This game most of all is great. But it has it's pros and cons. I'd really rather play Age of Empires all day. I don't like the DS version of Age of Empires just the PC. Now this game is awsome and all but one thing is that to me if I play the game to much I'll get tired of it and if I keep doing that I get really tired of it then I don't want to play it anymore. The PC version looks more cool to me but that just because the graphics look so much better on PC than DS. You know how on the top how your advisor looks and how his graphics look. Well I think they should have the whole game like that. But the game was awsome. I keep getting stuck though and it's a bit hard. Maybe it's just me because I have it on easy. Well anyways this game is great and on a scale of 1 to 10 I think it's 9.5.

I love strategy games and played all of the Advanced Wars series. I also liked Age of Empires but got bored after 20 hours or so. Anno 1701 is better than the DS Age of Empires and very close to the PC version of Anno 1701. It really deserves an 8.5 rating but they crammed a ton of features into an easy to use system. I love the idea that I can assign quick access menu hot keys for the menu items I use frequently (like roads and storage capacity). And I can also reassign hot keys during game play such as Tactics to build and deploy troops. The only complaint that takes away from game play is the inability to rotate the map. In areas where mining ore or stone is needed from all four sides of a mountain, you can only access two sides to place a mine. When your island grows, it is also hard to place roads between structures. But, any good micromanager will know to place the roads prior to building, so you can work around that issue. Combat is good and simple, create troops in one area and request them in another, then send them to attack. This is a good paced real time strategy game that stands right behind the Advanced Wars series and just above Age of Empires and more enjoyable than Theme Park. I should be able to compare Anno to Drone Tactics and Toy Shop soon.