Anno 1404: Gold Edition

Holy crap. Anno 1404 has taken up alot of my 2019. I have been playing a senario which has alot of win conditions. It is a complex buider with trees to get to each new set of buildings that are based on how many people in your towns, and of what class in society. There are 4 classes from peasant to nobleman and each has varied and stacking needs. There is also the orient and their own ways of building a society, which are essential to supply your western citizens with the goods they need. On top of this you are managing diplomatic relations with other players, and going to war is a very difficult task. You are given a variety of missions from all kinds of characters you encounter as you explore the map for new islands in your fleet of ships. Ships can be used as goods transport and to sink your enemies or attack ports in real time. The art style is pretty unique, cartoony, well exectued for what it is. The sound and music are fine I didnt find any of it annoying, but you do dislike some characters more then others. Its difficult to capture how good this game is in a short review. It keeps you engaged and planning your next moves franticly in real time. You are always fighting for space and to keep your enemies at bay. About my only con would be that the way armies work and fight is clunky, difficult and takes ALOT of resouces and time to build up, take up alot of your good land and computer enemies seem to have the upper hand at all times. Ship combat is simple and fun enough ( a basic outnumber usually wins and you can add special people and items to help you) trade, rescource gathering and diplomacy balance well and are alot of fun. Buy this if you want strategy till yr eyes fall out.

One of the BEST in the ANNO Series! I downgraded my rating to four stars because the Gold Edition also has the Anno 1404 Venice game included. The user has no way to choose the Venice game. The user must find the .exe icon for Venice, and "send to Desktop as shortcut". Then it will run the Venice game, but bypasses "GOG Galaxy", so no credits/stats are saved. An annoying inconvenience, hence the four star rating.

Even in 2025 the game looks great and has, for me, the right balance between complexity and playability.

I recently replayed this game and had a lot of joy with it's still very good gameplay, sure Anno 1800 might be more complex, and in my eyes, even better, but that doesn't make Anno 1404 obsolete in my eyes. The setting in combination with the very, very well aged graphics make it a wonderful experience up to this day.

I'll keep it short: The game works in 4K. I've had it for awhile and it never crashed. Also it looks awesome in 4K - much much better than the low res screenshots here.