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.
Oh I get that. That was kind of a disappointing part of ER. They established this sort of sanctuary effect, gave an example of it being revoked, and then never revisted it.
I thought it was like callback to ds1 firekeeper sorta thing, which it wasn't. Same thing with the Radahn fight and the giant desert arena. I thought it was a callback to Bed of Chaos or Seath with some hidden immortality gem to break and you had to feed phantoms to distract him until you did. Nope.
But in that way ER is truly DS2:2 with the one-off mechanics.