1503 A.D.: The New World (2002) - MobyGames (original) (raw)

Tetris Forever

Tetris Forever

aka:Anno 1503,Anno 1503: De Nieuwe Wereld,Anno 1503: El Nuevo Mundo,Anno 1503: Il Nuovo Mondo,Anno 1503: Le Nouveau Monde,Anno 1503: Nowy Swiat,Anno 1503: The New World

Moby ID: 7613

Moby Score

7.7

#4,669 of 25.6K

Critics

78%(41)

Players

(25)

Review Ranking

Collected By

85 players

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Description official descriptions

1503 A.D.: The New World is, like its predecessor, a 2D-strategy game where the player colonizes a new world. The first important part is the constructing of several buildings which are used for different means, e.g. residences or plant facilities. There he needs to ensure a logical arrangement to reach short production cycles and the population's satisfaction. With preceding time there demands grow which force the player to expand and build more respectively more effective buildings.

As the game knows 46 resources it is unlikely that the player finds all on one island. This also results in the need of expansion which may be against the interests of the up to three AI opponents or one of the nine neutral factions. These problems can be resolved with trading or military action. The latter is still a small part of the gameplay but is noticeable more complex than in 1602 A.D., now the player has a few formation and behaviour orders to his disposal and the 14 military units gain experience. Other innovations are a research function where the player works on upgrades, four new climates and more production cycles.

Besides the free playing mode with randomly generated islands the game also features ten scenarios and, also new, a campaign with twelve missions.

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Credits (Windows version)

205 People (188 developers, 17 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 41 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5(based on 25 ratings with 5 reviews)

A great Strategy game to play, superbly detailed!

The Good
This game is great and I still play it today! The graphics and music are wonderful. It causes the player to think about resources and finances and the needs of the people, while creating structure and allocating materials. A variety of military weapons and options. The games AI is done very well as the computer generally faces you off against anywhere from 2 to 5 other settlements. I wish I could find more games like this one! Something like this should be done in the area of being the first to settle the United States or something. Games such as these could be made for settling the planets even!

The Bad
I wish the game was larger now, since I have been playing it for years! I'd like to see a MMOPG like this!

The Bottom Line
Take your ship and sail it to an island of your choice, each one offers a variety of minerals to mine and vegetation to grow and harvest. Create a village and supply your people with what they desire from foods, supplies, doctors, tools,etc.,and as they grow and learn through education, the more people move there until the village expands into a town, city, etc. Trade with the AI's other players or go to war with them. Watch out for Pirate ships as well! Grow through trade or conquer the entire map. Use diplomacy or cannons. Move your armies from island to island using your Navy to bring them ashore. Use the armies or Navy cannons to destroy cannon towers, building and the enemy soldiers. Build castles and construct the building which create your weapons. Have cattle, grain, tobacco, sugar cane and more farms. Highly detailed and great fun!

Windows · by hoker shotor (1) · 2008

Great game - but not as addictive and fun than Anno 1602

The Good
The game has nice and detailed graphics, several different production line, it has more of everything that made Anno 1602 so addictive. You could wait hours doing nothing and keep looking your town grow bigger and greater.

The Bad
- Even as it tried to be better than its predecessor it failed as they changed some mechanics of the first part. Money is earned via shops and not via taxes any more. This makes the game really hard in the beginning.
- In addition are the AI is something not really worth mentioning as the enemy only builds on a little island and not really disturbing you any more.
- After 1 1/2 year the multiplayer part was finally cancelled.

The Bottom Line
Fun manager game settled in the time of Christoph Columbus. It is nice to see your city grow. If you know and liked Anno 1602 you will most likely have fun with this one too.

Windows · by Wylaryzel (173) · 2004

It’s complicated, aggravating, and boring, without a whole lot to offset that.

The Good
Well, the music's nice and some parts of the game seem interesting. It's got an interesting starting cut scene, and interesting little interludes between missions. Wolves hunt deer, even though the deer just sort of stand there while they're doing it, which is a nice touch. Also, animals seem to have some sort of lifecycle, and suddenly drop dead at random times.

