In order to further society, you need to meet those needs and level up your populace, which will in turn have greater needs you must fulfill. Anno 2205, like previous Anno games, has you building up cities by engaging in a classic gameplay loop: you build houses to build a population, and that population has needs. I presume that the new game has surprises in store for me, but I wish I'd gotten to see more of them. Pollution, too, has been removed as a consideration, which makes me wonder what disparate paths Anno 2205 might allow me to travel. There's a sense of removal this way-one that mirrors the same problem in EA's most recent SimCity, which had you establishing multiple cities and then using a regional interface to establish trade and move between metropolises. These two elements alone held Anno 2070 aloft, though I don't wish to downplay the significance of other aspects: the mission system, the complex trade mechanics, and so forth.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot'sĪnno 2205 abandons the undersea landscape in favor of the moon, an exotic locale to be sure, but ultimately, just another stretch of (cratered) land to exploit, and one reached by clicking an interface button, rather than diving into a watery murk and establishing a presence.

Secondly, underwater gameplay gave the game an air of mystery as you established resource collection bases on the seafloor. Firstly, its climate change mechanics made a bold statement, and allowed you to stake your success on whether you ravaged the planet's resources or developed new ways to gather the energy you needed to run a trading empire. Anno 2070 found its thematic footing in two vital ways. The problem I face, however, is one of sparse information. I spent significant time with the upcoming city builder at E3 2015, and it left me wondering if this chronological leap might ironically be a step backward for the series. So it is in life, and so it is with the Anno series, which glided into the future with its previous installment, Anno 2070, and continues its forward momentum in Anno 2205.

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