Cannot play the game because Ubi connect wants me to create an account. Ubi Connect account creation is not working so I cant create an account after two hours. Ubisoft has really innovated and broken the mold with this title because for the first time ever, I have come to regret buying a game before I have even had a chance to play it.

I dont want to live in a future where every big studio that very well could afford paying artists instead chooses to steal from artists by using AI generated images. AI tools are bad for the environment, bad for the job market, on top of that the images look awful, genuinely an eyesore in a otherwise beautiful game. It also feels morally hollow, you have artists, you employ artists, and yet you couldn't let humans make the art, you had to use AI tools to cut down on development time, and then you ask the same price tag as a game fully made by humans with human art? Disgraceful. I want to love this game, I want to love Anno, but my god are you taking a massive dump on the franchise with the use of AI. How much time did this AI slop actually save you guys, a week? a month? And now everyone who dislikes AI dislikes this game for it, was that worth it? I dont think so personally. You could have easily shipped with some less loading screen images, or even less polished loading screen images. I am sad for all the artists or freelance artists that could have contributed to this beautiful game that were cut thanks to greedy CEOs. Using AI is clearly positioning yourself against artists and that sucks. I hope you make better choices in the future. I will edit my review should you remove the AI content.

Ubisoft connect causing issues on game launch, why do we need Ubisoft connect in 2025?!? We should be able to download and play the game on Steam without needing third party applications which constantly cause issues.

Anno is fine. The core gameplay loop works just like it always has and the numbers go up. Building things diagonal is a nice little quirk and the research tree a good idea. If it weren't for the gripes I do have with it, it would be a fantastic time waster and I would be recommending it to people. But my beef is the following: - main story line cut scenes miss characters (something that can be easily reached within half a day, playing blind) and reminders keep popping over something that doesn't break the game (didn't set a deity for one second, please stop blasting my screen with the reminders. I know. For the love of all that is holy, allow me to fail at my game when I dismiss this dialogue box for the third damned time.) - character textures look like from the 2000s (derogative). I've played 1800, I know what you used to be capable of. This game takes up space in the triple digits on my machine, you should provide proper textures. If 17 months development isn't enough, you should consider giving your team more time and plan accordingly. It's not like this is your first game. I know it's on me to trust a multi-million dollar company to have their early main quest line halfway polished at release (or plan a release that allows for it). I'm still going to bring it up, because it still isn't correct. - the story is meh so far and the voice acting...well, at this point I'm just hoping that they're ACTUAL people because the other problem, and most egregious of them all:

The fucking AI "art"!

What is(n't) wrong with you, Ubisoft? You ask us to pay you this much for clanker slop and then you don't even have the decency to mention it until you are caught? This shit is trained on millions of stolen artworks and someone as big as you should not be thinking twice to employ actual artistic talent and provide them with the time and means to be creative for you. What am I shelling my my life-time-converted-to-coin out for if it isn't to compensate my fellow man for their craft and effort to create an immersive experience for me? If I'd known that, I wouldn't have bought it and unfortunately I didn't realise until I was over the time limit to request a refund or I would have. I sure won't be buying another one like this, no matter how much fun the concept of the game is. You have so much money and you can't even invest a laughable fraction to pay an actual person. Maybe replace management with AI for a change. Pretty sure it can "come up" with the same corporate thinking and you'd save their salary.

