Seriously, I wanted to enjoy this game, since the atmosphere is nice, but the game is way too random. Lots of players hate the time limit of some missions, but even in the other missions, there's very little actual strategy involved. To me, the two main problems of this game are: 1) There is too much variance of the random combat (chance of hitting and inflicting critical damage) 2) You advance with your squad without having any way to know where the enemy is and if they can spot you at your new location. You move down an empty looking road and BAM, some aliens spot you from 20 cells away and you're revealed. Even if you have already seen the enemy, it's not clear if you can attack them from the position you move to. At times, the line of sight is surprisingly blocked. Other times, you move to a cell just to find out that you can shoot through a ceiling at something you weren't even aware of. Those two factors will either result in frustrating deaths of squad members or (and that's probably what 99% of players will do) saving after every successful turn and re-loading after something bad has happened. You're better off, watching a SciFi movie and rolling a dice until you get a 6 (ignoring all the other dice rolls since re-loading is fast). This is what this game essentially boils down to. On top of those game-killing problems, the interface and mechanics between mission is confusing to say the least. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, EVEN WHEN ON SALE!
As a fan of the genre, I hoped that Anno 1404 would be a nice game. The start was quite promising, but the frequent crashes (no Alt+F4 or Task Manager working - you have to restart Windows) and long loading times make it painful to play the game. Also, the interface isn't very intuitive: searching your troops on the map, knowing which symbol represents which resource, looking for tiny crates floating somewhere in a gigantic ocean. If that doesn't sound like fun to you, you're right. Actually, it's very annoying. I guess, if you really know what you're doing and if it works well on your computer, it's a decent game, but I'd look for another Anno instead of this one.
