This time, I'm going to go over the Anno games...all...three that I own. That's 2070, 2205, and 1800 in order of release date. There's 3 more before that, all historically based, but those three are the only ones I own. and honestly all that I wish to own, so that's why we're only reviewing three of the six games.
Anno 2070 was the first Anno game I tried, quite a while ago. And, despite still owning it, I can't bring myself to play it anymore, even with only 20 hours on it, though I have a suspicion it's more then that...
Why? Because of Anno 2205, and more importantly, 1800. Both, but more so Anno 1800, improve the game and add gameplay that appeals to me, so, trying to get into a now outdated and clunky game to me is really hard.
So I'm going by memory, though don't worry, I played the game recently in offline mode on steam for a bit, enough to refresh my memory.
Anyway, Anno is a series of city building games set in different time periods. This was the first Anno series to be set in the future. It's a future where...I honestly don't know a lot what happened, but I do know Climate Change screwed things up. Perhaps there's some lore in the campaign that I repeatedly ignore to instead play in sandbox mode.
Yeah, there's a lot of features in this game before you even start the game. There's voting, daily missions, annual missions, a story campaign as I mentioned earlier, and even account unlocks for reaching certain achievements ingame.
But the game is at heart a city builder, so I ignored all that and went to sandbox mode, easy of course since I was new at the series and game and just a noob in general, and started building for one of the two factions.
At start you pick one of two factions to play as, each with there own buildings, materials, and citizens to please. One is the Global Trust, which thinks that the planet earth is there to be plundered, and that climate change clearly was not the fault of corporate greed. The other is the Eden Project, who are environmentalist hippies, except they are willing to kill you to protect mother earth.
While they play the same, they are not the same. I mean, Anno is at it's core a game about making simple to complex fabrication chains to please citizens so you can tax them heavily, so both factions are the same on that count.. But, they react to pollution differently, their buildings make different things, they require different fertility's for different plants to grow, and their buildings to power other buildings are radically different.
I usually played Eden, since I too am an environmentalist that advocates murder. Eden is all about making a heavy plant based diet for your citizens, using nature friendly power sources, and mines for minerals aren't nearly as pollution heavy as for the Trust. Of course you need your citizens to be entertained or informed too, so you make the 2070 equivalent of smart phones for them.
I'll admit I never got too far in the game, having only gotten to early Executives tier, level 3 of Eden citizens. There are some problems with the game that were solved in future games, that I just can't get over though...
The user interface is clunky, but I don't mind that too much. No, it's that all buildings do work automatically and don't need anyone to operate them. I find the lack of needing citizens to be the work force annoying. Also service buildings, like hospitals and fire stations and police stations have a pre determined radius around them requiring all buildings to get benefits from them to be in that small radius. In future games they replaced that with a certain amount of road tiles leading away from the building. ...If you didn't understand that, basically you could make your own, if limited, area of usage with roads in 2205 and 1800.
Also the quests are clunky and hard to understand for me, and come up rarely. There's also an upgrade system with ships and the ARK, your homebase away from the multiple islands you can colonize, which I don't understand at all. The graphics also look weird and just...off to me, but that might be the time, I'm not sure.
Anyway, there's also a war component to Anno, which since I played on easy never really used or saw much of. But you can make warships to attack trade routes, make islands surrender to you, or just protect yourself from optional pirates.
I'd rate Anno 2070 a C+, honestly. It -feels- like the devs were really trying to make this a good game, but only made a mediocre or average one. But still, I-wait, there was an expansion to this game that I need to talk about? Well, damn.
Yes, there was, and it added a new faction that you unlocked by playing the game as Eden or Trust, the brainy scientist or Tech faction. The expansion is called Deep Ocean, and allows you to not only add these new citizens to your Trust or Eden ones. But, the Techs require underwater resources, which you can only get from underwater buildings on 'underwater plateaus' or pretty much just underwater islands. Techs also allow you to build more of the weird upgrade systems and temporary upgrades to production chains if you want, but I could never understand that stuff, even if I loved building underwater and the Techs. Techs also expand warfare to allow better weapons as defenses or on ships, AND adds aircraft.
So yeah, with the expansion I'd give them a B- or even a solid B. But I'll admit, I'm biased. I love science fiction more then historical or fantasy games, and I love the idea of underwater cities.
Anyway, next time, Anno 2205. TO THE MOON. or more likely, to bed with me, it's god damn late as I finish this.
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