Anno 2205

 Anno 2205.  It's...I mean....well...you know...

It's hard to put into words for me.  I both enjoy and dislike the game.  As you might guess, Anno 2205 is set in the distant future, but still on planet earth, but, the whole storyline is about going to the moon for colonization purposes.  So let's put on our dancing shoes and learn to moonwalk.

Look, you try to come up with something funny from this.

Anno 2205 simplifies the entire Anno premise from the previous games.  While I applaud the UI simplification and how some buildings work, they removed a lot of features from previous Anno games.  Most notably, all of the islands in a map automatically trade resources between them, including manpower, which is required to run buildings now, and power.  Fertilities between different islands are gone as well, meaning you can grow any type of crop on any type of island.  Other players, AI or human?  Gone.  having to protect your islands from pirates? Gone.

Before this sounds too depressing, you get more then nine maps to build cities in.  However, each maps is basically it's own island, meaning you trade between maps, and not islands.  To make things a little bit more depressing, the maps are divided into three, uh, biomes?  Types.  One is temperate, where your biggest cites are going to be.  Arctic is where you build specialized items to ship to the temperate maps, and Lunar maps are a late game addition that give you energy to transfer to temperate maps.  There is little diffrince between the differnt map types, meaning the same production chains adn goods can be made or grown on all of the maps of the same type.  IE, you can grow rice in all temperate maps, lunar crops in all moon maps, and fish farms in all arctic maps.

In the place of war between different players, we have instead 'crisis missions' where it's more of a classic RTS where you lead a small fleet of ships against inexplicable large fleets of mercs.  While I found these enjoyable, they are no replacement for the pirates and war hungry players in other Anno games.

Production chains are also simplified, except for very late game ones.  But, there is one thing Anno 2205 does well: statistics.  By that i mean you get a clear number representing how much demand of a product you need, how much your making to meet it, and the total you are producing after demand takes some away.  I sorely missed this ease when playing Anno 2070.

Overall, Anno 2205 is a poor entry into the Anno series, simply because it simplifies all that makes Anno a good game series.  But, depsite this...I really like it.  I'd give it a B rank.  Why do I like it?  Because it's a simple, easy going city builder.  Combat is completely optional, making produciton chains is easy, and all you have to worry about is having enough power so your citizens don't complain the TV isn't on 24/7.

So yeah, most people who are avid Anno fans wouldn't like it, but, I do because for me, it's what City Skylines is to a lot of people. (City Skylines is a modern day city builder, with less empathize on making goods and more on just building services and residential areas.)

Anyway, next time will be Anno 1800, which to me is the best on yet.