only basic attacks is entirely possible of course, but if you're fighting against more than two or three opponents, I wouldn't advise risking the lives of your heroes in vain.

It should also be taken into account that the game is actually quite difficult. Going with the flow in combat usually ends rather poorly, the same as departing from one's kingdom without any healing potions. The opponents can be especially troubling when they attack in bigger numbers – that’s when it becomes a necessity to draw monsters or guards away from the slightly more squishy ranged units. Enemy mobility becomes a major concern in the case of defensive battles – the opponents attack from various directions and blocking their progress requires considerable speed when relying on natural barriers and keeping an eye on the minimap looking for potential breaches.

Can't see anything in here...

The skirmishes are dynamic, but once we have mastered some combat patterns – they also become somewhat schematic. Of course, the elements introduce a certain dose of randomness, forcing us to react and change the way we fight, but after a while I caught myself on the fact that my opening moves in any single fight are virtually the same. Developing appropriate tactics is in fact half the battle – the other half is their proper application in practice.

A town to die for

The second, somewhat less important part of the fun is the town management – this applies mainly to the capitals, which can be upgraded with a variety of services, allowing us to obtain the raw materials required for the development of not only the city, but also our heroes. Expansion of the village takes place in a rather peculiar way – individual areas located around the castle are unlocked by building watchtowers, which enables us to gain full control over a given area. Locations for individual buildings are predefined – each area can only have a few of them; once built however, the districts can be further expanded with a wide variety of options, so it is unlikely we run out of space at some point. It is also worth mentioning that the town management takes place in a turn-based system – all the profits earned through mining or craftsmanship are collected at the end of the day.

And here are the winning numbers of today's lottery!

The city is also where we can access our heroes – choose their special skills as well as equip our warriors with new gear, such as jewelry, courtesy of the blacksmith, that increases the amount of health points. Looking at the special skill tree of individual champions one must admit that the development path is quite long and unlocking even only most of it will take us a really long time. It should also be remembered that the heroes' development level is closely linked with the class of the city – the sooner our capitals achieve subsequent cornerstones of technological advancement, the better will be the performance of our henchmen on the battlefield.

Ok, the vistas are nice. I'll give them that.

The only element truly reminiscent of the classic iterations of The Settlers are the visuals – there's a lot going on on the screen, especially when it comes to urban centers. As usual, the residents happily cruise between successive waypoints and the craftsmen diligently work on their success. Slightly less clear are the duels, especially when we face several opponents at once – the riot of color can sometimes obscure the essential elements of the interface. The game also features an abundant variety of funny lines and jokes that match the general character of this production.

So far,Champions of Anteria is a product that delivers an interesting mix of RPG elements and strategy, but it does so in a way that's somewhat flawed. The repetitiveness of combat can wear a gamer's patience thin, while the strategic mode, despite everything, seems to be a bit too underdeveloped to serve as a significant enhancement to the rest of the game. Should the team at Blue Byte decide to serve us some additional features, however, and add some much-needed variety to the RPG mechanics, we may yet have a very interesting production on our hands.