Anno 1800 the city-building giant

Anno 1800 serves as a pretty good introduction to the series. The onboarding is hardly perfect, but the story mode works as a solid enough tutorial. It takes things slow, establishing the rules of its complex systems. Occasionally, a head-scratching lack of clarity will emerge. However, carefully following instructions and engaging in some good old-fashioned trial and error helps you through it. Expect this massive game to take dozens of hours to fully understand.

The campaign tells the story of you and your sister leaving your homeland in search of a fresh start. Following your father’s untimely and suspicious demise, your unscrupulous and power-hungry uncle takes power. As you’d imagine, he immediately makes your life hell. After settling on an empty island, you begin building a new civilization. You’re also attempting to uncover the truth behind your father’s death. The tale is entertaining enough, but it mostly just serves to establish a complex web of systems and mechanics.

At its core, Anno 1800 is a city-builder. Your primary objective is to construct a city from scratch and attend to the needs of your growing population. Balancing economic growth with your people’s happiness is the primary challenge. Elements of the 4X genre are also prevalent. Exploring the world, expanding your civilization, and trading with other civilizations. These are all important ways to ensure you stay on top of the economic food chain. Real-time strategy aspects are present, too. You build ships, create control groups, and cruise the high seas to engage in combat where necessary.

If all of that sounds like a lot, that’s because it absolutely is. Anno 1800 is extremely dense. It possesses three games worth of ideas and can get quite overwhelming. Although the campaign covers the basics, the explanations of how the many systems work could use some expansion. Although the basics of building and maintaining your settlement are made clear, much of the minutiae is left unexplained. While it can be fun to unravel the inner workings, it becomes frustrating to parse the endless web of systems.

Ultimately, Anno 1800 represents a return to classic Anno form for the city-building giant. There’s a huge amount of depth embedded in the intense myriad of systems. They’re either going to be a complete turn-off or an open invitation. Does the idea of getting lost in a sprawling strategy epic sound like your idea of a good time? If so, Blue Byte’s latest stab at the series is likely to be your jam.