Anno 117: Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Stunning First-Person Perspective.
Wait — did you know you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? Should that be your response, your surprise matches as I was upon finding out this secret option. I must step away from my empire’s management, delegate it to a reliable subordinate, borrow a cart, and go for a joyride across the Roman world.
Unlocking the First-Person View
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played using a top-down camera. However, if you enter a secret combination — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can explore the realm as a regular inhabitant. Given a comparable hidden feature appeared in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to try it out in the new release, yet I had doubts it would work before I discovered myself stuck in a Celtic building (which probably wasn’t intended — this option can be somewhat unstable occasionally).
Roaming the Streets of Rome
After extracting myself, I strolled the busy roads across my settlement and explored stalls, alehouses, floral patches, and shellfish gatherers — the experience was splendid to see all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I detected all kinds of details I wouldn’t have spotted when viewing from overhead: Front door decorations, an ass transporting a floral pail, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Merely examining the form of a ledge and the paint layers on a column becomes engaging to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
Beyond Simple Strolling
But there’s more to Anno 117’s first-person mode aside from meandering through streets. I became extraordinarily excited when I found out that besides being able to view farming fields, but also enter them. And even though I thought structures would be inaccessible, I was able to enter mud extraction sites, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building while lessons were in session, and invade personal courtyards. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the studio planned for that functionality), but it’s entirely possible meander across a cereal plantation, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and glance into any tiny hut provided the entrance is missing.
Appearance and Mood
Even though I expected to witness my city rendered in PlayStation 1 graphics, apart from certain rough movements and sometimes citizens positioned in a bench instead of on a bench, the immersive perspective seems far superior to anticipations. The intricately designed surfaces (notably masonry elements) really have no business being this good within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You might not observe separate follicular elements, yet you will notice wall inscriptions, flames emitting from lights, discoloration of masonry, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and also a lot less scary relative to the previous game, given that the populace appears unlike nightmarish entities anymore.
Testing and Personalization
Given the covert first-person feature has no guided tutorial, I opted to try different commands, and immediately located the options to jump, sprint, and changing perspective — the last option enabling me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and back. I then experimented with some number buttons and learned I could modify my character’s appearance. Golden robe? Red toga? Azure and violet outfit? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You can wield a blade and protection, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you activate the engage command, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. In case you’re wondering, eliminating citizens cannot be done (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, since they're incredibly amusing. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you offer additional fowl, your grandmother will be furious.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. One lovely local Celt then began complimenting my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female opted to menace me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
At the moment I believed I had found everything available within the game's immersive perspective, I found the joys of joyriding in Ancient Rome. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Cattle, asses, even human-pulled carts; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey-powered transport, notably, moves quite quickly, though you shouldn’t imagine any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Battle Constraints
The only thing that disappointed me regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I charged toward adversaries amidst fighting and endeavored to damage them, only to be ignored completely. The proximate observation remained quite impressive, and seeing opponents retreat, their arms flailing about, seemed enormously rewarding, but it would’ve been cool to actually hit something with my burning arrows.
