Champions of Anteria

Did You Know?

• The DLC pack The Alchemist introduced a new building called the Foundry of Affinities for brewing five types of hybrid potions.
• The DLC pack The Beastmaster added Tarn the Beastmaster, a brawler with both metal and nature alignments.

Gameplay

Champions of Anteria consists of three main components: a world map, a city base, and combat missions. The world map contains 26 territories, one of which is the player's city base. At the start, some territories are neutral while others belong to one of three opposing factions. To win, the player must capture every territory; to permanently defeat a faction, they must conquer its city base, which is guarded by a boss and accessible only after all that faction's territories are taken. Attacks are limited to territories adjacent to the player's own, and when an enemy attacks a player-owned territory, the player has one in-game day to prepare before playing a defensive mission. Winning repels the attack; losing cedes the territory. The game proceeds in turns, with each side allowed one attack per day; playing a defensive mission also counts as a turn. Enemy factions act autonomously, attacking player, neutral, or other faction territories. Captured territories can be improved with trading posts, which increase daily gold and renown, and fortifications, which delay enemy attacks.

Plot

The game opens with three native Anterians—Vargus, a former Crown Legion sergeant turned mercenary; Anslem, a vegetarian warrior monk cast out from his tribe; and Nusala, a desert warrior who disliked sand—returning to their homeland after years away. They find Anteria overrun by bandits led by Randal, and after defeating and imprisoning him, a local named Bryan reveals that Randal's gang were actually guards for the dark mage Kalen Daark. Bryan introduces the trio to General Fidelus, and they agree to defend the kingdom. They face three factions: the Dune Tribe, once peaceful but now attacking without explanation; the Frostbeards, warlike peoples from the east recently united under new leadership; and the Broken Crown, remnants of the Crown Legion rebuilding in the mountains. Four additional champions join them: Oona, a warrior who once fought Vargus; Baltasar, an egotistical mercenary; Weissle, a clumsy but powerful mage; and Tarn, a brawler with an affinity for animals.

Development

The game was announced in June 2014 as The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria, the eighth entry in The Settlers franchise. Blue Byte's Director of Product Development, Christopher Schmitz, called it the most innovative Settlers game yet. Screenshots released in August 2014 showed a combination of city-building and action role-playing, with combat compared to Diablo or a MOBA. The city-building originally involved supply-and-demand economic micromanagement, constructing buildings, researching technologies, and gathering resources. A key innovation was that buildings no longer automatically linked; players had to manually assign roles and link production chains, such as connecting a lumberjack to a specific forest and then to a sawmill, with each building linking to only one other. After a closed beta generated negative feedback for not feeling like a Settlers title, Ubisoft scrapped the project. It re-emerged in 2016 as a new property, unrelated to The Settlers, with most art assets and the broad storyline retained but gameplay reworked to remove most city-building and economic elements in favor of action role-playing combat missions.

Reception

Champions of Anteria received mixed or average reviews, scoring 67 out of 100 on Metacritic from twenty reviews. IGN.it's Francesco Destri gave it 7.8/10, praising the alternation between action RPG and management sections, graphics, voice-acting, and humour, but criticizing repetitive combat and lack of stealth. 4players' Dieter Schmidt scored it 77%, praising the integration of genres and Active Pause Mode, calling it addictive, but noting repetitive missions and poor AI pathfinding. IGN.es's Jose A. Rodríguez scored it 7.2/10, praising comedy and voice-acting but criticizing graphical similarity across maps. Eurogamer.it's Daniele Cucchiarelli scored it 7/10, praising graphics but finding combat repetitive, calling it a successful but incomplete hybrid. PC Games' Matti Sandqvist scored it 6/10, praising graphics but criticizing repetitive combat, the rock-paper-scissors elemental system, limited enemy variety, lack of AI tactics, poor pathfinding, and issues with Active Pause Mode where champions forgot orders. He suggested the developers may have lacked time to optimize the game.