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1701 A.D. is the best!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is a good game if you like the 1700's. There is a ton of resources and things to do. This is a trading game more then a fighting and empire game. You are a trading company, of some kind. You have to deal with pirates, and other civilizations; like an Indian trading post, Chinese, and about a ton more. If you like games that you get to build a city, and manage almost everything, then you will love this game! It is worth ever cent! And you wont put it down, like me. I play it for hours on end, and wont stop until I got to get to bed, which would be around 12 or 1am. It has troops, ships, and you even can go around attacking other players, but if you do, you will be at war with them. And it is hard to get back into peace mode with them, I tried it many times!So if you like sim city games, and fighting games, along with trading games, then you will like this game! So buy it! And have fun!!!!

Very fun and engrossing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: July 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing this game for 6 months (since Jan 2008), logging over 300 hours of game-play (which it tracks for you), and it is still my favorite game.

Before this game, I played SimCity 4 and CivCity: Rome. (BTW, I also tried SimCity Societies, but I don't even consider that a game, and so you will hear no more mention of it here).

The game is more fun than all other city-builder games for a few reasons:

1. It has the most interesting, exciting, varied, frenetic game-play (until you've got your city completely grown and your supply chains completely stabilized). Competing against the 3 AI players just makes everything more interesting, and you don't feel as anti-social as you might in other city-builders. Plus there are the elements of diplomacy, trade, managing your own building supplies, settling, research, and (optionally) war. There's just a lot more going on. And once you get through it all and have your city, there's actually something to do afterward. My favorite is to just keep building on my castle, making it more complex, and to just roam around the city gawking at all the cool graphics, and watching the mistril band and stuff. I also generally try to go for independence from the queen, and to finally annialiate the pirates, who annoy me throughout the game. You could also try to annihilate the foreign cultures and even annihilate your opponents and become the "last player standing". Any of those things is truly fun.

2. The game has good performance. Even in the later stages of the game, the interface is *always* responsive, never stalls, and although the game did slow down during the later stages, on my GeForce 9800GTX, there is really no slow down to speak of ever.

After playing this game, it's pretty hard to go back to SimCity 4 which, even 5 years after its release, and on the newest, highest-end hardware, sits and chugs for seconds-on-end whenever you do anything. I mean, If I really had no other responsiblities, I might spend some of my "fun-time" waiting for SimCity 4 to do its thing, but life is too short.

3. NO (significant) bugs. NO crashing. After 6 months of game play, the game has never crashed. Here's the worst that's ever happened:

a. Once, after my PC went to sleep during a game, I shut down the game and tried to load my city, and for some reason, all the housing was gone.
b. There is one particular free-trader assignment that cannot be fulfilled (he tells you to bring him wood, or something, but when you bring it to him, he doesn't seem to recognize it).

4. Graphics. If you have a high-end graphics card and want to get the most out of it, don't even bother with the other games I mentioned. While graphics are not an essential part of the game-play, they are above and beyond anything you'll find in the others. I played this for 5 months on a low-end PC with all the graphics options set to low, and always thought the gameplay was fun. I would zoom in sometimes and find it enjoyable to roam the city in detail for a few seconds. Now that I have my GeForce 9800GTX, and I have all the graphics settings set to max, the graphics are so amazing that it's almost too distracting.

I showed the game to my roommate after upgrading my card, and we both said 'wow' involuntarily. There is really no comparison to the other games.

That being said, without a high-end graphics card, the graphics are nice (especially the water), but the experience is definitely inferior.

5. I like the music. Though I suppose if you listen to any soundtrack for 5 months, it will start to grow on you.

Here are my major complaints about Anno 1701 A.D.:

1. No map-editor. If I understand correctly, even the U.K. version will only have an "world" editor with the same recycled islands.

2. Small following in the U.S. This is a constant source of disappointment. You don't have a same level activity in online forums as you might for other games. And news, about the map editor and other updates for example, takes a lot of persistence to find.

Fun city-builder

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It's like a mix of Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom and Age of Empires III, which is exactly what I was looking for. Very polished, and I would buy it again.

Awesome game, didn't install

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

1701 A.D. is an awesome game. Having played the board game on which it is loosely based (Settlers), I found the game play easy, strategy engaging and the graphics and sound both enjoyable and entertaining.

Sadly, I had to copy the entire disk to my drive, as the key code would not work on any of my three PCs, as long as the game was in the drive. I have found, in the past, that installing games from a directory on my drive would eliminate the software protection errors I have received in the past. Certain schema for copy protection have errors when attempting to install games using a number of CD, CD/RW, DVD, and DVD/RW drives. I suspected this was the case and copied the disk to my HD before installing it on my gamer PC system. Once installed, the game was a blast to play.

Less than Fantastic

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: March 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I felt the game was very misconceived in its description. I was expecting more of a Civilization type interface to it, especially in game play, i.e. turns. Overall gameplay is confusing and the manual was unhelpful. It took me forever to figure out how to expand my colony. Over the hours of game play while hoping for it to become fun, I found it instead slow and boring. But this is just my opinion. I also bought Europa Universalis with this game, and I found it much more enjoyable but perhaps that is just more my taste. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS GAME BUT THAT'S ME.

not fun for me

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: February 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I didn't enjoy this. There is little instruction included, and I could never really figure out how to get past the beginning stages. It was not interesting enough to put the effort into really learning how to play.
Blechhh!

Needlessly complex

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

My favorite games are empire building... This games had and may still have promise if the company entirely reworks it. There is a good premise behind it but the interface is overly complex and the game world is too small. The game seems to be a poor combination of Caesar 3 and Age of empires. I've enjoyed this type of game for more than ten years and haven't found a game I couldn't find an aspect that I might enjoy. This game finally hit that mark. Save your money and get Age of Empires 3.

Great Sequel

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is the third in the series and each is an improvement over the previous version. I have played all three. I enjoy the scenerios the best and wish more than ten were available. This incarnation has great graphics and the process to grow a city are reasonable and intuitive. If non-battle (though battles can be part of the play) are your thing, this is a great game.

Absolutely Fantastic Game!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is, by far, one the the best "city-building," manage an economy, games ever created. You'll find yourself constantly busy either exploring new islands in which to gain resources, or building the necessary resource-gathering,or production buildings necessary to upgrade one's housing (which leads to even more items you'll need to obtain in order to keep your population happy). Though the military aspect of the game may dissapoint some players, the game is really meant for those who enjoy building a healthy enough economy to sustain a large community, which, if you choose, will equipt you with the necessary resources to overtake and destroy your competition - the other AI computer players/opponents. The graphics on this latest edition are breath-taking, and the game runs smoothly without any problems. This installment, following 1602, and 1503 AD (a very underated game in itself) wasn't voted IGN's Economic Similation game of the Year 2006 for nothing. I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys the challenge of managing a growing economy, within a city-building style of game.

.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

1701 is about the same as the orriginal, 1603. This game in a nice mix of city building and naval warfare.

The game is simple, but difficult as well. The replayabilty factor is infinately high, too. This game is very fun, but kills time WAY too fast.

However, it lags horribly on a Vista equiped computer. Don't know why.

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