A strange new world beckons
Along with its sister titles Anno 1602 and Anno 1701, this is a fine addition to the historical strategy genre. This one is perhaps the best of the bunch and makes for a hugely entertaining time. This one sees you attempting to create a vast empire by exploring the New World in search of fame and riches. You get to sail across the vast oceans, and establish colonies, build up trade routes, establish diplomatic ties with neighbors and engage in combat on land and at sea. The game is very accessible, but includes a highly detailed and realistic economic system and which allows for a huge variety of goods and resources to be traded. You also get to interact with a wide range of differing cultures, each of which need to be handled differently, while the combat system is also very sophisticated and which allows for some truly epic land and sea battles. The variety of environment types is also an interesting addition, and this makes for some great tactical considerations, while there is a massive range of building types to experiment and which further enhances the sense of depth to the game. As far as empire builders and RTS games go, this one is top notch stuff. It is pretty easy to get into, even if you've never played such a game before, thanks to the friendly interface, but it lacks nothing in complexity. Once you start building up your empire, it's easy to get hooked and you're almost guaranteed to lose a lot of hours to this one. Throw in the neat visuals and open ended nature of the game, and you have a great bit of entertainment.
