Anno 2070
Review
A gutsy move into the future.
by Sergio Brinkhuis
reviewed on PC
Butting heads
In most scenarios, war is inevitable. So your main drive for growing your population is to build a sustainable, healthy economy for a civilization that - at the very least - can defend itself. You strive to gain the money and the right population class to build and maintain ships, planes and probably some stationary defences as well. And I can tell you that the wars in Anno 2070 usually mix frenzy with patience.
Depending on the AI difficult settings and your diplomatic efforts to stay friends with everyone, war will often happen when you’re not quite ready for it. Defensive measures become available earlier in your city’s growth curve than warships and planes and there’s no shame in relying on those to rebuff early attempts to remove you from the playing field. You can usually see an attack coming as the AI will start demanding money, goods or the removal of buildings prior to an attack. Once you no longer give into their demands, it is smart enough to focus the majority of its forces on single targets when it decides to take a stab at you, resulting in the ‘frenzy’ part of the war. Once the enemy has run aground on your defences, though, you have plenty of time to build up your fleet as the AI will happily send newly built units at your defences one a time.
Land units are no longer available in 2070. Only S.A.A.T. provides the aerial units needed that can take over enemy buildings so you are forced to line your chosen faction’s population with S.A.A.T. technologists. I say ‘forced’ but using S.A.A.T.’s supportive technologies is a ton of fun and adds even more variation to Anno 2070’s already impressively rich gameplay experience.
Tech
You travel to new sectors by way of vast ‘submarine cities’ called Arks. The Arks’ AI provides guidance on how to develop your civilization and detects threats to ships and population. The Arks can be upgraded with technologies that provide bonuses in areas such as ecology and productivity. Once the technologies are socketed, they will travel along with you to every new map that you start, providing a fun, RPG-like aspect to Anno 2070’s core gameplay.
New technologies are acquired through research or ‘license trades’ with NPCs and can also be used on ships or individual islands. Ship technologies include speed, auto repair functionalities and even the ability to hijack cargo from enemy ships. Island technologies usually focus on reduction of the ecological footprint of buildings, energy usage and maintenance costs, but can also seed new fertilisers for crops or boost mineral resource quantities. Here too, S.A.A.T. plays a unique role by being the only faction that is able to conduct research.
Click, click, click
With so many new features, Anno 2070’s interface has come under some pressure from overcrowding. Despite well designed tutorials during the early campaigns, I spent the first two hours or so trying to deal with the game’s somewhat overwhelming amount of information and number of click paths. With different screens for trade, stock levels, diplomacy and building options, there is just so much to keep track of that it takes a while to take everything in. The build paths are especially daunting to early explorers of the game’s many features. A second level building in a production chain can require no less than five clicks and starts with opening the building screen, choosing between your main faction or S.A.A.T., selecting the building’s level, the product you are building towards and then finally the building itself. I’m not sure in what way this could have been made quicker, but it really ups the learning curve.
A bright future
All things considered, neither the weakish post-frenzy war AI nor the hard to get into interface detract from the game’s magnificence. The AI can be forgiven because there’s so much to do that giving you a breather from constant war pressure is almost a blessing and, after a few hours, the interface won’t bother you at all. A few small bugs aside, the game is rock solid too so it scores points in that area as well.
Related Design and Bluebyte did a brave thing moving the franchise into the future but it paid off handsomely. Anno 2070 is the richest, most engaging Anno game to date and even die-hard fans like me will find it a great adventure discovering everything the game has to offer. Like other Anno games before it, Anno 2070 has sucked up inordinate amounts of my time but it has eclipsed its predecessors when it comes to sheer entertainment value. One can only hope that the next Anno will take us to Mars.
9.0
fun score
Pros
Deep, engaging gameplay that will keep you playing right into the wee hours of the night.
Cons
Interface will take getting used to.
