If you’re a fan of the Anno series then you’ll be happy to know that another title is on the way (though it’s currently in an open beta and we were allowed to review it), but it comes with a catch, well actually a few. Anno Online is in playable form right now and is a free to play browser based strategy game by Ubisoft. Fans of the series will certainly find much familiarity with this new venture, as you still need to turn your quaint fishing village into a booming and robust trading commerce city. You won’t have to worry about any natural disasters though as Anno Online is a very peaceful city and resource management game set in the middle ages.
At its core, Anno Online is a city simulator, but unlike most it’s not just about the growth of your city, but the economics behind it plays the major emphasis of how well your city performs in development and how quickly it grows. You’ll need to balance your resources and wealth with the current demands of your townsfolk as you hopefully grow your quaint village into a large city. Satisfying your population is how you’ll set the foundation for your soon to be “Empire of Commercial Success”. You’ll have to construct new buildings, manage resources, keep production in check, all while trying not to overspend beyond your means. You’ll begin with a small corner of an island unlocked and not only do you have to unlock all sections of the initial island, but more islands once you have the capability to do so. Once you do, and you connect them to your trading routes via ships, your economy will start to boom, though getting to that point will test your patience.
As you begin your foray into Anno Online you’re only given a small section of the aforementioned island to begin your humble village. Other sections of the island are hidden by a ‘fog-of-war’. As you start out you’ll only have to manage a handful of resources such as trees and fish, but as you your city and population size progresses you’re going to have to manage a whole slew of other resources that will test your management skills and persistence. When you grow to the appropriate size you’ll level up allowing new buildings, new areas to unlock, and new areas to explore via the quest system that guides you along the proper route of growth. As you expand though things will become more difficult to manage as you’ll have many more resources to take care of as you try to keep your population happy and growing. Eventually you’ll have to keep up on such things as sheep, wool, apple farms, mills, hemp farms, taverns, churches, and many more things that will test even the greatest strategists to do so efficiently.
As you embark on your quest you are given a base set of materials and gold that allows you to manage your start-up city expenses, but every building you create will cost you resources and gold, on top of the maintenance costs per minute once created. You’ll start with zero population and strive for a booming city full of workers as you attract pioneers to live and work in your village, and as you expand and become larger in size and economics, you’ll start to attract and entice higher class citizens to move in, though you’ll have to make sure the appropriate amenities are near their homes for them to even consider it. At first you only need a marketplace nearby to entice pioneers to move in, but the higher classes have many more demands that will require quite the depth of strategy to upgrade and place properly. Upgrading a pioneer house to a vassal isn’t too expensive itself, it’s the additional buildings you must also create nearby where the grind for resources and gold come into play.
Anno Online continues this upward trend of requiring more and more from your city to progress further, which unlocks the next tier of buildings and goals, exponentially raising the difficulty in strategy but also the time needed for resources to replenish in real time. As you progress further and unlock new islands, this opens up a whole new level of approach needed to be successful, as you’ll need to juggle multiple resources in your finite amount of space for the best output, all while trying to keep supply and demand in check.
Early on in the game you are introduced an easy to understand quest system. It clearly tells you’re your current goal at that given moment and will guide you in how to complete it. It starts off clearly by instructing you to build your first pioneer house, rewarding you with some resources and gold for completing the quest. This continues from one quest to the next and eventually you may have half a dozen quests at a given time, which stay there until completed. This system is not only there to give you a direction and purpose, but it is a tutorial so to speak. Eventually it will simply tell you do something specific, but not explain how or what the most efficient way to do so is, leaving you to trial and error.
One of the main features you’ll notice as you begin is the chat room that’s seemingly filled with everyone else playing on the server. The chat has been a mixed bag for me during my play time; if I ask a question I seem to always get an answer by some helpful player. That being said, there were many times the chat degraded into something childish you’d see in an MMO region chat. This is no fault of the game itself and I’ve been fortunate enough to find helpful players when needed; it just feels odd when the chat that everyone can see degrades as I expected a more mature audience to be playing Anno Online. Again, not a fault or problem with the game itself, just an observation.
