Anno 2205 - Catch All

Yes, I know, I'm no good at catchy titles. But this game is coming and there was no thread. I felt it deserved a thread because I'm super excited for this game. I discovered the series only last year with 2070, but got very hooked. So here we go:

Announcement Trailer:

Gameplay Trailer:

Early Play Impressions from Docm77:

Anno 1404 (Dawn of Discovery) is still my favorite, but I'm pretty excited for Anno 2205. That core Anno gameplay is always addictive, gives me "one more turn" syndrome in real-time!

Since this is being posted elsewhere, but no notice here.

GMG has this on sale for $35.

http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/e...

I bought it. Will download it tonight, maybe fire it up if nothing else shiny crosses my path.

I picked it up at full price. The Anno games are one of the few franchises that I very intentionally do so, in order to make sure I'm voting with my wallet to say "hey, keep making these!"

I'm currently watching a lets play youtube series on it. So far it looks good. If Fallout wasn't out next week I'd grab it now, but right now I'm happy to wait until Christmas Steam Sale.

Downloading it right now.

I keep looking at that GMG deal... so very tempting.

I downloaded it last night and have a couple of hours into it. I'm still playing the first "hold your hands" scenario, which just

Spoiler:

morphed into a separate "combat" scenario

It's definitely more of the same. Graphics are good and there's more help in the tool tips to better optimize supply and demand for the supply chain. It looks like they've abstracted town centers and warehouses to the point that there's no zone of effect. At this point I haven't determined where the efficiency of placement is - if there even is one.

I played for a couple hours tonight. As far as I can tell, the only thing with a placement requirement is the wind power stations. The transport hubs say they should be placed near factories, but I didn't see any indication that placement made a difference with those.

Upgrading things is kind of a pain, since it involves a lot of moving stuff around if you don't already know what your upgrade layout is going to look like when you first build things.

I'm having fun with it so far. I especially like how streamlined and standalone the combat is, and how many optional objectives there are for everything.

A few more hours into the game, and I'm really enjoying it! As I mentioned earlier, I find it MUCH easier to balance my inputs/outputs and know where I need to expand a production chain here and there. The module mechanic borrowed from the latest Sim City works well when you're budget or space-strapped, and the multi-map is much more satisfying for me than the old multi-islands were.

I'm still concerned about longevity, however. There's no sandbox mode - you just keep playing your campaign map forever. Probably not a huge deal (considering how I played the older games), but YMMV.

Combat is incredibly simple, but for dipping into every 20-30 minutes of gameplay, I don't really mind. It definitely needs the most polishing in future patches / DLC, but it's loads better than having the combat in the same map as the building aspect.

So I broke down because of the GMG sale with the full knowledge that my aging laptop would struggle with the game, but so far it's surprisingly very playable (~30 fps) on medium (1280x720, not fantastic but still very pretty).

I had a healthy wait for the download, so I only got about an hour to play with it. And like has been said, it's a much more forgiving Anno 2070. I've been playing quite a bit of Planetbase, so it's a little shocking how Anno just plops down structures with no build time .

I'm liking it so far, FWIW, and even the combat was enjoyable for me. That may be because I'm not too keen on the combat and it's very approachable with little side missions available for those willing to explore the map.

For $35, it seems a good value. At $60?

You're a big bunch of filthy enablers. I bought the game.

Hrm. Sounds like they fixed all the issues I had with 1404, which I liked well enough as it was. OK, bought via GMG.

I'll add to wishlist, but I still have Dawn of Discovery and Anno 2070 on my pile.

I was initially upset when i realised the GMG key wasn't a steam key, but I'm still ok with saving lots of money. Took forever to download though as UPLAY isn't as fast as Steam. I let it download overnight and then had a quick 20 minutes to play this morning.

Really liking it so far. Just feels like a nice relaxing city builder with all kinds of cool stuff. This is my first trip into the Anno series too and it's definitely a beautiful looking game.

Budo wrote:

I'll add to wishlist, but I still have Dawn of Discovery and Anno 2070 on my pile.

Same here.

I'm really enjoying it so far. It's definitely Anno, so if you don't like Anno you won't like it. I was a little wary of the streamlining but I have to say I think it's a great change. You lose some of the authentic feeling of putting goods on ships and hauling them around, but now there's no "ramp up" time, you can move buildings around freely, and a couple other nice additions the new system allows. I also really like the new upgrade system where you have to play even more building Tetris with the modules.

Combat is still dumb and mediocre, but it's isolated to maps you don't even have to play. The constant reminders to go do them get fairly irritating however.

Definitely getting a little more complicated. The arctic area really adds a different layer of complexity due to the buildings requiring heat from the factory placements. Then balancing the need for the information hub. Fun, but challenging.

I've done a couple of the combat missions so far and they're not bad. They're pretty bland really, but it's not horrible. They give me resources, so can't complain too much.

Looks great, pity the DRM means I'll never play it.

Beyond being on UPlay ... there is no other DRM. Assuming it's Uplay platform, what's the big deal. I can launch it from an icon on my desktop. It starts up right away...

Yeah, it's pretty much no different than a Steam or Origin game. It can be played entirely offline after a one-time activation. I think Blue Byte finally figured out that people hated their always online bullsh*t.

I'm downloading it now. Looking forward to it.

Messages keep getting cut off by newer messages or a keypress, which is annoying.

The way the tutorial presents information isn't that great. I think I missed some things because I didn't mouse over a tab at the right time?

My new mines weren't producing what I expected them to, but I had a new logistics building available, so I plopped one down nearby, and that fixed the problem. I guess I needed more delivery trucks. Or a nearer source, because I think the total number I had was still sufficient. Does that sound right?

It should say in the bottom bar if you need more trucks or not. It shows up red if you're in the negative, which affects efficiency. Keep in mind energy and workforce have the same effect (and will also be red if in the negative).

Logistics buildings tend to be very expensive and they aren't upgradeable, so building logistics upgrades on your other buildings isn't a terrible idea.

One thing I'm not clear on is that there seems to be no area of effect for logistics buildings or the information centers. You can pretty much slap them down anywhere, right?

I haven't got to the Arctic area yet, I keep wanting to do the side missions in the first area.

It's a function of how close they are to the buildings they support. Logistics buildings closer to factories reduces the amount of the logistics resource they use. Similarly, homes that are closer to buildings like the info centers or transportation hubs will reduce amount that they use. The farther away buildings are by roads, the more they use.

Is there any way to see an indication of that? I tried clicking around a bit, but I never saw anything that looked like an area of effect.

Blue line on roads, also if you click on the factories, you can see the usage rate go down.

Once you get to the arctic area, you will see the impact of the social hub. It's really visible there since you have your population houses spread out due to the fact that they need heat from the factory buildings. I'm still messing around to try and get an optimal layout for the arctic. Also, those scientists sure do need a lot of those drugs.

I got to the moon and after putting down a few houses I ran out of money. They're 7,500 each! Moon buildings are expeeeeeensive.