A disclaimer, right out of the gate, Anno 2205 is my first game in this series. Honestly when I saw it at E3 this past year I didn’t know anything about it, but I enjoyed the trailer quite a bit, and had been having a blast with games like Cities: Skylines, so wanted to get my feet wet with the Anno series. So, you can look at this review as a seasoned gamer going into a new series. With that said, Anno is a lot of fun and can eat an entire day away if you don’t pay close attention.
For those like me just hearing about the series, Anno 2205 is a game that is a bit like SimCity or Cities, but with real-time strategy elements, business simulation, and combat mixed in. From my time with the game I came away feeling like they took a bit of Cities, a bit of Civilization, and a bit of Starcraft and mixed it all up. Veterans of the Anno series will likely tell me that each of those three games took their ideas from Anno, but alas I’m new to the series. Go easy!
As you first jump in to Anno 2205 you’re briefed on your spaceport, and how you need to build a city of workers up to continue building the port and get everything active. From here you start into what people familiar with Cities or SimCity know best, city building. You add workers, build food production, mining operations, water supplies, etc. Each building you construct costs currency or materials that other buildings produce, and all of them need workers. So as you keep building up your workforce and material-producing buildings, you eventually get access to do more and more things, and build more and more buildings.
As you move along story points will pop up and guide you through what you need to do to improve the spaceport. There are also side contracts and quests you can pick up from other NPCs generally sitting in other areas of your zone. One example is a woman trying to rebuild a dam. If you choose to help you go on quests to collect materials and workers and eventually get a damn built that gives you materials and money. There are a lot of these little side ventures and figuring out who has good intentions is a lot of fun. The overall story is nothing too in depth, but it does keep missions moving along and side opportunities popping up, which is all I ask from a game in this genre.
Every so often you are able to take on combat missions as well. When you launch into these typically you go to a new zone and you use your fleet of ships (all upgrade-able) to sail around the map and take out enemies, and collect materials. You’ll typically have one main thing to do (free a ship from the enemy, for example) but there is plenty of area to explore and even a few side contracts to pick up in the middle of the battle. These combat areas feel like your typical RTS game. Find enemies, click on them to fight, and use special abilities you gather along the way. I think this mix-up in the typical city building genre helps keep things fresh and new.
The game was never too difficult, but that’s because I was playing the more casual mode, where you have plenty of money and health. If you want to just relax and play the game I’d recommend that mode, but there are much more difficult options for hardcore fans.
Overall Anno 2205 is a great game. Being new to the series it’s hard for me to quantify its worth in the pantheon of all Anno games back to 1998, but the lack of bugs, nice visuals, smooth gameplay and fun questing all lead me to believe that even if you’ve played every Anno game, you’ll still like this one just fine. For all you like me, newcomers to the series, this is a great time to jump in. The game can be as easy or hard as you want, and everyone should have a great time playing it.