The Bad
It's extremely complicated, but terrible at explaining that complication. It has a bare-bones tutorial and an even smaller manual that comes with the game. Then it's got an in-game "help" section that just gives a line or two about the topic, like "Gold coins are the currency used in 1503 A.D. Mining gold doesn't give you gold currency". How that's supposed to help, I really don't know. But I do know how aggravating the game is. In my first two tries at the game, I ran out of Tools before getting the necessary level and buildings to get more tools, and with no one to Trade with (you're supposed to trade with someone, but you end up just giving them Salt in return for nothing), I got caught in a catch-22, unable to continue with neither Tools nor the means to make Tools, and had to restart. On the third try I finally got Tool-making buildings, and things were looking up. Then I ran out of money. I loaded a game just after I started making Tools, but for the life of me, just couldn't stop my money from slowly trickling down to nothing. Not even shutting-down, then destroying all non-essential buildings requiring upkeep money stopped the downward flow of money. Worst part is, I didn't really know what to do. There's no Money Flow screen, like you might have in Civilization or Age of Wonders that shows what's draining money and where you're getting money from, and the tutorial, manual, and in-game help doesn't even mention money beyond simply that Gold Coins are the in-game money, so I really didn't know what to do. And all this is just on the first level! I'd hate to think what later levels might be like.

On top of that's the extreme nonsense of the game. You supposedly sailed to the Caribbean. You're in this area with a bunch of islands. But for some reason, it's snowing on the northern islands and it’s desert on the bottom ones. Near the bottom are Africans, not slave Africans but wild ones, and most boggling of all, to the east of your first colony is a colony of Mongols. And not just Native Americans mistakenly referred to as Mongols. I'm talking the steel-using horseback-riding Chinese-killing juggernauts that forged the largest empire in the world while Europe was in the High Middle Ages, and then disintegrated about 2 centuries before the game takes place. What the bloody heck are Mongols doing in The New World? And why are they allowed to take my Salt and give nothing back?

Ship cannons are unrealistic, the cannonball slowly exiting the cannon well after the cannon's fired. Increased number of cannons on ships simply decreases the delay time until your next shot, instead of being able to fire all the cannons on one side of your ship at once. To top that off, the cannonballs explode when they hit the other ship. Cannonballs of that time period were all solid shot cannonballs, not shells, and designed to just splinter and punch holes in the enemy ships. Then there are other little things, like the deer and wolves walking around your town like they own the place. Plus the time scale is really out-of-joint. During a mission supposed to take a few weeks, maybe a year at maximum, you see the lifecycle of trees, crops, and animals cycle over and over. By the middle of the first level, you should have died of old age, which would save you some aggravation anyway.

The music, while very good, is sporadic. It sort of just starts up and stops willy-nilly, even when you’re just looking around your town. It’s even worse when you get near another settlement, and music keeps switching between the music of the natives and your regular music. Plus, though it looks like there’s a good selection of music, the game is so long and slow it soon gets repetitive. I’ve probably already heard the Scarborough Fair song a dozen times, and I just started playing last week.

Finally, in the start cut scene, someone gets splashed by water, but it looks like someone dumped a bucket of mineral oil all over their head. Such is the state of this game's starting 3D animation.

The Bottom Line
It’s very overrated game, not worth the $10 you'll need to buy it. It's got a few nice things that at least whet your appetite for a pretty cool game early on. Then you realize how needlessly complicated and nonsensical the game is, not to mention its slow pace. After spending 10 minutes waiting to get enough wood, bricks, and tools to build what you want, building it, then realizing your money's going down now because of the upkeep, and there's no way to speed up or slow down the game, you start to realize how boring the game is. Nothing happens very fast, and nothing gives you a sense of accomplishment enough to offset the slow pace and the terrible aggravation this game gives you. If you were in a waiting room, and had to choose between playing this game and reading a Sears catalog, I'd suggest the Sears catalog. At least that would be simpler, more exciting, and more entertaining than this game.

Windows · by kvn8907 (173) · 2012

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Multiplayer

When Anno 1503 was released, there was no multiplayer-mode included - officially... In fact, they placed a file in their /data directory which enables it. The mode was not finished. It lacked a lot of features, balancing and so on. But they wanted to get some feedback from their fans without starting an official beta test. So they hoped a small group of people found out and offered feedback.

Source Code

The Anno 1503 source code is about 400,000 lines long - almost everything coded by just two coders. And the graphician, Ulli Koller, has studied architecture - thus the very detailed buildings.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Felix Knoke.

Additional contributors: Corn Popper, JRK, lobo rojo, Sciere, jaXen, Aubustou, Crawly, rrrr hhjjh, Patrick Bregger, Evolyzer, 一旁冷笑, Zhuzha.

Game added October 28, 2002. Last modified October 31, 2024.