The Settlers Online carries on the much loved franchise from Ubisoft where players get to run and build up their own island settlement, choosing from dozens of buildings with their own unique attributes and assembling an army to defend it. With the added Colony system players are able to PVP and fight each other in a domination conquest mode for prizes and bragging rights.

Free to play and accessible through your browser the game offers a number of premium features and microtransaction options, so when all is said and done we want to see just how truly free the game actually is.

• No. The game is a free to play browser based MMO

• Yes (optional). -15%. Players can purchase a 7 day, 30 day, 180 day or 360 day Premium account using gems which cost real world cash or can be earned as rewards in the game from completing quests, unlocking achievements or consecutive logins for seven days.

• Yes (but...). -10%. The game comes with a wide range of “Adventures” that player must purchase using Gems, these Adventures add story content to the game and provide the player with unique rewards.

• Yes. -5%. Players can use Gems, the in game premium currency, to buy a variety of things such as extra resources, building upgrades, units and more. Certain unique buildings, units and items can be purchased from the store.

• No (but…). -5%. Players are able to develop their settlements more quickly by purchasing resources and upgrades with real cash, but the rate at which these would be used up doesn’t make it a viable pay to win strategy without being extremely expensive, particularly for a game that is more focused on co-op play than competitive. However, there are certain buildings and units that do offer a significant advantage and getting access to them early definitely helps players out and can give them the edge in the PVP Colonies.

• No. There are no restrictions, but there are no options to customize either.

• ―. There are no races/classes in the game

• Yes (but…) ― -5%. Players are able to trade with each other by acquiring a Trade Office Deed from the premium shop and placing the building, the store charged 450 Gems for the deed  (lowest gems package is $5.47 for 600 gems).

• Yes. -10%. Players are limited to how many buildings they can construct and so, in time, must purchase a Building License using Gems, which will allow them to construct more buildings to expand their settlement. Similarly the number of resources you can store is directly affected by how many storage buildings you have, and so players (after ranking up/upgrading buildings) will have to build new buildings and take up their building cap.

• Yes (but…). -10%. The Adventure locations are locked up and require resources, typically Gems premium currency to access.

• No (but…). -5%. Whilst combat at high levels if open to free to play users, the game benefits those who have access to Gems with a wide variety of unique boosts and buffs to help players stay competitive, though the main requirements for engaging in the Colony PVP feature are level restrictions and building requirements (that don’t require Gems to purchase).

• Yes. +10%.Providing players are sensible with their Gems spending then it’s more than possible to enjoy the game without having to spend cash, and there are plenty of guilds that work to helping new players get off the ground. There is an obvious advantage in the game for those who do spend money, but this is more a time versus convenience, though there are quite a lot of options tied up in Gems which would be quite a hurdle for casual players to overcome.

The Settlers Online gets a 45% in our test.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015 at 10:23 am and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.