First things first. The game is beautiful, fun, engaging and good all around. The scenario is *chef's kiss. The gameplay itself doesn't differ much from 1800, which is a good thing. The management part, the trading part, finding and using specialists (items), planning your cities and industry paths is as fun as always in the series, but nothing brand new tbh (besides the military). The Roman architecture is beautiful to look at, watching the animations and all the details in your growing cities in different regions is stunning. So why the negative review? I am pretty disappointed in the usage of AI here. Knowing the Anno series for as long as it exists, knowing the small little details everywhere is what made the Anno series always special, this is actually just sad. Seeing the loading screen "art" and hearing the voice lines immediately felt off. Now it’s confirmed and all we got is the most common excuse of "this was a placeholder" *insert South Park we're sorry meme* Considering the huge success they had with Anno 1800 and the cash they generated, plus them getting funded by the German government with a good amount of money, seeing them use AI on "art" for ingame notifications or loading screens and voice lines to cut costs and not hire artists is inexcusable and unacceptable, in my opinion at least. Yes, AI is here to stay. Yes, of course, use your AI tools in development to make your life easier coding or whatever. Or find a new, creative, useful way to implement AI in your game. But when AI replaces pure creative work out of laziness and cutting costs, then gets tagged on the Steam Store with an AI warning, following a statement that AI's "final product reflects our team’s craft and creative vision", I really question the new creative vision and path the devs are going for. Btw. the warning tag came a few days before release, for transparency reasons of course. I now paid for it and will play it, but if the devs don't fix this issue the negative review stays and I won't do what I did for Anno 1800: Be a good boy and buy every DLC and cosmetic pack for the love of the game plus buy the gold edition of the next game of the series on release day. If the devs don't love their game enough to pay artists, why should I?

Pretty heartbroken to discover AI generated images used in this game. The Anno games have always had such inspiring splash art that really set a great tone for the setting. Seeing low effort slop used in its place was disappointing.

Imagine pre-ordering a game for full price and being stiff-armed out of content through twitch drops (one of which happened a month ago). On top of that, they are also shoving a Ubisoft+ subscription down your throat to gain further exclusive content. The game is good overall, but this FOMO-content model is crap. I'd much rather have everything available to me through DLCs that I can pick up on my own, rather than being punished for not being chronically online. I'm hoping they make all content available like they did with Anno 1800.

This game is increasing the number of times i think about the Roman Empire on a weekly basis.

I just finished the campaign and wow, what a complete letdown. The game is right in the middle of the story and just... ends, opening up with the sandbox mode with no conclusion, no climactic ending and no notification that the campaign story is over. I kept wondering why my quest log was empty and I had to lookup online that the story content just stops with no conclusion; no epic final confrontation; nothing.

If you use AI art to save money, the game shouldn’t be full price. If you want to charge full price, pay real artists.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Anno117will keep a high review score as more time passes. The first few hours and initial supply chains are fun and satisfying, but the game drops off hard past that once you realize it’s all window dressing around a bare-bones, AI-generated shell of its predecessor. I’m a longtime Anno fan since 1404, i have a minor in Roman History (just for fun, not for marketability), and I even made my own custom Risk board game based in the Roman Empire in the year 117, coincidentally enough. So you can imagine that i was SOOO excited for Anno 117. However, it feels altogether stripped bare of the features, complexity, and secondary systems that made Anno 1800 such a masterpiece. There are no Museums or zoos for collecting rare items and beautifying your cities, no Expeditions for fun little story beats (some people didn’t care for these but I LOVED THEM and was terribly disappointed they left them out of 117), no Electricity (obviously) or comparable system that makes you rethink your layout, a severely hamstringed Specialists system, a clunky and unintuitive console-friendly UI, and an infuriating combination of DRM and launchers — though i give that last one a pass since 1800 has the same problem. In exchange for those losses you get ground military units and diagonal roads that are barely usable. It feels to me like 117 was designed to have as pretty of a facade as possible, but relegated the core systems and endgame to the background while entirely abandoned the art and story and humanity that made 1800 so endearing and “comfy”. For example, the AI loading screens and art. In 1800, loading screens showed gorgeous concept art of slice-of-life snaps within the world. These were a joy to see between screens because they showed the dedication and multi-discipline effort that went into making the game. In 1800 you could really feel how these drawings, the elegant UI, the solid underlying gameplay, the orchestral soundtrack, and the well-written short-story-esque Expeditions came together as a fusion of all these forms of artistry to make a product that truly felt like a piece of art in and of itself. In 117 these drawings are replaced by AI-generated hodgepodges of vaguely Roman stuff only tangentially relevant to the gameplay and setting. There are no expeditions, and the story writing that is there in the campaign reads like it was written by an early version of ChatGPT. Importantly, the Steam page disclaimer about the existence of this AI was added only days before its release, which is seriously scummy imo. Ultimately I’m a little bit heartbroken, as silly as that sounds. I had utmost faith after 1800 and it’s DLC in this team, even preordering the gold edition and taking off the day to play — something I NEVER do (for good reason, clearly). But after 1hr50m of game time i decided to refund Anno 117; I had been more than happy to support the team that brought me so many hours of joy in Anno 1800, but it’s clear to me now that those artists and writers have been replaced by auto-generated AI slop. And I’ve no interest in paying $60-$90 for AI.

