Anno 1701 is a strategy game for the Nintendo DS. The game is a sim type game, which relies on an isometric layout to show the country which you run and develop.

In essence you control a population of people and have to please the Monarch by completing certain missions (there are fifteen missions), defending your country, attacking other countries and keeping your population happy. Keeping your population gets harder as they become more demanding and want more facilities, but you are able to charge them higher taxes then to help build up your empire.

When building your properties, such as housing, entertainment, industry, defences, and so on, you have to work as you would in Sim City, by zoning the city in an efficient way so that supplies can be directed to the right place. Like Sim City, if you fail to please your population, your income from taxes will fall and the island will stop progressing and have no money to improve.

You can play the game in either story mode or in continuous mode. The story mode allows you to work through the game in stages giving instructions as you go, which is a very good introduction to the game. Each of these stages is a separate mission and it's fun to play through these. The continuous mode has no time limits, so you can just play this for as long as you want.

The game is used by playing the stylus, and works very well. Unfortunately the constraints of the DS and this type of game can make some of the icons quite hard to select correctly and can be a little fiddly. However strategy games can be very difficult to convert from the PC, which this game appears to been ported from, has been done competently given those constraints.

The only addition that I think would have been useful in terms of playing the game would be a facility to rotate the screen. Sometimes there are times when it would useful to see the map from another angle, or when selecting smaller items on the screen. The omission does appear to be quite an obvious one.

There is also a multi player mode, which is suitable for up to four different players. This multi player mode is well structured, so you can play through different targets. You will all need copies of the game though, you can't just use one copy as you can with some other games.

The game is rated 7+, so is suitable for most children other than the youngest children. The game is currently available for fifteen pounds on Amazon currently, but can be found cheaper second-hand on sites such as eBay. However this game is one of the harder games to find on the DS, so will still cost at least ten pounds, more than other games I've tried to find second hand.

Overall, I found this a superb game. I had thought that there would simply be too much information on the screen for it to be fun and enjoyable, but the programmers have really thought about the game and its development. There's lots of game play in this game, lots of difficult strategies to follow and I found this game to have a considerable depth. Definitely very enjoyable, five stars.