First Looks// Anno Online

Anno Online marks the long-running city management series’ new venture into the waters of the browser-based free-to-play market. Fans of past games in the series will find a lot that’s familiar here, and it returns to the series’ roots with a traditional middle ages setting rather than that of fancy futuristic Anno 2070, the most recent game in the series.

Personally I was attracted to Anno Online by developer Blue Byte, which created my beloved The Settlers games long before they were bought by Ubisoft and handed the keys to the Anno franchise. While there are some pretty major differences between the two series, there’s enough common ground between them that I soon felt right at home.

Straight off the bat Anno Online is likely to make a strong first impression. The overall presentation of the game is fantastic, and Anno Online is sure to win over some casual interest through its good looks alone. Every building is highly detailed and smoothly-animated where there are moving elements such as windmills or smoke from chimneys.

One nice touch is the inclusion of multiple varieties of design selected randomly as you build your citizens’ residences. It’s not much but it does help give your packed towns a more natural and less uniform look, especially given the sheer number of homes you’ll be building in close proximity.

And despite looking so pretty, Anno Online performs well even on my less than cutting-edge machine. Once the initial fairly brief loading is finished you’re good to go. Even once my town became a sprawling metropolis I didn’t suffer any noticeable lag while playing even with multiple other tabs open or while running other programs.

The game’s great presentation doesn’t just end with the graphics, however. The UI is notably impressive. Despite the wealth of information regarding your finances, stock levels and missions, everything is kept clear and concise.

All these statistics are hidden away in their own tabs around the edge of the main screen, which can easily be expanded and closed as necessary leaving the playing area clear most of the time. The only particularly cluttered area is the chat-box and friend list combo that takes up quite a big chunk of the corner, but it can be resized or hidden away just like everything else.

Anno Online does a good job of fooling you into thinking it’s quite a slow-paced, relaxing game at first, obviously well-suited to leave running in the background while you get on with whatever it is you do on the Internet. You’ll probably want to switch the sound off though. While the sound effects are tolerable the game only has one piece of background music and while it is perfectly fitting and even pleasant enough to listen to, you probably won’t want it looping around forever.

But it doesn’t take long to realise there’s an alarming amount of depth to be found in Anno Online, though the game does make sure you aren’t overwhelmed right from the start by slowly opening up new content as you play. Each population milestone you reach unlocks another layer of industry to develop, with most buildings remaining locked until you fulfil the necessary requirements.

It’s only once you get quite a bit further into the game and begin to experience the full extent of the resource management that it becomes clear how time-consuming and demanding Anno Online can be. Depending on your tolerances this is either where the game becomes much more interesting or much more frustrating.

You’ll soon find yourself pushing to make the most of every available acre of land as your cities rapidly expand across multiple islands. As your population rises you’ll have to expand your food, clothing and materials industries to keep up with demand.

On top of this, as you gradually upgrade your citizens to higher social standing their basic needs will grow more exotic, leading you to create new supply chains that might even require trading goods between different islands. The first few days playing Anno Online may be very relaxing, but it soon becomes far more stressful and hectic. And fun, of course. Unless you have a pathological fear of multi-tasking.

Fortunately it all stops short of becoming overwhelming thanks to the typical time-gating mechanics of these online games. You’ll soon reach the point where you can only do so much before your resources run low and you need to leave the game alone to replenish your supplies. The game is perfectly suited to quick bursts of regular play rather than extended sessions, unless you’re willing to stump up the real-life cash to instantly resupply yourself.

The tutorial does a good job getting you started but there are some quirks that aren’t well explained at all. As you progress further the game holds your hand less and less, which is obviously a good thing but there are some niggly areas where a little more guidance would have come in handy.

The ship and island management is a pretty major element of the game which really changes things up as soon as you reach that stage, but the in-game missions and guides breeze through it quite quickly. Worse still, the ship control menu is a little cumbersome and it took a bit of trial and error before I got things working just how I wanted them. Once you get the hang of it it’s a breeze, but there’ll undoubtedly be some rocky patches when you’re getting to grips with the new mechanics.

It’s worth bearing in mind that Anno Online is still officially in its Beta stage despite its high level of polish. Some issues might be fleshed out better as the updates roll out, and some areas are very likely to be expanded on. Most noticeably the game has little multiplayer interaction for an online game. You can add other players to your friend list and even form guilds with like-minded individuals, but as of yet there’s no real advantages to be gained from doing so.

If the thought of managing resources to build and maintain both a sprawling city of tiny people and the farming, mining, and all sorts of other industries to support it appeals to you then look no further. And even if it doesn’t, you might be surprised by Anno Online’s quietly addictive gameplay.

What it really comes down to is that if you had to pay for Anno Online then it would still be a very good game. So as a free-to-play title it obviously offers fantastic value for money and you could do a lot worse than give it a try, even if it’s just during your lunch breaks. At the very least it’s quite a bit more engrossing than FarmVille.

Pros
+ Relaxing pace.
+ Increasingly deep infrastructure management.
+ Great presentation.

Cons
- May be boring to some.
- May require too much micro-managing for others.

SPOnG score: 8/10