Anno 2205

It’s truly the most beautiful Anno experience in the strategy series. It comes along with some major changes, concerning mostly the economic systems in the game. Many things are easier to handle. Still the game offers enough potential to optimize your cities. But it feels different, comparing it to the classic Anno games, it is now more like a Sim-Citybuilder, which isn’t bad overall. Unfortunately there’s no multiplayer, no editor, no campaign, no challenging scenarios – it has become a multi-session gameplay, combining all these gameplay modes in a persistent game world.

Blue Byte has taken some risks with this game, but all the decisions were the right ones. It's complex, but accessible to those who really want to make the most of it, thanks to a long campaign, full of content and incredibly engaging.

Faithful to the series but friendly to newbies, Anno 2205 lets you experience colonization in three different zones (Earth, Artic, Moon) at the same time, each with its own risks and rules, with gorgeous graphics and an intuitive UI. However, lack of multiplayer and somehow of a more streamlined experience may be disappointing for the veteran.

If you are at all on the fence on finding a game which can deliver a rich experience and dozens of hours of gameplay with a great mix of resource management, city building, and RTS combat: this just might fit the bill.

Anno 2205 is a needed step forward for the series. Even though it can’t match up to the classic Anno 1404 the courage to implement some significant changes to a proven formula is noteworthy.

A brave new start which sacrifices the traditional elements of trade and tough competition and replaces them with a truly epic endless game.

There is a lot to like about Anno 2205. I love the new global economy which, combined with the overall goal of colonizing the moon and achieving endless cheap energy to renew the planet, really drives things forward. The streamlining of the interface has paid off but the same cannot be said about the simplification of trade and the lack of competition on local maps.

Doesn’t reach the stars but will get you to the moon. [March 2016]

Anno 2205 is polished, clever, and Tages-free, but falls prey to the same repetitive, micromanagement-heavy end-game grind that's always plagued the series.

Maybe the old series fans won’t appreciate Anno 2205, but thanks to graphics, gameplay and type of approach we are looking at a very solid futuristic city builder.

Anno 2205 is the city-builder that the community was waiting for. 2205 is transparent and easy to learn for beginners, but it still has the soul of the Anno franchise, full of complexity, duration and that gorgeous atmosphere.

Anno 2205 is a solid city builder, albeit one that doesn’t feel like the full Anno experience to me. If you’re someone who has been interested in the series but has been a bit scared by its fussiness and micromanagement, I’d recommend it. Ditto if you just want a city builder with a heavy resource-management angle...If you’re a long-time fan of the series though, you’ll probably be a bit put off by some of the changes and a very real drop in difficulty.

With Anno 2205, Blue Byte takes its city building formula in a different direction, which generally works out very well. The game looks amazing, plays super smooth and seems more accessible to new players. Your journey to the moon is challenging and original, but the optional combat feels weird and lacks depth.

Anno 2205 is good city builder with an interesting take on the future of humanity and with plenty of humanity, the kind of video game that a player can spend tens of hours with as long as he is interested in making all his cities run at peak efficiency all of the time.

Anno 2205 is a remarkable city building game with plenty of options to create your own economic empire. We miss more content or custom scenarios to increase its replayability. However, Anno 2205 is a great strategy game for the fans of the series.

But without a sandbox mode, or challenge scenarios, or Anno 2070’s grindy but gratifying system of scientific advances, 2205 doesn’t have the infinite replayability you get in the best city builders. That’s probably a good thing. The last thing I need is a city builder this good with infinite replayability.

A solid city-building and economic management game, one that provides an addictive experience. As the end game draws on however, some players may experience fatigue and move on. Fans however, will find a sim that will eat up dozens of hours of their time, especially if they are out to establish a perfectly balanced economy.

Building in a futuristic setting was never as much fun as it is in Anno 2205. Build your own metropolis on both the Earth and the moon. The gameplay is easy to get into, so both newcomers and veterans of the franchise can instantly enjoy the game.

This new Anno is way different from its predecessors, and it focuses more on the management aspects. The strategic aspects are not fully developed, and that doesn't help the full package.