Here comes the catch with Anno Online being a free to play game: There’s a cash shop. Granted, it’s not necessary to purchase the in-game currency, rubies, with real cash, but it definitely makes things more bearable and less frustrating. The bottom right chest icon links you to the shop where you can purchase rubies with real life cash, varying in packages from $2.99 to $99.99 for specific amounts of rubies. These rubies can then be exchanged in the shop for numerous items to help mange the ‘wait-factor’ built into the game. Oddly enough, there are no real deals to speak of in the shop, as buying 10,000 gold for 49 rubies has the same ratio of buying 50,000 gold for 245 rubies. Granted, it is a beta and final prices are subject to change, but there should be a much better deal for someone plunking down a larger amount of cash for these items and resources. You’ll eventually hit the dreaded ‘wait wall’ where you’ll become tempted to buy some rubies so you can exchange them for gold or resources allowing you to build that next structure now instead of waiting a few hours for assets to pile up in the warehouse. The game’s built in quests will reward you with small amounts of rubies here and there, but it’s never really enough to do anything substantial with. You eventually get to a point where everything is so expensive you’ll place a building or two and have to wait hours for resources to refill. As of this publication, simply treat the shop as time saver rather than a necessity.
With Anno Online you won’t have to worry about natural disasters or battles, you simply need to worry about your economic and placement strategies, well that and your patience. The ‘worse’ you play, the longer you’ll have to wait for your resources, though this can be ‘fixed’ with the aforementioned cash shop if you so desire. For a casual free to play game, Anno Online has a surprising amount of depth, even if it is hidden for quite some time and will test your patience with making you wait almost constantly. The game is still in development, hence the beta, and many features could be reworked, changed, or even removed, but this review is as-is at the time of publication.
The quest system does a good job at explaining the basics but I found there were some nuances and quirks that weren’t really explained at all which led to much trial and error (which thus resulted in more waiting time as my input and output ratio wasn’t efficiently balanced) and having to figure a few things out on my own. As you progress and things become more complicated; surprisingly the game holds your hand less and less at a time when you actually need it more.
Those looking for the next true sequel of Anno won’t really find it here as Anno Online draws its inspiration from the click-and-wait Facebook games, and of all the time I’ve put into the game so far most has been waiting for my city to build up resources. The treasure chest of rubies I was given to help speed along my review was certainly appreciated and no doubt helped speed things up when I was either running out of patience from waiting yet again, or simply needing to get more play time in order to progress further so I could write more about it. Anno Online is suited for quick bursts of gameplay when you have a few minutes here and there to check in on your city.
Surprisingly, for a browser based game Anno Online looks and performs flawlessly on every browser I tried. There’s a short initial loading screen you’ll have to endure after logging in, but after that everything is smooth and zooming in and out occurs without hiccups. Granted I have a beefy PC, but even with multiple programs running, numerous tabs open, and other tasks taking up PC resources, Anno Online performed smoothly. Also, for being a browser based game, the level of detail is actually quite impressive, as you can see the fields, individual buildings, and even your town folk. The UI is minimal, only popping out when needed in certain menus, and everything makes sense in its placement. I do wish the same could be said for the audio department though, as the background music isn’t bad, but with only the one tune repeating over and over you’ll want to have some music playing in the background as the looping tune will get in your head quite easily.
For a free to play browser based game Anno Online is a pretty fun diversion for those that simply want to check in on their city now and then, but for those looking for a massive in-depth strategy city builder you won’t really find it here, at least not for a long time unless you’re willing to spend the cash to get to that point much quicker. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your Anno Online city, unless you want to pay for it. In the end simulation/strategy fans should give this game a try as you just never know how much you will or will not enjoy it.
