(disclaimer - I'm basing my review on the box copy that I own) Anno 1602 is a real gem of a game in which you, and your competitors, found and grow small colonies on a large map with a collection of islands. Perhaps the best way to explain the game is to give an example of the typical thought process: "Ooh, that's a nice big island with lots of building space. I'll settle there." "Right, let's get to work. Let's place a woodcutter's hut there, and a couple of fishing huts over there. I have 60 wood remaining so I can start by building 20 pioneer houses." "Let's see, my pioneers have access to a chapel, so the only thing they still need is cloth. Let's clear some forest and put down some sheep farms and a weaving hut." "Cool! My pioneers are upgrading to settlers! Let's see what do they need? Hmm, they need alcohol and tobacco/spices to upgrade. I can cultivate grapes on this island to make wine, but I can't grow tobacco here. I'm going to have to settle a 2nd island." "Damn, where's that free trader and his ship? I need to buy some more tools and sell my extra cloth." "Right, let's load my last tools and wood onto SS Kickass, and go and look for a 2nd island." "Actually lets load some extra cloth as well. I'm running out of money and I perhaps I can sell it to one of the AI players or some natives." "Yes!! I've found an island with a gold deposit! I'm going to be rich!" "Ok, so I am making wine on my main island, and now I'm cultivating tobocco on my 2nd island. Let's set my ship on an automatic trade route to deliver tobacco to the main island." "Why aren't my settlers upgrading? They have everything they need! Oh right, they need tools to upgrade :P I'm going to have build an iron mine and make my own tools seriously!" "Ah there's the free trader! Give me all your tools!" "Ah crap I'm broke" "Yes! Finally! My settlers are upgrading to citizens!" "Hmmm, I need an extra ship, as well as some soldiers to defend all this." ^ This is about 1/8 into a typical game
Everything about this game is incredible. I can't think of a single bad thing to say about it. Simply put, you build wiggling structures out of goo balls (of which more&more radically different types are revealed as you progress in the game) in order to reach an 'extraction point' which is most often a pipe located somewhere on the level. The difficulty comes from the fact that you only have a limited number of goo balls, various environmental hazards on the level, and the tricky structures that you have to build to succeed (towers, bridges, floating strings, flying towers, balls, and more indescribable shapes). The levels are INCREDIBLY creative, fun and surprisingly (for such a long game) non-repetitive : one level you're building a structure inside a tumble dryer, on another you're using balloons to elongate a giant frog's tongue over a field of spikes, and on another you are floating in water. Not to even mention the crazy fun levels that follow the revelation of Project Z! The difficulty ranges between mostly average, to tricky and sometimes - hard. Most levels you control the difficulty by deciding whether or not you want to chase the OCD award which you unlock by extracting a certain number of extra goo balls. After a while you will automatically start chasing these awards, and coming back to the ones you could not get. This happens I think because they are easy to obtain in the early levels, so you kind of start to think "hey OCD isn't so hard to get" but then you get to the harder levels and it becomes a real challenge to obtain them. There is also a sandbox mode in which you can use all your spare goo balls you obtained in the levels to build the tallest tower possible. You'll start by using all of your 200 goo balls to barely reach a height of 20m before the whole thing crashes to the ground, then you'll see other people managing to build 50m+ towers, and then you'll lie awake at night thinking of better designs to reach the next 10 meters.