I am a fan of the ANNO series, ANNO 1404 is associated with my childhood and ANNO 1800 is the best version I have ever played. I hope ANNO 117 will bring me a lot of fun but I am really disappointed. The gameplay is much more boring with ANNO 1800, the campaign is extremely bad, the story seems to be written by AI, I don't even know if I have completed the story, compared to ANNO 1404 this is too bad. The image detail is far behind ANNO 1800, feels like it was created by AI. The music is extremely bad, I am playing a game with a ROMAN theme but it is like the renaissance, I only hear the boring Violin. P/S: I use google Translate to write a review. This is the first time I have to review a game because it is so bad.

Woke crap, not dealing with it anymore. Insta refund, you want to re-write history with BS leave me out of it. Obvious Developer team on here trying to discredit reviews. The seethers gonna seethe

Constant multiplayer connection errors. Can't even re-invite players, lol. 46 days after the release and I am still getting constant multiplayer connection errors.

outside of every male character being a feminine twink or gay its actually pretty good.

As you can see from some reviews some people will just cry that a game is a copy of a game that came before it. Yes Anno is still Anno...obviously. Somehow this surprises people. It's also about a 20 second wait for the Ubi launcher the first time you launch the game so these complaints not recommending the game are a bit nonsensical to me. Heres a list of good changes imo. There's a surprising amount -This is a step up graphically. Anno 1800 looked great, this just adds a bit more weather and atmosphere. The building models and maps are more detailed but things like character models are a significant upgrade. -Performance has mostly been a locked 60 with high/very high, raytraced shadows, and DLSS on balanced/quality. I run a 4080 with a R7 9700x and 32gb DDR5 @ stock speeds. I have a 35 inch 3440x1440p monitor so I was very happy with this. When I turned raytracing off and unlocked the frame rate I was getting 100fps in my small town. There was way too much screen tearing without it locked though so I went back. -They introduce the game mechanics quite a bit better this time around. New players will have an easier time with this. Small things like game tips popping up in a silent visible notification on the top left of the screen instead of most games where tutorial tips are literally forced on you and often pause the game. This allows some learning at your own pace if you're new. -This has a much more fleshed out combat and military system which was needed. Actual ground combat was a welcome surprise. I'm excited to be able to play a military RTS, city builder, and logistics simulator all in one game. There's actual varied mechanics to the individual ships and units which is cool to see. - You can now build more unique cities. The ability to build curved roads and rotate buildings at a 45 degree angle adds quite a bit to the variety surprisingly. - I didn't think I would care for yet another historical setting but thay manage to make their take on the roman era interesting. I do hope the next title is something completely different though. I'm salavating at the idea of a 1950's Soviet/US era or something that's a fresh take for the series. -This launched with more standalone items compared to 1800 if I'm remembering correctly. Decently cool statues and ornaments. -This developer is great with UI and this game improved on the already good UI in the previous game -Added a religion mechanic with varied interesting options -The story is halfway intriguing so far, which was not expected. I saw some negative reviews that called it "woke" which is just hysterical/sad to me. -They've kept some quality of life stuff introduced as dlc in the previous game. -Added a research progression tree with three main varied subcategories that will allow rushing certain builds/playstyles which gives you a much more varied playthrough if you want to start fresh. This tree impressed me because it determines pretty impactful changes that can alter a playthrough. -They added a brush tool that allows you to brush over buildings to change the look of them which adds to the city building element even more. Overall, I think this is in an excellent spot. It adds meaningful and welcome changes to the formula without removing core elements that make Anno the series it is. They're doing a lot with this game and I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do with it in the coming years.

