Anno 1602 A.D.

First of all, I must to admit that I have a huge soft spot for ANNO 1602. It was my very first PC game I bought in my life, turned out to be a perfect choice. It,s a colonisation game. You have to choose the right island to start. And your choice matters. The biggest island on the map will be always most tempting, but remember - inconvenient placed mountains and rivers, fertility of crop, even jagged coastline could be really challenging, when you develop your small settlement into the most flourishing town of the archipelago. In return, smaller islands are usually very fertile, have more often iron ore or gold deposits, This is a city builder too. Ok, maybe not SimCity, but still more than enough to be a match for Pharaoh , Zeus "Master of Olympus" or Ceasar 3. But maybe this, which I like most in ANNO 1602, it's the mercantile system. With a handful of commodities and goods, it's simple & complex at the same time. You need to balance imports, exports, production, to achieve a constant trade surplus. Fortunately, when you are below the line, you can always count on the free traders, these cheapskates and swindlers ... . Oh, did I mention that I have been studing economics, back in the days? :) In ANNO 1602, a cordial peace is generously rewarded. Because a trade with AI players is much more profitable than with the free traders. During the war, you're killing your best buyers. And a dead buyer is a buyer, who can't buy anymore! But, from time to time, you have (especially in some specific scenarios during the campaign) to crush your opponent and wipe him out. I strongly recommend to go through the campaign first. The scenarios are well designed, gradually adding new features and increasing the level of difficulty. Really great! And at the end, I humbly beg You : please please please play GERMAN version, cause its soundtrack and messages for the player are so climatic, unique and ... funny, especially if you are NOT german native speaker ;)

My goodness..... The hours I have spent on this game. I played everything in that game over the years. The building, fighting and the music work so perfectly well together its unbelievable. This was my childhood game and I am so happy that GOG finally has it up. From the starting when you are floating in your ship to the moment you hit land, to the moment you start building and then in the end conquering, the excitement never ends. The ability to play certain songs from the soundtrack and to alter the playlist is a +1 for classic music lovers and honestly it sounds pretty good too. Now this may be a long shot but make sure your computer has the proper requirements..... Including that 1GB of ram lol. Seriously tho I had this game running on ((16MB)) of ram back in the day. Buy this game enjoy this game and tell others about it.

The formula to which the series sticks until this very day with only minor changes with each iteration. Here is where it all began, with a small ship and some goods to a thriving network of cities and warships. On the technical side, I had rare occasions of sudden crashes (thankfully, only shortly after starting the game). I can not Alt+Tab for some reason and if done via Taskmanager, the colors go all LSD. For this I have to substract a star and hope for a patch or something. I really hoped for a bit more of remastering, but well, what are you going to do.

I'm also basing my opinion on the box office version which I bought at the release of the game. It was one of my first PC games. The gameplay is very addicting and has been described on this page already. I didn't play the missions, only the endless mode without a specific goal and I didn't pay a lot of attention to the warfare, so I can't say a lot about this. You'll find yourself looking for ways to optimize your production cycles and fulfill all of the demands of your people to keep them happy and the taxes rolling. The awesome soundtrack is worth to be mentioned, I had it in my head as soon as I saw the game title a few minutes ago. I also liked the successors Anno 1503 and Anno 1701, haven't played Anno 1404 yet and I don't really like the setting of Anno 2070 or the announced Anno 2205.