Anno has always been an interesting blend of different genres, enough so that I’ve spent a good deal of time in its last two instalments. When I heard that the next instalment was going to be set in the 1800s I was intrigued as I had always thought it was a futuristic title. As it turns out that’s not the case as the original Anno game was set in 1404 and it just so happened that I got into the series when it took on its future bent. However it seems the setting matters little as this is very much an Anno game at heart, much more so than 2205 was. For the purists it will be a welcome return to form however for me, someone who quite enjoyed the streamlining, it reminded me of the endless frustration I had in balancing the equation that every Anno game puts before you. Therein lies the rub: this is most certainly a game for fans of the Anno series, just not ones like me.
You father was imprisoned for a crime he swears he didn’t commit and his near allies all fled from his side. Seemingly unable to live with the guilt of the shame he brought upon his family your father took his own life whilst still in gaol. With the little inheritance you’ve been bequeathed at the mercy of your uncle you buy a small island and set about rebuilding your name. In your travels however you find out that your father was telling the truth and it looks likely that the crime was a plot conspired by your uncle to snatch away your father’s fortunes. So you must now become the person that your father raised you to be: a cunning but compassionate business person who can take down your dastardly uncle once and for all.
The engine powering Anno 1400, which from what I gather is Blue Byte’s own internally developed one, appears to have received a few improvements for this instalment. Most notably this comes in the form of NPCs wandering around your town, something that I don’t recall either of its predecessors having. It might sound small but simulating those things in addition to the rest of the game whilst maintaining performance can’t have been an easy challenge to solve. The artwork is, once again, top notch even if the animations still leave something to be desired (would it really kill you to do the lip synching?). I did need to give the game a few tweaks to get it running properly but after that the game has been quite smooth, even at late game stages. For such a long running series it’s good to see Blue Byte still investing in keeping their games up with the times.
If 2205 was a simplification and streamlining of the core game mechanics 1800 is a regression back to its true roots with the mechanical complexity of previous games back in spades. The core game loop is still very much the same: you have one island which support so much so you have to expand to others in order to keep progressing your citizens up the hierarchy. One influence from 2205 remains though in the form of the “New World” map which has resources that you can’t get in the Old World. There’s also an item system for getting buffs for certain things like your trade union or ships, although nothing that makes a game breaking difference. There are some remnants of the streamlining still there like the buildings being hidden behind the citizen’s needs which makes it quite easy to ensure they’re properly satisfied. One last new feature is the expeditions, essentially side missions that you send a ship off on in order to get some item or unlock something. It’s pretty much blow for blow the same game as I remember 2070 being, albeit with just a single race to play.
The RTS aspect of Anno 1800 is very much secondary to the rest of the game, really only there to function as another part of the overall political landscape that you’ll be playing in. In any engagement it’s going to come down to raw numbers rather than the skill of any one player so your best bet in winning is just to have as many of the biggest ships you can manage. To be frank you can get away without having much military for the majority of the game as it really only starts to become a concern later on when your allies start declaring war on others which you are unfortunately obligated to do as well (lest you then end up in a war with them). This time around the combat at least felt like it was serving something of a higher purpose, I.E. leveraging a NPC a bit more to get something you wanted out of them. Still in the grand scheme of Anno 1800 it’s not much more than a distraction.
Anno 1800 follows the series’ formula very closely with the standard tech tree advanced through meeting your citizen’s needs so they can then be upgraded to the next tier. Being able to see exactly what’s needed to meet that need through the build menu is a nice touch as whilst it wasn’t terribly difficult to find out in the last couple games it was a bit of a chore to have to remember it all the time. Other parts of the UI have also had some good quality of life improvements as well, like the shortcuts on the build menu that let you define a few often used buildings that are a single click away. Your also unlikely to go bankrupt as easily this time around as I noticed it was far, far easier to run a sustainable business than it has been before. Fans of the Anno series will feel right at home as pretty much everything else is identical from a mechanics perspective.
Starting off things are easy enough as you only have one type of citizen and their needs are basic. Moving up the chain is, as it always was, where the difficulty starts to ramp up exponentially as you have to find the balance in providing all the resources needed so that your colony can keep growing. It gets even worse at higher populations as you’ll usually have multiple islands, both in the old world and the new, which all need trade routes to each other to ensure that you’ve got enough supplies in the right spot to do what you want to do. This is then exacerbated by the constant onslaught of on-screen events like the newspaper guy asking for you input on the latest issue, the various factions commenting on your actions and the expeditions needing your attention.
It honestly got to be too much for me this time around and I found myself simply giving up and shutting the game down every time I hit yet another roadblock for something. Keeping a colony going is easy enough, even at higher populations, but once you’re in the multi island, new/old world end game it can get really tiring dealing with all the goings on. This is, of course, what most people play Anno for and to a certain extent that’s what I like playing these kinds of games for to. However Anno felt like it rubber banded back just a bit too far towards the old school way of doing things as I really quite enjoyed the simplification of 2205 as it kept me playing for longer.Of course I know I’m likely in the minority for that given the backlash 2205 saw.
There’s also room for a little polish in a couple of places. For instance it’s not entirely clear that if you select a shipyard and then click somewhere else on the map you’re actually setting the rally point for it. The game doesn’t have a line marker or anything for it so I routinely had ships disappearing to all sorts of weird places until I figured out what was happening. This is the same for any unit as well and the only remedy is to deselect the unit with esc to get around it. A highlight mode for resource nodes (or even a list like the fertilities) would be nice as it can be quite a chore to track down what resources an island has. Changing these probably wouldn’t do much to remedy the ungodly complexity that the core game loop has but it would at least make it somewhat more tolerable.
Give it’s wild commercial success, shipping 4 times the units in its first week than 2205 did, I’m sure there’s no one out there reading this review to decide if the latest Anno game is worth it. Indeed you probably shouldn’t be reading this to decide either as if this is the first you’re hearing of the series then it’s likely not for you. However if you’re like me, one of the odd few who enjoyed 2205 for what it did to the then 6 year old formula then Anno 1800 likely isn’t for you. Sure it has all the trappings we’ve come to expect from the series but its regression back to the mean assures that your time spent with it will be a taxing one. For some that’s exactly what they’re after however, for me, I’d prefer a little more sugar with my coffee.
Rating: 7.5/10
Anno 1800 is available on PC right now for $59.99, Total play time was almost 7 hours with a total of 19% of the achievements unlocked.
