Anno 2205 Review

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Imagine a future where global warming has melted the Earth's ice sheets, and all that's left is a fractured society desperate to pick up the pieces and build anew on the few islands that remain. This is the setting of Anno 2205, a game where you side with one of two competing corporations to rebuild civilization, and eventually, construct a fusion reactor on the moon for a limitless resource of clean energy.

 

Thankfully, humanity doesn't have to start from scratch. During your campaign, you have access to bits and pieces of advanced technology leftover from Earth's better years, but there's still a lot that needs to be rebuilt. That's where you come in. You're responsible for constructing new houses, roads, and factories, plus all the logistical systems that are required to support and transport all of your goods.

 

Like most city-builders, construction is handled with a straightforward system of dragging and dropping elements from a menu onto a map. Anno 2205 makes construction a simple affair; even more so than usual. It adapts the series' mechanics to work within the constraints of a flooded, land-starved Earth, allowing you to tack modules onto existing properties to boost resource production, rather than having to construct entirely new buildings that eat up your ever-valuable real estate. Unlike most games in the genre to force you to permanently commit to decisions, you can also reposition elements after they're built in Anno 2205, which makes it easy to react when things don't go according to your original plan.

 

You can eventually take on bigger construction projects that unlock new areas, including arctic settlements, additional islands, and, yes, the Moon. These projects require huge chunks of resources, however, and given that you earn funds at fixed intervals while playing, you have to do an awful lot of waiting before you can enjoy building and managing greater expansions. Anno 2205 accounts for this by giving you optional, secondary objectives to help pass the time.

 

Every so often a terrorist organization launches attacks on supply lines and climate regulators. When they do, you can engage in a military mission to capture and control the objectives in question. While on these excursions, you continue to earn resources back home, and your bank account--provided you were running with a budget surplus when you started the mission--will continue to grow. If you're in the red, though, you'll often come back to find that you need an emergency loan to keep your corporation afloat.

 

More info:

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/anno-2205-review/1900-6416317/