Anno 117 Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Stunning First-Person Mode.
Hold on — were you aware you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, you’re just as shocked as I was upon finding out this secret option. Excuse me while briefly leave my empire’s management, leave it in a trusted assistant, commandere a carriage, and take a spin around the classical city.
Unlocking the First-Person Mode
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played using a top-down camera. However, if you press a covert button sequence — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you gain the ability to walk your domain as a common citizen. Because an analogous secret was part of Anno 1800, I felt excited to try it out in Ubisoft's newest game, though I was uncertain it would operate until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature can be a little buggy at times).
Exploring the Roman Cityscape
Once I crawled out, I walked the lively avenues through my metropolis and visited stalls, alehouses, floral patches, and cockle pickers — the experience was splendid to see all my hard work through a fresh lens. I noticed a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted when viewing from overhead: Entryway ornaments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Merely examining the shape of a window sill and the paint layers on a column becomes engaging to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
More Than Just Walking
However, there's additional content to the first-person feature in Anno 117 than strolling along the road. I was especially delighted the moment I learned that besides being able to observe crop lands, but also enter them. And even though I thought the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto earthen quarries, tour an esteemed educational structure during active classes, and intrude into private gardens. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the creators planned for that functionality), but it’s entirely possible meander across a cereal plantation, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and look within any modest shelter provided the entrance is missing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
While I was completely ready to observe my settlement depicted using primitive rendering, apart from certain rough movements and the occasional civilian resting within a bench as opposed to atop a bench, first-person mode looks much better than expected. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) really have no business being this good in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You may not see separate follicular elements, but you will see writings on surfaces, fiery particles from lamps, discoloration of masonry, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, is especially atmospheric, and proves significantly less intimidating relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like sleep paralysis demons anymore.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective has no guided tutorial, I chose to test various actions, and promptly found the abilities to leap, run, and zoom in or out — the zoom function permitting me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and back. I subsequently tried pressing various digit inputs and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Golden robe? Ruby clothing? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You can wield a blade and protection, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. In case you’re wondering, eliminating citizens cannot be done (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, since they're incredibly amusing. Only seconds after I landed the immersive perspective, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that he “Can’t have a pet fox and should you provide another poultry, your elder will punish you.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A pleasant regional Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female opted to menace me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Thrill of Transportation
Just when I thought I’d discovered all there is to discover within the game's immersive perspective, I encountered the delight of riding in Ancient Rome. Totally unintentionally, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Bovines, equines, even manually drawn vehicles; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey cart, in particular, is pretty fast, though you shouldn’t imagine Grand Theft Auto-style mischief — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Battle Constraints
The only thing that disappointed me regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and attempted to attack them, yet was completely overlooked. The proximate observation was still rather spectacular, and seeing opponents retreat, their limbs waving wildly, felt highly gratifying, yet it would have been exciting to effectively strike targets with my burning arrows.