The use of AI slop for the artwork is really disappointing from a series that's always had such beautiful art. There are so many low quality and very obviously AI generated images used without any touching up at all. I don't mind the use of AI as a creative tool, but it should never be the finished output in a $90 game. Hire real artists.

Edit: Update 1.3 comes tomorrow and promises to substitute the "placeholder" AI images. I'll wait until then to possibly change my stance on the review. Follow up: The promise, as it often is, was broken. The literal image that sparked the controversy is still there in the loading screens. AFAIK nothing was changed. The placeholder was the direct prompt result, not the image reworked to hide the fact it's genAI. Utterly horrible customer practices. While I did enjoy what I've played of the game, the usage of AI generated images is inexcusable and a hard no for me in further suggesting the game. Had I known, I would've avoided this purchase, but the AI disclosure was not present when I originally wishlisted the game a month or so ago. The fact that this was the case, added with the clear examples showcased by the community on the forums of AI generated images, reworked to look like they were produced by an artist, reveals an intent to purposely hide this fact, as it is evidently known the image produced is not of an acceptable quality and that leaving it as a final result could spark a negative response from at least some possible customers. As a customer I feel misled and cheated in purchasing a product that does not align with my personal beliefs and directly hurts the work of artists I know and respect in favour of profit and cheap imitation. As I have passed the Steam gameplay time limit to request a refund and because I otherwise genuinely enjoy the game, I choose to still play the title, but I will not further purchase products for this game, such as the announced DLCs, or from this developer until a statement and a change is reflected that guarantees the quality we are entitled in as paying customers.

