First impressions of Dawn of Discovery (aka Anno 1404)

OK, so I started playing the Dawn of Discovery demo (aka Anno 1404) last night on my primary desktop, and WOW, what a gorgeous game. I've loved all the games in this city-builder series, 1602 A.D., 1503 A.D., & 1701 A.D., and this one looks very promising as well.

While I've only played this demo for a little while, a couple of hours, the game is very similar to it's predecessors, though their are quite a few new features and technologies. Enough old to know my way around, enough new to require some listening to the instructions.

I couldn't find any good game play footage, so I thought I'd post this footage of the game, using the camera zoomed in, and surveying my crappy little settlement. The scenery is just incredible, I feel like the governor of my own little settlement some 500 years ago :).

I'm running the demo with all graphics settings maxed out on my desktop [AMD 7750x2, Asus EN9800GT Ultimate, 4GB RAM, Vista Home Premium] and FRAPs doesn't go much below 60 FPS.

Needless-to-say, I'm buying & downloading this one from D2D tonight for sure. I won't be seen for a while :)

Grab the demo from Big Download.