Anno 1404: Gold Edition

This is my favorite game from the Anno series, but unfortunately it is broken. You will, sooner or later, run out of memory (it can only use 2 GB of RAM). There is no way of fixing this.

This is my first review after playing nearly 25 years of games on PC. First game I stumbled into was Total Annihilation. Took me some time to get the grips, but it was (and still is) a blast. RTS was my style, but gradually I grew more into city building, economical management... Anno series delivers the absolute best in this genre. Even the combat is well done. Simple, but fun nevertheless! In contrary to the best city builders like Emperor or Caesar IV. But we not play these games for the combat... Probably Anno 2070 is the better game of the two, but I want to give my words to 1404, because it is just wonderful: the (learning) campaign is just what you need and after that there are many scenario's in 3 difficulties, the random mode let's you define many parameters and victory conditions. The reason I bought this on GOG is because I didn't have the Venice expansion. I recommend this game to players that want to start with this series. Believe me, if you played this one, you will want to play the first 3 as well: 1602,1503,1701. If however, you want to go on, play 2070. However, always start wit ANNO 1404

The best Anno game and one of the best city building games ever. Must be played by everyone. Anno 1800 is good but 1404 ist still better in many things. Ok also vise versa. But anyway... It works great on Windows 10 but with one little annoying bug. On game exist, it does not recover the desktop resolution and frame rate. Maybe only in my case. But the Anno History Collection is coming and I hope for a better and modern hardware and OS support. But don't be afraid. This version here also works great. Anno 1404 does not need a remaster. In many points it also looks better than the newer Anno games. TL;DR; buy it, play it, enjoy it.

I have this game on disc but wanted the GOG version as well as it was on sale. It doesn't work properly. I tried on 2 different machines and constantly receive a low memory warning in the game which eventually causes it to shut down. One machine has 32 gigs of memory, the other 4 gigs, the disc version I used on the 4 gig machine for years and never experienced this issue. Eventually it got so bad the game would crash after 10 minutes or so of play. Reinstalling, compatibility mode etc made no difference. So I would advise against getting the GOG version, buy it from somewhere else.

I've never played any of the other Anno games, and got this one as a free gift. I enjoyed it for the first few levels, until combat became more of a factor and it began to feel like a bit of a burden. It's fun building up your cities, creating supply routes and making sure your resources are getting where they need to. I found it challenging but not frustrating. If you make a mistake, there's usually a chance to correct things before it gets out of hand, and the large, open maps mean you can spend time exploring if you're waiting for a process to complete or more resources to be harvested. It gets rapidly more complicated with each level, but does a decent job of walking you through the additions so you understand how everything works without needing to consult a manual. The plot isn't super deep but it keeps things moving, and the art style is detailed and appealing- the deliberately goofy and exaggerated smiles of absolute bliss on your happy citizens repeatedly cracked me up, too. I eventually lost interest and didn't finish the game because every level took many, many, many hours. The game has been described as addictive but I think it would be more accurate to say that it's just built in such a way that it demands large amounts of time to make progress. There are just so many factors to balance, problems to solve and resources to pursue that you get lost in the details and when you look up, 8 hours have passed as if by magic. If you have enough free time to devote weeks of your life to playing Anno 1404, this is fine and possibly even desirable, but I found it increasingly hard to justify this monopolization of my limited time when I could be playing and finishing multiple other, faster-paced games from my backlog. Still, it's a fun and decent game if you have the time for it and I recommend it, especially for people who are already fans of the series.