Anno 1800, from Ubisoft Mainz, provides players with countless opportunities to prove their skills as a ruler. Players can create huge metropolises, plan efficient logistics networks, settle an exotic new continent, send out global expeditions, and dominate their opponents by diplomacy, trade, or warfare. The Anno 1800 Season 2 Pass included three new major DLCs: “Seat of Power,” “Bright Harvest” and its final one which was released this past week, “Land of Lions.” These three DLCs added quality of life elements like silos and tractors and even added more mechanics like palaces and research centers. With “Land of Lions” we also saw the expansion of the world you can build in with the addition of the East African inspired Enbesa.
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Here are three reasons why picking up the Season 2 Pass is worth it.
Quality of Life
The one thing all three DLCs in the Anno 1800 Season 2 Pass have are ways of updating the overall “quality of life” for the players. The original Anno 1800 and Season 1 Pass were great, but you could tell as more and more content was being added to the game that players were running into quality of life issues. Having to manage production chains, trade routes, and just general management in four regions became a real challenge. This is not to say that there weren’t plenty of quality of life things done in the regular updates as the Anno 1800 team has made plenty of changes just within the last year thru their updates that didn’t involve the Season 2 Pass so the game overall is still great shape.
The Season 2 Pass however does bring many things that you don’t get in the updates. Starting with “Seat of Power” you are able to build a palace that not only brings attractiveness to your city but new city policies that really help boost your economy and production. “Land of Lions” brings a new research institution that is a real endgame game changer. The institution allows players to do a few things which includes researching almost any item in the game, be able to produce New World items such as coffee, rum, cotton in the Old World. I know as you get deeper into each game finding items becomes this monotonous struggle of doing the same quests, shuffling through Archibald and Eli’s options, or running the World Fair over and over again hoping to finally get what you want. Now, you can just research the items to learn them and then spend points on obtaining you actually want. The research institution alone is worth the investment. Additionally, it lets you do my personal favorite: move oil springs, clay pits, change island fertility, or mining ore.
Bright Harvest
The Anno 1800 Season 2 Pass as mentioned consists of three DLCs and I purposely did not talk about “Bright Harvest” in the quality of life section as Bright Harvest deserves it’s own section. “Bright Harvest” was the second DLC in the Season 2 Pass and it is actually most likely the smallest in terms of content especially when compared with Land of Lions that has by far the most content and another entire region along with unlike Seat of Power there is no fancy new massive structure, the palace, for you to make and decorate all over your island either. Saying all that the reason “Bright Harvest” deserves its own section is that without “Bright Harvest” all of those large fancy metropolises wouldn’t be possible. Well actually, they would be still possible but would require lots more work and space.
The addition of fodder silos and tractors has been the best game implementation to date for me. The ability to only need maybe a single animal farm or just two crop fields instead of the usual 2-3 or 3-5 has been groundbreaking to me. Players are able to save so much precious space, which is a valuable resource in itself, along with boosting the production of the raw consumables from the plant and animal farms. As a player that used to have entire islands dedicated to just trying to keep up coffee production for all those pesky engineers and investors Bright Harvest been a lifesaver.
I could go on and on about how silos and tractors are the best features added to Anno 1800, but I did want to mention that the addition of the agricultural and industrial ornaments. These made not seem like much but they really do help fill in all the gaps for your farms and especially your industrial areas. Anno 1800 is giant Tetris in a way with all the different size buildings and various island shapes so trying to make everything line up is impossible however with all the ornaments you can fill in the gaps nicely so everything looks so pretty. The industrial ones are by far my favorite and really fill out any industrial area of a city. I know personally, I like to now section off parts of my islands with the industrial walls.
More Campaign
“The Passage,” the last DLC of Anno 1800 Season 1 Pass, added some more campaign to the game. This included some unique tasks and quests to do to fulfill the story along with the exploration of the new region. There is so much micromanaging in Anno that having breaks to do story missions and tasks is a nice breath of fresh air. The third DLC of Anno 1800 Season 2 Pass called “Land of Lions” added plenty to the campaign for players to enjoy.
Much like “The Passage,” you do get a new region with new items and materials in the Southern continent called Enbesa. This campaign is more expansive than the previous one, with about twelve hours of story in this region alone. There are multiple questlines that force players to choose between helping the emperor of Enbesa, the other tribes of the region, or even Archibald as the Queen has decided to attempt to expand into the region. The quests involved in “Land of Lions” are unique as they involve more puzzles of finding ancient ruins and studying old texts to find clues for artifacts. “Land of Lions” provides players with plenty to do and play just within the region, not including all the extras.
Overall I have really enjoyed all of the DLCs for Anno 1800 Season 2 Pass. The three reasons above were what stood out the most to me while playing the game. These are definitely not all the reasons that Anno 1800 players should pick up the Season 2 Pass. If you are a fan of Anno 1800 then you really should check the Season 2 Pass as the team at Ubisoft Mainz has done a fantastic job this year is not only adding additional content but adding quality of life features that makes increases the overall experience.
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