Anno 1404: Gold Edition

I bought this game when it was on sale if I remember and never really touched except an hour or so here and there. It wasn't until now, with the release of Anno 1800 that I thought "why not give this an actual go" and going into it head first without a clue what it actually was blew me away. That hour or so before was mostly spent in the sandbox mode and playing around with making nice looking cities. Some turned out okay. The graphics look amazing, especially for a 10 year old game. It's crisp and clean and... gosh it's just got such charm! Than I tired the campagin, thinking it was just a tutorial on how to build nice cities. HECK NO! It's a pretty interesting story about the rising of a crusade, and it teaches you the second main aspect of the Anno series. Production chains. Want to build ships? Build rope which is made from hemp which is made from a hemp farm that needs tools and lumber that you get from trading and lumberjacks. And it just gets deeper. Than throw in dipolamacy, battles, trade routes, quests... This game is deep! Or it can just be a simple city builder. The fact I was able to play it as a city builder and not run into too many issues without not knowing all the mechanics is amazing, and the fact that if I wanted to go deeper I can. Just because you've never played Anno before doesn't mean you should skip this title, it looks amazing, runs well (save for one weird chugging issue in a cutscene...) and it plays amazing.

I love this Series but if you're expecting a fair fight you won't be getting that here. The ANNO series has given me hours of fun and I still play it every year or so. The graphics and sound of all the ANNO series has always exceeded the standards of the time. There is a lot of fun to be had with this game. Where this series falls short is cheating NPC's. I'd like to point out that this may not affect everyone the same so you may love this game regardless. However the people who enjoy strategy will find this very annoying. What I mean by this is there is almost no real chance of economically crushing your enemies. They must all be put to the sword. That is the only means of conquering them. You can control the entire board cutting off you're NPC opponents from the resources they need. Even destroying there ports so they are cut off from all external supplies. At this point you should be able to watch them slowly crumble from a once modern superpower back to a small insignificant village. Unfortunately for the player that never happens. The NPC's citizens and cities will riot and recover endlessly all the while some how maintaining their technology and military might. It will become obvious to the player that they must swoop in with overwhelming military might to face off against the NPC's never ending magical resources and military. It is a real shame and the only stain on what would be a pristine RTS experience that could leave you playing this series regularly for years to come. I do still play this series every now and then but I'm always left with a deep sadness over what this series could have and should have been.

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

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.

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.