Great successor to Dawn of Discovery that improves on itself and retains it's depth. Excellent city builder game.
Anno is a city building game. The idea is to build as big and bold as you can to outdo your opponents or achieve your victory conditions. While many games can claim this genre classification, such as SimCity, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Civilization and the like, Anno is different again. To give a baseline comparison, if you are familiar with The Settlers (also by Blue Byte, different franchise), you will have a very good idea as to what you are looking at in Anno.
Firstly, you pick one of the two factions to play as. First off, you have the "green" Ecos, that are geared towards keeping their islands clean and fertilities at max efficiency. They have better technologies to help keep their island from turning into oil slicked turtle choking grounds. The Tycoons are their production driven counterparts. It comes quite easily to them to dirty up the islands, as their eco technology is not quite as sophisticated, but hey! Whats than next to profit? That will be your decision to make when choosing your faction.
The map is divided into several island. Map sizes can be varied from close and claustrophobic to an agoraphobe's nightmare. This necessitates ocean trade, courtesy of the global warming issue that is apparently prevalent in the year 2070. New to the series is the underwater plateaus that can be colonized and harvest many weird and wonderful goods such as the humble algae that is processed into food, and the industrious oil rigs that reach up to the ocean's surface. Each of the islands have preset "fertilities", that will dictate what you can cultivate and mine there. These raw resources then are processed into other products via the use of production buildings, and then distributed to the vast reaches of your industrial empire. HEY PRESTO! We're playing what is the largest and most integral part of Anno 2070.
Whenever I play an Anno game, the phrase "elephant on a teacup" always comes to mind. Certainly not regarding the technical makeup of the game. No, it is excellently made. The phrase is referring to how you play the game. The challenge in Anno is to keep up with your demand of resources. The larger your archipelagic empire expands, the more complicated and unwieldly your economy becomes. For the first hour of the game until you you can build your own ships, you won't be feeling so much like a transport magnate than like a transport muggins. Your initial ship will be the tool for which you manually ship around goods and complete quests, but we have to start somewhere. Humble beginnings soon grow into huge and confusing trade routes, depending on how good you are at organizing things. The game can be challenging even before adding concepts like military and outside trade.
However, to shake things up, no doubt you will add in some military at some point, even if to defend yourself from some jerk with a gun strapped to his boat or something. Naturally, the next progression from cargo ships is to fill up that cargo space with some lovely weapons and utilities. Submarines are also present, allowing for some underwater skirmishes. Aircraft can also be produced to strafe the ground dwellers. Without a doubt though, a bulky navy and trading fleet will surely make up the majority of your game.
Visually, this game is actually quite calming. The colour scheme heavily uses soft blues and greens, subtly making this an easy game to look at simply from that perspective. The swaying of the vegetation and the flow of the ocean also contributes to this chill factor. If you played Dawn of Discovery, you will find the visual style quite familiar, if not exactly the same. That is not a bad thing though, as it still looks great for the genre. Lighting is perhaps not as effective as its predecessor, but it has its moments, especially when underwater. Blue Byte retains their usual caricature styled player models that you can play as or against. Each player does not have any bonuses, but rather gives you something to visually identify the other forces in the game.
So, I'm sure that there are those out there who are returning to Anno, seeking some sleep deprived nights, so I'll cover some of the differences and additions. Firstly, when you start up the game, you will notice a rather large and imposing looking ship/fortress/base thing. This is called your "Ark". It is the naval base of operations and serves as your storage base, global upgrade housing unit and portal to the senate and world government. Which brings me to the player community. Every so often in real time, players are given the opportunity to "vote" for the world government president, or one of three avatars that serve as major domo to the world, supplying unique bonuses to those who have the licenses to pay for them (formerly known as honor). This is a nice touch that allows players to have some choice in how the game runs, while giving the feeling of connection to the rest of the community. Senate bonuses work in much the same way, but usually only give bonuses for a single faction. The game also rewards you every step of the way with a persistent profile that could give you anything from a new colour scheme to play with, more influence with your votes and even an extra collector at your warehouses, thanks to Ubisofts integrated Uplay achievement/reward system, a concept that would be most welcome in ANY game system. Next is the tech tree. Something that was annoyingly missing in previous Anno games. Your laboratories and academies now serve a practical purpose in tangible research that furthers your efficiency in game. If you are a fan of REALLY LONG matches, this is a double bonus as a lot of the research projects can take up to AN HOUR AND A HALF of real game time to complete. If you don't like long waits though, you can play the game without worrying too much about the tech side of things. A most welcome addition is that of multiplayer, something that was sorely missed until the expansion of Dawn of Discovery. There is nothing quite like losing hour after hour with your other friends who also have no life.
In conclusion, this is the quintessential city builder purchase. If you play city builder games, you are likely the sort of person who likes to spend countless hours tweaking and perfecting your economy, and this game can do that in spades. Lovers of Dawn of Discovery will likely enjoy this outing as well, remaining familiar and faithful to a tried and true formula, while still being fresh and interesting. It plays well solo and with others and has interesting community support. It possibly may not be your thing if you aren't into "long stretch" games, but is entertaining nonetheless. I'm not really a big fan of Blue Byte, but I won't have anything to complain about at this rate if they continue to release games of this quality.