Et Tu, Ubisoft? Another Woke Wreck in the Rubble of Rome. Avoid This Buggy, Bare Bones Blunder Oh, Anno 117: Pax Romana, where do I even start? You promised me the glory of the Roman Empire, a sprawling city builder where I could channel my inner Trajan and forge an eternal legacy of aqueducts, legions, and olive oil empires. Instead, what did I get? A half baked toga party crashed by modern politics, technical tantrums, and enough empty promises to make Caligula blush. I have sunk 20 hours into this mess, mostly watching my GPU sweat like a gladiator in the Colosseum, and I am here to warn you: skip this one unless you enjoy paying premium denarii for a game that is shallower than the Tiber after a drought. Ubisoft, you have done it again, turning what could have been a triumph into a tragic comedy of errors. Let us unpack this imperial disaster, shall we? Picture this: a game that struts in with all the pomp of a triumphal parade, only to trip over its own sandals and face plant into mediocrity. It is not just disappointing. It is a betrayal of history, hardware, and honest gameplay. The Woke Woes: History Hijacked for Hashtags Gods above, the wokeness is everywhere, like graffiti on the Forum walls screaming "Diversity or Die!" They shoehorn in female blacksmiths hammering away like it is no big deal, but newsflash: in 117 AD, women were not swinging 10kg mallets in forges hotter than Vulcan's forge. They were running textile shops or influencing from the shadows, not pretending to be Xena the Warrior Princess in a historically male gig. And do not get me started on the "diverse" North Africans portrayed as sub Saharan elites. Actual history says they were Mediterranean Berbers and Punics, olive skinned folks akin to Italians, not some anachronistic nod to modern quotas. No Black emperors? Septimius Severus was Punic Italian, not Wakandan royalty. No direct Chinese contacts? Yet here is Ubisoft tossing in Asian envoys like it is a Silk Road swap meet. Female rulers calling the shots? Ha! In Trajan's era, women had zilch official power. No legions, no votes, just sneaky family politicking. This is not artistic license. It is ideological fanfic, courtesy of Ubisoft's "Project Rise" DEI mandates and those sweet German/EU subsidies that demand you cram in equity checkboxes or lose funding. It is like they are saying, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, but only if Caesar identifies as non binary and leads a pride parade through the Senate." Witty? More like woke washing history to appease BlackRock's ESG scores, insulting both ancient Romans and us players who want immersion, not a lecture. Tyrants rewrite history, Ubisoft. Congratulations on joining the club. And let us not forget the slave mechanics, oversimplified to the point of parody, as if Ubisoft feared offending the gods of sensitivity by making anything too gritty or real. It all feels like a corporate checklist, not a love letter to antiquity. If history is a banquet, this game serves up fast food versions of the classics, supersized with agenda and skimpy on substance. Performance Pitfalls: A Chariot Race to the Crash Site But hey, maybe the gameplay saves it? Nope, it is a buggy chariot race straight off a cliff. Performance is atrocious. My RTX 4080 was cooking like it was auditioning for a Pompeii reenactment, even after turning off ray tracing, which defaults to max, because why not fry your rig? Crashes galore: open the build menu? Boom, error code exile. Waves in the water? They reveal ugly terrain glitches like the gods forgot to render the sea properly. Frame drops on a 4090/i9 setup? Loading times longer than a Senate filibuster? Freezes, not responding, and alt F4 becoming my most used hotkey? Ubisoft's support pages are full of "report your bug" pleas, but fixes are scarcer than honest politicians in Rome. And this is launch day stuff. The early access demo was trashed for the same reasons. It is like they optimized for a wax tablet, not a modern PC. Ubisoft, your engine has more holes than Swiss cheese in a legionary's rations. I have seen better stability in a house of cards during an earthquake. Add in the AMD GPU woes from the beta, where menus crash harder than the Roman economy under inflation, and you have a recipe for rage quits. Why ship something this unpolished? It screams rushed development, probably to hit those quarterly targets while the stock tanks. Players deserve better than this digital dumpster fire. Content Catastrophe: Shallow as a Dried Up Aqueduct Then there is the lack of content, which hits like a barbarian sack of Rome. Compared to Anno 1800's depth? This is a kiddie pool. No Docklands style hubs, no collection buildings, devs straight up said "no plans," and cross regional trade is so optional it makes the game feel like easy mode for toddlers. Regions are not equal. Some are fleshed out, others barren as the Sahara. The campaign is a snooze: build, expand, repeat, with diplomacy and warfare tacked on like afterthoughts. It is gorgeous, sure. Diagonal roads make towns feel natural, islands alive. But it is all surface shine hiding shallow mechanics. You will blitz through tiers, then realize it is DLC bait city. Needs polish? More like a full expansion pack to not feel like a step backward. Replayability? Only if you enjoy restarting from scratch because the demo's design actively deters you. It is like Ubisoft shipped half a game, expecting us to pay for the rest later. Where is the meaty logistics, the intricate supply chains that made predecessors addictive? Here, it is streamlined to boredom, with naval systems that promise epic seas but deliver puddle skirmishes. And the narrative? Thin as papyrus, barely scratching the surface of Roman intrigue. If Anno 1800 was a feast, this is scraps from the table, leaving you hungry for more. But more costs extra, naturally. Ubisoft's Undoing: An Empire in Freefall And let us not forget the bigger picture: Ubisoft's epic fail parade. Their stock has plummeted 85% since 2021, nearing all time lows after flops like Assassin's Creed Shadows, delayed amid "woke" backlash. Feudal Japan with DEI twists? Yikes. Cancelled games? Oh boy: that post Civil War Assassin's Creed "Project Scarlet" axed because it might "offend the KKK." You cannot make this up. Corporate cowardice at its finest. Beyond Good & Evil 2? Vaporware. XDefiant? Shuttered with 143 layoffs. Skull & Bones? Delayed to death, launched DOA. High budgets, low sales, and a "wild ride mostly downhill" per analysts. Yves Guillemot calls Shadows' controversy a "wake up call," but here we are with Anno 117 repeating the sins. Bowing to politics, ignoring players, and churning out unoptimized messes. Market shares collapsed, bookings slashed from $2.4B to $2.2B for 2025. Ubisoft is dying, folks, and this game is just another nail in the coffin. They are like Nero fiddling while their empire burns, except Nero at least had better PR. How many more franchises will they butcher before shareholders pull the plug? It is a tragedy worthy of Sophocles, but with microtransactions instead of catharsis. In the end, Anno 117 is not Pax Romana. It is Pax Ridicula, a ridiculous peace where history bends the knee to agendas, tech fails spectacularly, and content starves like plebs in a famine. If you want Rome done right, replay Anno 1800 or boot up Civilization. Ubisoft, vade retro. Go back and fix your mess. 2/10, and that is generous for the pretty pixels. Save your sesterces, legionaries. This one is not worth the march. also, a small note, mods actively ban anyone one the forums discussing this topic but the far left gets to say and do whatever they want without punishment.

