Anno 1404 (2009) (Gold Edition 2010).
I tried out the first Anno, 1602 (1998), a year or two back and found it to be very addictive and enjoyable. It's a city building game with the added complexity of economic management and trade and then on top of that has a layer of strategic combat. The combat was the least enjoyable part, the trading wasn't overly interesting but the city building and economic management aspects were the main draw and they didn't disappoint. I spent about 200 hours'ish playing around in campaigns, scenarios, free-build maps.
So I tried Anno 1404 because many people said it was the best one of the 2000s sequels.
And if it's your first Anno game then it probably would be. Or if you're just a dedicated fan of the series I guess I can see how it would be as well. However, for me it kind of put me off playing any more games from the series even though I had, again, got another 200'ish hours of entertainment.
If you thought Jeff Vogel games are often the same game repeated or if you think Bethesda games are the same game repeated then I'd love to know what you'd make of this series, because these games really do seem to be the epitome of "if you've played one then you've played them all".
Anno 1404 is the fourth game of the series and is a decade on from the original and yet nothing much has changed in its world of building and economic management. You still settle various small islands on a small map, each with different produce to farm on it, then ship all your produced goods back to your main island where you gradually promote peasant houses into posh mansions, with various buildings and upgrades locked behind house progression. You can then sell off your excess surplus goods to passing trading ships.
So what had changed after 10 years and four games? Well, first up was Ubisoft's logo in the title screens. Possibly uh-oh? Hmm, let's see.
And yes, pretty much all the 'new' stuff is time wasting skinner box type stuff. You can now perform 'quests' while you build your town, which, after doing this for about 20 hours in a game, you quickly realise is the same quests being cycled over and over again ad-infinitum, most of which involve you sailing very slowly to the corner of the map and back again. Or fetch quests for another player. To which the rewards are small and usually pointless.
One of the rewards is usually Honour, another new feature. The game has lots of different ways you can earn 'honour', aka game-bucks, which are used to unlock 'perks', most of which are either opening blockers to natural progression, stuff that only effects the military aspect of the game, and your classic 5% to 15% marginal improvement to XYZ stat nonsense. I found a grand total of 2 of the 22 perk trees to have any real impact on my games.
But, of course, the first time you play the game you cannot see what the perks are until you unlock them and then you can't know how effective they'll be until you use them all. Hey, wow, you've played 100 hours already! You must really love this game!
In terms of the building aspect of the game though… if anything I'd argue it's regressed since 1602. The buildings are bland by comparison, even with pointlessly aggressive graphic requirements. in 1602 each building looked significantly different enough so that you take a lot of aesthetic pleasure in upgrading all your people's houses. In 1404 you just see a mess of indistinct browns (or whites for the desert islands) and it is sooo uninspiring.
1602:
1404:
And then 1404 even applies a skinner box to the final big building, a cathedral, which initially you think you can build when you have 1500 or so top posh resident housing, but when you go to build it, it then just gives you a building site. You have to gradually upgrade the thing every time you've settled another 1000 top posh resident housing capacity. Because why bother thinking of new buildings to look nice when you can just have the player constantly upgrade just one building.
And throughout the game the number of non-residential properties seems to have declined rather than evolved over the four games. Or just stayed the same, it's difficult to quantify it as all of 1404's non-population housing is so bland and indistinct you can't tell them apart from population housing anyway.
If 1602 was a basic builder game with added economic management then 1404 is therefore still a basic builder game with added economic management, it just has more 'other things'. But I bought it because it was a builder game with added economic management…
The military aspect has improved a lot. I think if someone is the type of person who likes these games because they offer a version of 'paint the map your colour', then 1404 would be an improvement of 1602, though I couldn't tell you why or how much because I quickly removed this aspect of the game in both as I didn't enjoy the combat in either.
At least 1404 has kept the series' ethos of allowing as much customisation as possible. Thank heavens for small mercies.
I have lots more to say, but shan't bother if no-one else is familiar with the series as 'wall of text' issues already.
In both cases the game was extremely addicting for a couple of hundred hours and then all of a sudden the magic just vanished, because these games are very limited in depth, to which 1404 offered zero change in this department as well.
And once the magic has gone it's, like, I can't even open the game up any more. I've never played a series before where the brakes get applied so suddenly from such an addicted state. There's not even any tailing off. One minute one's thinking about eight islands delivering hundreds of goods to the main island in a sea of hundreds of plans and objectives, the very next time one logs on one doesn't even want to log on.
So how to score something like this? Well, after 1602 I still had very positive memories of the game, even though I stopped dead and probably wont go back for years, I felt I had made good use of my time exploring the game. With Anno 1404 I feel like I've been duped somewhat, though not always unenjoyably during the duping process… if that makes sense.
Not really angry about it, but kinda motivated to slag it off if it arises in conversation, though willing to give it due praise in the few areas where it deserves it kinda-thing. Maybe a 6/10?
