The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria Becomes Champions of Anteria

Despite being an avid RPG enthusiast my entire life, I’ve also spent plenty of time playing strategy games, and Blue Byte’s Settlers series has been a go-to for me for many years. So I have some mixed emotions when I learn that The Settlers: Kingdoms of Anteria has effectively been cancelled, and its shell is being retooled into a strategy/RPG hybrid entitled Champions of Anteria. That means we have an announcement trailer for this new title:

And an interview with creative director Mihnea Dragoman to help explain why they went down this direction:

Is there symbiosis between the player characters? Are their abilities complementary?

MD: Yes, in a way. For instance, with the element system, there are abilities from several Champions that can either protect you from damage by a certain element, or can change your element from one thing to another. So for instance, our monk character can change his party to all be lightning for a period of time, and then they will do a lot of damage against a water opponent. This is how they will combo off each other.

To go more into detail, we wanted to give each Champion a different gameplay focus, so they each work a bit differently. For instance, our archer tags arrowheads on each target, and then has abilities that can detonate those arrowheads and inflict different conditions, either damage, or blindness, or whatever. Our knight has kind of a rage bar mechanic, which is called vigor. He pools energy up the more he stands in a fight, and then he can consume it to deal extra damage with his abilities. Each Champion plays differently. Our monk has a system based on a number of bells he can gather and then use to power bigger blessings on the battlefield. He can gather up to three bells, and then there’s bigger miracles he can do with the three bells.

How does village management work?

MID: The village is the Champion’s base of operations. It has a system of resource management; we have a few buildings that you place there, but it’s more of a slot-type system. You have a few places where you can place buildings, and it’s a matter of how you get the most out of it, and that will get a lot of resources for you, and the resources feed into the crafting. So the major focus of the village is crafting. Those resources feed into how you create potions, or devices, or gear for your Champions.