Initial thoughts are this game is exactly what most Anno fans will want, same gameplay as before but with tones of new and additional features that still keep it feeling fresh.

- they cut the campaign's 3rd act and beyond to get this game out before the holidays. it ends awkwardly & suddenly despite earlier laying out potential plot lines, this confused players. is the story truly over or will it continue in a patch? not really sure - if youre used to the depth of Anno 1800 and its production chains / residential tiers, diving into this game feels limiting, it's kinda barebones right now, this will no doubt change in the future, but the feeling of less depth is still there, they could've given us a bit more with the base game -there are a few criticisms with the interface such as missing bits of info that are tucked away in the statistics screen but could've been more openly displayed. i shouldn't have to use the copy/eyedropper tool to bring up icons of the same building type. sometimes you dont get alerts for important events like fires, you only come to realize there was a fire when they tell you that ruins are ready to be rebuilt. anno 1800's quest tracker is better. anno 1800's diplomacy screen is better. - performance suffers compared to Anno 1800 because they've added raytracing and perhaps not enough optimization. with my hardware (9800X3D, 5080) i expect the default top-down view to stay at refresh rate fps (120), sometimes it does not, you can use upscaling to improve this but it will add ghosting & artifacts. it does look prettier than Anno 1800. -the land combat is an improvement over Anno 1404's land combat which forced you to deploy each unit into a 'camp' and manage individual radiuses. in this game you just right click attack. units & ships require so much workforce however so you have to build a lot to have a big military -the tech tree is a nice addition to the series, it adds a feeling of progression, its another resource to manage called 'knowledge' i will change this review when this game transforms into the fully-fledged Anno it should've been. it was released too soon

AI Slop really ruins the game for me. They even changed the AI disclaimer after they got caught using AI images ingame. Expected more from Anno devs. The end of the campagne comes way too sudden, plot points build up in act 1 are just dropped completely. The statistics screen, which is arguably one of the most important things, is clunky and buggy, completely unacceptable. Sound effects like coughing and fire don't stop after the issue is dealt with, so I hear constant fires and coughing in my cities until I restart the game. And don't forget you need to be online or you won't have access to anything you unlocked in the Hall Of Fame, which includes half of the gods and several specialists. This game is not worth its price, even if you don't mind the use of AI.

Seems like a pretty good Anno game, however the AI artwork, especially for an established, profitable series from a studio and publisher of this size is pretty inexcusable. Sloppy work that makes it look cheap and nasty, baffling decision - how hard would it be to commission an actual artist to make some still images? Can't in good conscience recommend anyone else purchase this based on this fact alone, would be willing to consider changing that if they patch this stuff out.

The forced DEI ruins it.

Those complaining about Ubi-Connect 3rd party launcher, I get it, I don't like additional layers of effort to just play a game, I hate it in fact, but, the game is great, runs great, it's a very streamlined approach, but not so overly simple that it takes the strategy out of the game. Input and UI work great whether I use a controller on the big screen (I love being able to kickback with a controller), or mouse and keyboard. I am enjoying what little I've played and had to throw my 2 cents in when I saw the review bombing for Ubisofts stupid launcher...look, Ubi you really need to just step out of the way and let people play through their storefront or platform of choice. If we wanted to play through the Ubi app, we would have purchased the game through the Ubi app. We didn't, that should be enough of a clue to ditch the additional aggravation of having to launch a game, that launches your launcher, that then launches the Game! The game is good, so if you can overlook the annoyance you will enjoy once you get there.