Perhaps not as deep and full featured as some previous Anno games, 2205 will nonetheless scratch the itch for most city builder players, whether they're new to the series or returning.

This game probably won’t make old veterans of the series happy, since it’s now a simpler and more linear title compared to its predecessors... still, it works, thanks to the new RTS phases and a great interface.

Anno is still a great IP which ventures into lunar lands. While the concept is good and the changes are welcome, we would have gladly traded Uplay and DLC's for a multiplayer mode and more maps.

I had a great, if fleeting, experience with Anno 2205, but I’ve now solved the equation in its entirety, and without an editor or custom scenarios (or even pre-determined ones), the game just doesn’t have any real staying power.

Anno 2205 has so much going on and makes all of your tasking varied and interesting. One game is three different building sims with real-time strategy naval battles peppered in and everything moves in a way that makes it compelling and addictive instead of overwhelming. It’s an ambitious improvement in a lot of ways over Anno 2070. Unfortunately, the technical issues keep it from being the perfect entry in the series that it wants to be.

An ideal gateway into the city management sim, but with too little room for forward-planning.

After initial delight and ten hours of fun Anno 2205 became a bit boring. [13/2015, p.40]

Very good building strategy offers a rich environment and the need to constantly balance the economy. Initial city construction is fun for everybody thanks to that. However, Anno 2205 loses pace after a few hours and only true fans would stay. It would need much more diverse content.

Anno 2205 is a stellar city-building experience that rewards and demands precision in planning. It makes the compromises that real city management requires central to its mechanics, and the strong environmental theme helps to make it contextually relevant today.

Blue Byte tried to renew the Anno series, but the game lacks on content.

Anno 2205 offers plenty of enjoyment, but may not appeal to the hardcore strategist.

While gorgeous to look at, Anno 2205 feels like a simplified version of the city builder the series used to be. New players will find it entertaining, but veterans may be a little disappointed by the lack of depth.

Even if some of it feels a little extraneous, like trying to keep investors and executives happy with god knows how many future toys and bits of entertainment, Anno 2205 is still absorbing.

Anno 2205 is a gorgeous looking economy builder with an impressive scale and scope. A few poor gameplay decisions tarnish the overall experience, but it will no doubt still have city-building devotees glued to their computer screens.

Anno 2205 is an engaging and strategic city builder with unique challenges in each of its attractive biomes. But ultimately, it manifests as a never-ending treadmill of trying to supply the picky, luxury-loving consumers of the 23rd century with more techno-garbage.

Anno 2205 is a satisfying city builder for those who may think that Cities: Skylines can be a bit complex. It looks great, building your cities is a breeze, and managing resources is easy. Unfortunately, once you've finished the campaign, there's not much left but more optimization and expansion. No mods or DLC make this a rather finite game.

Is beautiful and huge. However, this is a title whose first game is the best, while in the second, even though trying to do something different things, is noticeably dull.

We were able to sit back and twiddle our thumbs more than we’d like – it all just feels a little dumbed down.

There’s definitely a market for this game, but I completely understand why so many long-time fans are so upset. It feels like Ubisoft basically tried to dumb down an amazing series to gain more popularity, and I’m not so sure expansion packs can fix this.

A minor entry in the venerable city building series, which has some interesting ideas and visuals but too little in the way of gameplay depth.

Anno 2205 is functional and fun, but with the singular exception of its visuals, it either had so little ambition at the outset or was so scaled back in development that it’s regrettably a missed opportunity.

Despite all the gameplay faults, Anno 2205 could become a major hit... if it had been a Facebook game. [Issue#204, p.70]

Glorious though Anno 2205’s cityscapes may be, a game that justifies the banality of numerical mechanics through visual sensation alone is inevitably one that provokes the question of whether or not it needed to exist at all.

It's a shame that Anno 2205 takes the game so far into the future and does so little of substance with that premise. Not much has changed from Anno 2070, and what has is almost always worse. Anno 2205 still has a sturdy core of satisfying city planning and construction, but so much has been cut out as to make the game barely worth playing at all.