Anno 1800 is the seventh and also the latest installment of the long-running city-building series. The Anno franchise has gone through several developers, and Blue Byte is one brought it to the current height with the four latest ones. After 8 months since the latest update to the game, this is the first time we've heard about this newest title.
And as it wants to remind us that Anno is not dead yet, Blue Byte has worked with Ubisoft to provide a full week free-to-play trials of Anno 1800, starting from today. This means you can start to build and defend your own city in the 19th Industrial Revolution now!
If you're still hesitating on downloading the game, below is the trailer to show how beautiful and intriguing Anno 1800 is:
A quick review of Anno 1800
The Anno series has always been rotating around building your own territory, and Anno 1800 is not an exception. In detail, it follows the same concept as the previous two titles: Anno 2070 and Anno 2205, bringing us back to the historical settings of the 19th century's Industrial Revolution.
However, with highly detailed graphics and enhanced RTS combats, Anno 1800 has gathered more success than its predecessor, winning Gamescom 2019's Best PC Game Award. In this game, you'll become a landlord to make your territories and your name remembered across the wide landscape from Europe to Africa.
In order to do that, you'll have to continuously enlarge your land, gaining political and economic influences and protecting your region. Starting from a small empty island, you'll start by placing houses and necessary facilities to match the needs of your people. After that, you'll have to connect all of them with transportation systems.
The more developed your island is, the more people will come to your island. The range of buildings that you can construct in this game is very wide, sitting very close to what we have in real life. And apart from the building, you'll also have to take care of the economic situation and diplomatic intercourse as well. Through the peaceful way, you can earn a new island for more people to settle, therefore spreading your reputation.
And if the soft means are not enough, you still have your punches. Deploy military forces and send your troops to conquer the potential-rich island that you need for your empire. At the same time, other forces have also laid their eyes on your lands as well, so you'll also have to build firm defense lines to protect your results as well.
Speaking about combats, Anno 1800 focuses entirely on naval fights. By building certain facilities, you'll have access to more powerful ships to siege other islands down. All the battles in this game will take place in real-time, which means you'll have to continuously give orders to your ship to get the final victory.
Overall, even though Anno 1800 is basically an enhanced copy-paste version of previous titles in the series, it still has a lot of goods under its sleeves, such as beautiful visuals, rich of content and innovative features such as day-and-night mechanics.
Free-to-play until December 18
Ubisoft is running this free-to-play even of Anno 1800 on both Epic Games Store and Uplay, so you can enjoy it on your most convenient storefronts. This free version consists of a co-op mode and all free DLCs from the beginning to now, so you can enjoy building your extraordinary empire with your friends.
The only shortcoming of this event is that your progress will not be brought to the full version even if you opt to purchase it in the future. However, it's still the best chance to have some experience in the best PC game of the year so far, so don't miss it.