As with the best of such games, mastery of the thing is much, much further off, however, and Anno 1404's demands on my gaming faculties languidly spiral into complexity as I try to build large cities, or more complex trade structures.
Over the past few days I've been entirely consumed by the precise-yet-accessible city management, and actually feel a little spoiled by how easy to play the game is. It's been a kind of instant underlining of how far apart the poles of PC gaming actually are. Having been immersed in the nerve-fraying battle-horror randomness of Arma II for so long, Anno 1404 is like a neutralising balm: slow, careful construction of towns, farms and armies, all under a well-kept, slightly cartoonish theme, where the UI is obvious and the 3D buildings appear hand-crafted. Occasionally a game comes along that feels like the raw antidote to what I've previously been playing. Will it attract gaming patricians? Or could it simply be a peasant's hovel furnished with old-school resource management? Here's Wot I Think. Sea-trading city-builder Anno 1404 (or Dawn Of Discovery in North America) has sailed into our critical harbour to unload large bales of real-time medieval economics.
