i really fucking hated anno 1800, it has all the problems of anno 2070 which managed to be a decent game despite them, and it ramps them all up to fucking 11 without learning a single fucking thing (and thats not even touching the weird politics)

as you go along there are so many fucking plates you have to keep spinning at once at so many places for so long and THERES NO FUCKING ACTIVE PAUSE. there’s a mod that adds a bullshit pause but it doesn’t work that well because of how the engine is designed. so you need to be organising these supply chains on a whole bunch of islands in two separate areas at once, where even a momentary shortfall of one good can cause your island’s economy to completely collapse, while trying to draw out new industry in these perfect mathematical ratios because of space constraints etc, while at the same time micromanaging ship battles and quests and fires and and fucking zoos and all sorts of other crap and you can’t just pause and manage your shit you just have to keep frantically switching from one bit of bullshit to another with the shitty minimap its so fucking exhausting

and yeah i get its more about supply chains and shit but the populations are so abstracted that theres no sense youre actually building real cities, its all just gamey fake mechanics bullshit right in your face

edit: lol i just re-read this and its way too angry about a vidya, it just pissed me off because of how in-your-face player-hostile it was