Anno 1602 A.D.

Anno 1503, 1701 and 1404 are all much improved games over this first iteration. It's not even so much the outdated graphics that are the problem, I wouldn't mind that for an old game, but the pathfinding, unit control and UI for trading, building and fighting are all worse than the newer games. To top things off the game crashes about once every 2 hours for no good reason on my beefy windows 10 PC. I even tried using dgVoodoo2 as a replacment for the default directX libraries. That managed to solve the issue of much too high framerate which caused stuttering, but the crashes still happened. Maybe this can be avoided if you run the game in a windows XP VM, but that's where my patience ended. If you are playing this on a modern PC, do yourself a favor and play a newer Anno instead. This one just isn't as great anymore as nostalgia makes you believe. There are just too many rough edges for it to still be enjoyable.

I once played this game (multiplayer) for 18 hours straight. And I wish I could do that again. Also, when I try to make a personal "top ten" list of all the games for Windows that I've played, this remains at #1. There are a lot of nice things to say about this game, but I'm going to leave it at that.

A relaxing city builder with a generic 17th century colonial setting: no real nations or locations, just a "new world" with natives and colonisers. The goal is to build up colonies with housing, food and services, using cash crops, gold mines and trade fleets to pay for it all. There are minor military aspects, but these are fiddly more than fun. Pirates in particular require annoying micromanagement. However, the colourful graphics, hymnal music and slow pace make this a mostly enjoyable time.

This is where it all began, one of my very first PC games and the first of the highly successful Anno franchise that has existed for almost 20 years now. At the time it was groundbreaking and it is still a very good game. The graphics are colorful and detailed, the music perfectly matches the New World setting and time, and the gameplay was a new take on city building, with the player starting in a largely uninhabited island world with nothing but a small ship, some wood and tools and a few tons of food. With this he would set out to discover islands of different shapes, sizes and climates, found a colony, build houses for citizens and fulfil their needs until they have developed into wealthy (and demanding) aristocrats. At the core of every Anno game is the continuous mode, in which the player can compete with three computer players (or real ones) in a randomly generated world and play the way they prefer - are you a peaceful trader who seeks diplomatic relations with his neighbors or a treacherous warmonger who destroy his rivals' cities and conquers their islands? Whether you try to reach a certain amount of inhabitants or want to defeat all enemies and claim every single island, it is always fun and challenging, and there is always something to do. Anno 1602 remains a great game, but it shows its age in many aspects, for example you have to plant fields manually around plantations, which can get very tedious in long games. I recommend it for nostalgic reasons mainly, for those who want to see where it all began. However, if you have never played an Anno game before I would recommend you start with the third one, Anno 1701, as it combines the best parts of both this game and Anno 1503, the second one, and further improves many things, topped with beautiful 3D graphics. See my reviews for Anno 1503 and Anno 1701 for more about these games!

As for many, this is the game of our young years. All is great as many people mention. There is one thing though - Game fighting AI is....well, doesn't really exist. I remember doing so much damage to my opponent just with few units. Program can give you feeling that army is added for fun, but not actually properly implemented. Score - war aspect of game 1/5 , economic and building 5/5 - in average 4/5 (don't ask for maths :p )