I got Dawn of Discovery, err, Anno 1404 during the steam winter sale and damned if it wasn’t the best $3.76 I’ve spent in my entire life. I binged super hard in it, blowing through the campaign and a couple of Venice scenarios, and then a couple random maps. (I still plan to go back to it but for now I need a break.)
How do you all rank the various Anno games? I guess 2205 and 2070 are on sale now? What should I do next, and how will it rate next to 1404?
(Also, why on Earth did they have the voiceovers say different things than what the caption reads when the character portrait pops up?)
1404 is my favorite. 2070 is probably what you should try next, I just could never get fully on board with the sci-fi Anno games. Please note, this was largely due to how much I love the setting and all the little detail of building up your settlements in 1701 or 1404 and I just didn’t get much of that from future towns. For the longest time my desktop backgrounds were screenshots I took in 1404, but I never had any desire to repeat that in the later titles.
2070 wasn’t bland, it had lots of personality, with the tycoons and pollution vs the eco’s and cleaning the pollution. Also the ARK was a cool as well as the underwater stuff.
Yeah 2205 seemed to really strip the excitement from the series, I guess the future will be bland.
I’d say you played the best Anno already. Try The Settlers 7 for something related but different, or Aven Colony which kinda feels like a futuristic Anno game but better.
2205 hooked me more than 2070 even though it is structurally different and kinda flawed in certain ways. But 2070 feels mostly like a more boring reskin of 1404 with weird online features I never wanted (ymmv).
I’m excited for 1800, although it looks like it’s not out for almost a year. I do think some of their experiments in 2205 were worth trying even if they weren’t totally successful, and if they took the right lessons from them 1800 could be a really strong revitalization for the series.
Unfortunately, there just isn’t a replacement for 1404. Just play the campaign again??
Of course I am. I was never asking for permission.
Not sure if it is in the minority or not. Aven Colony has better ratings then Anno 2205 and 2070 both on Steam and SteamDB.
The problem with Anno 2205 is that they reduced it to such formulaic gameplay, it took away most of any type of thinking a player needed to do to win. I need 5 more of this, then build this. Problem solved! That is true for a lot of city builders in general.
Taking away the trade routes that Dawn of Discovery has really took away the need for much of the planning. I just felt Aven Colony did a better job forcing the player to be a little bit creative with their problem solving. Now maybe Anno 2205 does better if played on hard difficulty instead of normal, but I have a hard time thinking it would be more interesting.
Aven Colony wasn’t really difficult on normal either, but something about it was just more interesting. Also, I’m not saying Aven Colony is better than Dawn of Discovery, just the two latter futuristic ones.
Thanks all. There’s a bit of dispute about the space-age ones, so I might hold off on those. 1701 looks good–can y’all say a bit more about that, and how it differs from 1404? Also, apparently there’s 1503 and 1602, which looks adorably retro on GoG (or maybe I should just say old)?
Or, if I just want to keep going in 1404, what kind of continuous game settings made for the most fun? The AI is a little strange in that usually it gets going faster than me, but then just stops. I suppose the difficulty rating of the various characters makes a difference, and they seem to have their own personalities, but it was a little off. (I also might go back through the scenarios.)
Perhaps we should move this to the Aven Colony thread but the only reason it is higher rated than the Anno games is due to the Ubisoft DRM and not the core game play.
Aven Colony can be enjoyable. It is bright, colorful and offers some interesting challenges at times. But all of the best building games offer at least one of two things in the end and the very best offer both.
(1) The enjoyment of looking back at your creation
and (more importantly in my view)
(2) A design that requires the player to constantly tweak what they have already done
Aven does not score on either of those points.
(re: 1) Aven can be pretty enough to look at and it is nice seeing a space elevator but colonies appear to be a hodgepodge of futuristic but incoherent structures. When looking at my colony I do not get a sense of wonder or awe at the creation of it. The buildings are merely there to exist for function, not form. There is no reason to create a beautiful plaza, a quad of buildings, a downtown shopping district, even a mining/manufacturing area or anything of the sort. I get no feeling of a cohesive development or of the colony becoming a larger whole. Planetbase suffers from the same problem - a collection of disjointed modules that give no sense of a larger, cohesive community.
(re: 2) This is what I believe Aven’s fatal flaw to be. Occasionally a player may be forced to go back and put in an intake fan or upgrade a building but the game never asks a player to go back and reconsider their prior choices. In SimCity or Skylines, a player is constantly prodded to tinker with their creation for new roads, safety structures and other reasons to make it better. In Anno players have to deal with the supply chains and get to see their inner cities grow and prosper; and there is a reason to rework those core areas to allow more buildings to grow and development. The Impressions games always asked the player to go back and redo city areas for monuments and to improve the routes of the walkers. Even Tropico requires redevelopment as your core city grows.
Not so in Aven. Once an area is stable, there is no further development and additional growth elsewhere has no impact on the rest of the colony. Thus Aven is less of a builder and more of a puzzle game. The challenge is the order in which you put down your structures versus the external environment.
I know many people complain if they need to use UPlay, but there are still a lot of negative reviews where UPlay isn’t the reason. Maybe if we took out the UPlay-only negative reviews Anno 2205 would pull ahead, but it sure wouldn’t be universally loved.
I guess those two things aren’t important to me. I never try to beautify my cities for the sake of me thinking they are pretty. I focus purely on function. If there is some gameplay reason to beautify I will do that when necessary. I don’t object to point 2, but it isn’t a focus or requirement for me.
In the end it doesn’t matter whether I like one moreso than you do and visa-versa. So I’m happy to agree to disagree with you.
Since this page shows up first on Google to people looking for the best anno game, I think it needs to be updated a little:)
A week ago, I wanted to find which one is the best and started by playing Anno 2070 which is a cool game, but I am not a fan of the futuristic environment; therefore, the next installment I have tried was 1404. I have really enjoyed it. Although it lacks some features from Anno 2070, it’s totally playable and has pretty much modern graphics.
But why do I write this post here? Well, because I have made a mistake spending $40 on two games not knowing that there is a better and the newest part of the game is available - Anno 1800. I have discovered it when I was looking for a guide to 1404 in this article. This is the best Anno game ever made, especially if you are a fan of the industrial age (personally, I am).
So, if you are looking for the best Anno game in 2020, make sure to start with Anno 1800.
Welcome, Janto! Love having more Anno fans around here.
I’m going to disagree with you and go with 1404 as the best Anno. I think 1800 has piled too many things on top of the game for little benefit (felt similarly about 2070). It’s impressive, but I ultimately find it less playable than 1404. And I think 1404 still looks almost as good (almost). But I’m glad a lot of people do really like what 1800 offers! I hope they’ll keep the series going for a long time.
