The highly anticipated city sim Anno 1800 had a closed beta last week and it’s definitely worth the wait. Going back in time has never looked so amazingly or felt so great. Check out our preview, to see what you’re getting.
Anno 1800 starts you off with creating a leader for your next “personal project”. Choose a difficulty and you’re off to your next adventure. As simple as that, I was transported to an island with some potential in becoming the next big island that everyone wants to have a piece of. Looking around my island, seeing what resources I had, set my mind rolling. I was already creating my perfect country with an amazing economy where everything went great and my leader was well-known among other political leaders. Quickly my dreams were crashing down… As I saw my first building my “beloved” warehouse, I was taken by my two feet and immediately became grounded to the soils of the earth because I snapped out of my dream and things occurred to me, I still had a long way to go…. Nonetheless, I was motivated to become greatness itself.
Anno 1800 looked amazing with these 2019 graphics. The detail to some of the buildings or environments builds up your immersion very quickly. The textures, colors, details, realism, … fitted perfectly and created this amazing world. I was eager to begin but even after the first hour, I was already lost. I had so much budget, so I started to invest in some fishing institutes, as is was the quickest and most easy resource to harvest but I quickly noticed that this wasn’t the way to go. My buildings stopped working after a while because I was overproducing and I wasn’t taking into account some of the important information the game shows you. My stocking was full, I wasn’t getting any income and I had too much work for the hands I had. The game is quick bringing you notices about the situation that you’re in. If you’re not finding the information yourself, the game pops up as a character that tells you what’s wrong. This allows you to minimize the damage that you’ve done to your settlement and recap some of the things that are happening. If you’re not taking your economy serious, it’ll be your downfall. You start off the game with a great number of dollars, but if you’re spending too much, you won’t be able to get out of this situation since you’re not generating a certain income. This income is very important ( if you’re thinking logical) to respond quickly to the needs of your economy or people. Without any improvements to your economy, the people will be displeased and income will be less than your outcome. If you have no hands to fill in the “work” gaps, your city will quickly become into a state of decay instead of making progress because problems will pop up everywhere and your budget won’t allow you to regain the situation. My city was shot down very quickly due to my own ignorance. It was time for a second playthrough…
The game doesn’t hold your hand and even though, I would love some guidance, the game really shouldn’t give you more information than it already does. I learned it the hard way and I’m glad I did. The second time, I booted up the game, I really took a closer look to all the information I was given and once you get the hang of it, the mechanics of the game will sort itself out. You’ll build up a great income and you’ll be able to respond very quickly to the needs of your economy or settlement. Once the income is there, progression is more slow and stable but it’s also on a decent pace to compete with your opponents. Creating positive diplomacy among your opponents still needs some work. The moment an opponent popped up, I was able to build up my relation towards him/her and even though, I had some interesting options, these options felt more like lucky guesses than thought through decisions. There was no information about this opponent, so I couldn’t figure out what he/ she wanted. I made more enemies in-game than I did in real life, just by making lucky guesses. I really hope that they’re tweaking this a bit more, so it would become a lot more obvious to figure out what your opponent wants. Then again, in real life, you wouldn’t know this either so I don’t know what the best way to go is. A fun feature is the fact that the game offers “quests” through these in-game opponents. The completion of these tasks, help you to gain some trust and make some extra coin.
The game offers a lot of information when it comes to the “overview” of your settlement. You can see all of the “things” that your settlement lacks or exceeds. The more social buildings you build, like bars or cloth shops, the more culture your settlement gains. It’s good to see that this can be accessed at any time, to get a glimpse of the quality of your settlement. Each building needs a certain amount of components before you can build it and it’s good to see that this system has been simplified for the users. If you click on a certain building, you’ll see different branches that shows the base components of the building that you want to build. Also, the link between resource and production has also been simplified. For example, if your liquor store needs potatoes as a resource, you get the opportunity to build potato farms in the near area, so this “base resource” can be gathered. It’s simple but effective.
During my playthrough, I didn’t have any server issues or bugs. It seems like the game has already been polished in a great way. Hopefully, this beta build is already a couple of weeks old, so the full product will be even much better than the beta. From what I’ve seen and experienced, the game offers a lot of challenge by leaving the player scout the area on their own. The game doesn’t offer a lot of guidance and it really is for the better. It’s the only way to build your empire as best as you can. The more you play, the more mistakes you will make because you have to multitask a lot more than the beginning. Learn from your mistakes and adapt! You’ll see that your empire will be built in no time! If you’re looking for a city sim that will go great lengths, this might be a game to look out for.
