Simply charming sequel of the Anno series. Both the gameplay and graphic are well polished. This empire management sim will glue you to your seat as you manage your trades and colonies to keep production flow and city flourishing! Army and battle are quite straighforward with rock, scissor and paper mechanic as this game is mainly focused on city building. Worth the money for management fans!

Probably the best of its genre. Endless replayability, awesome graphics, deep and fun gameplay.

It is perfectly polished, I did not encountered a single bug so far. The care the producers have performed towards this game and its customers is a lesson for every software house. 5 stars for pure gold.

Anno 1404 Gold is a fantastic game.

The gameplay is deep and rewarding, requiring you to set up trade routes within islands you own or with trade partners that you gain via the diplomacy options. Trading is very important to Anno 1404 because you need various items to make your citizens happy, but no island can grow all the required ingredients to make them. In general, you will have to have multiple islands like in previous Anno games, but new to 1404 are the arabic-styled Southern islands which have their own build-tree so you have to basically build up two societies, it's not just European anymore.

Thankfully it is very easy to set up these trade routes. You can click on a map icon that shows you all explored islands, cities and ships. Setting up a trade route is as easy as clicking on the appropriate cities, selecting which goods to load and unload at which location, and assigning a ship to the route, and off it goes!

The graphics are top notch in the game. The visual style is very appealing and colourful, and the world is filled with details like dolphins racing ahead of the bow of your ships, orca's and whales swimming in the oceans, deers prancing in the woods while small rivers meander through the landscape. The cities are filled with activity. Citizens are walking about, serfs are carrying supplies from buildings to storages, people roll barrels of beer down the street, children are playing. They are very active indeed. And it's heartwarming to see your citizens rush to the town square with waterbuckets when fire breaks out in the city somewhere. If you are lucky they get to it before the fire spreads to surrounding buildings. If not, you should have built a fire barracks!

The music and sound is also very high quality, with some music that will get stuck in your head without being annoying, and quality voice-work all around.

Playing in multiplayer with a friend is a blast too. In general, the game is very easy to set up, not at all hard to master, but very challenging to balance your income based on taxes.

Citizens need goods to be happy, but the buildings that produce them all require upkeep costs, making it a fine line to tread indeed.

Rating: 5/5. Excellent game that is well worth your money!

Ever had that dream about building a house which grows into a village then grows into a small town later a town then a big town which becomes a city state which transforms into an empire ? this will help you realize your dreams never played anything as beautyfull as this could spent hours upon hours playing it it also has great modding tools tho its mostly in german its easy translated and theres help around it

5/5 Get it and you wont regret it ;)

ANNO 1404 Gold edition is a great game to add to your library because it contains the original hit RTS ANNO 1404 and the expansion pack ANNO 1404 Venice which adds a large number of scenarios and expands the game quite a bit. ANNO 1404 looks great, sounds great and is a blast to play...you won't be disappointed with this game.

Anno 1404 (Dawn of Discovery in North America) is probably the best trading/city builder game I have played so far!

The campaign is fun, teaching you the ropes while surprisingly delivers a decent story as well. The gameplay is really good, you have to manage the needs of your population while making a profit by trading or conquering your neighbors/enemy. While it's not too overwhelming but it's certainly a challenge and the smoothness of the core gameplay will hook you for hours. The only flaw in my opinion is the combat system, which is quite simple and boils down to who have the most ship and troops.

The graphics is still one of the best in this genre, towns filled with people living their daily lives, lumberjacks cut trees to make wood, everything is fully detailed and the water effecs is just gorgeus. The game comes with full options you expected from a PC game like anti aliasing, anisotropic and complete control of every graphics settings.

The audio is also good, from the sound of waves hitting your ships to the business of your city and also the voice over who does a good job portraying the characters (watch the credit rolls for a good laugh)

Don't miss this gem of a game if you're looking for a city building/trading game!

A must buy for all rts fans! The multiplayer function is stunning. The venice part I think was a bit disappointing when realized that its not possible to build venice islands. But I give it 5/5 stars.

The German games industry is still renowned by many for city builders and trading games, which stems from the domination of these genres in Germany during the 90s (Die Hanse, the Patrician series etc.) The Anno series keeps this sentiment alive to this day and Anno 1404 Gold represents a major highlight in the world of city building and management games.

All parts of the game play fit together just perfectly:

- An exploration hunt for fertile grounds in two culture zones (occidental and oriental), neutral "npc factions" of unique character and last but not least room for your people - all of this in a picturesque island world that's very nice to look at (thus the game offers you the postcard view introduced with Anno 1701 again)

- A complex, but not complicated system of production chains, challenging you to plan ahead according to what your settlement's populace wants next. Watch your people climb the ranks from peasantry to nobility when well supplied. Shortly into a sandbox game you'll even unlock a parallel society to develop from desert nomads to oriental envoys.

- A highly customizable sandbox mode, allowing you to either play completely alone in a huge area, concentrating on building the ultimate city of splendour or duking it out with aggressive AIs in an unforgiving world of limited resources. You can even choose the victory condition, be it about economy or survival - or none at all.

- AI factions with character. Some are generally friendly, others far less so. Even the AIs of medium difficulty level are fairly hard to keep up with. In that respect the balance seems to be a bit off, at least for sandbox games.

- A quest system. Fulfill many tasks from rescuing castaways and hunting for wanted people in your city to escort and attack missions. These earn you, among gold and honour,...

- ...many special items to collect. Enlarge your warehouse's stores, increase your ships' speed and/or sight range and/or repair capability, introduce new seed to an isle which normally couldn't grow it and more.

There's always something to do in this game, be it optimising your industries and logistics, running errands (even for AI factions in a sandbox game - good for your diplomatic relations) or waging war on sea, land (though with limited complexity - this is NOT an RTS!) and in the shadows as introduced with the Venice Addon. That Addon also introduced multiplayer capability in the game, though according to personal experience it is advisable to use LAN via VPN rather than the "Gate to the world" introduced by Ubisoft when playing over the Net with your buddies.

Presentation may be a bit cartoonish for some, especially in the facial animations of the different faction leaders and their speech, but it's not quite as "bad" as Anno 1701, the quality is excellent. A well developed settlement is a beautiful sight in this game - but that will have to be earned. Get this game, and you might forget to look at the clock for hours...

This is my first Anno game and i love it. The graphics still stand today how amazing it looks,every little detail you can see how your culture and people are living. The structures and landscapes also the water look amazing. Hanging back and relax to do some sandbox game is lovely. People who love RTS you should really buy this one because it will take a lot of hours to play!

Anno 1404 Gold is a really fun game but I am little disappointed that you cant build Venice cities. But multiplayer makes so the game still is worth it's money. You can play,player VS player, player VS computer and co-op -> play in the same team and share on the cities and the resources.

I love this game so much. First of all the graphic is good and it run very smooth without errors. The game world is huge and i like that you have to trade with other cultures to provide your own colonies with the supplies they need. The game always take place on a user defined map either big or small but with many islands to build your colonies on. From there you build your society with wood cutters, farms ect. and produce goods to either sell or use your self in your citys.

Not every island is big or contain the resources that your population demand and to expand and become more power full you either have to attack other island or find an empty one to colonize to gain access to needed resources.

You are also able to use politics and make trade agreements ect. and to build different military units like infantry cannons and powerfull ships, but it all depend on what resources you have.

The game is really amazing and people who are fan of city building games and strategy will find that this game have so much to offer that it will properbly become you favorite game too ;-)