I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
I also stopped playing shortly after Jackal was released, and prior to quitting I have probably 600 hours in-game. I played from beta day 1 until then. Used to play with Macie Jay in Teamspeak. I actually started playing it again last year during Siege X and although the game is in a pretty good state, modern players just run-and-gun like TDM instead of reinforcing and using tactics and it just isn’t the same