Anno 117's Pax Romana's Hidden Gem Is a Stunning First-Person Perspective.
Hold on — were you aware you can play the game Anno 117 in first-person? If that’s your reaction, you feel equally astonished as my own reaction upon finding out this secret option. Excuse me while step away from my empire’s management, leave it in a capable deputy, take a wagon, and take a spin across the Roman world.
Activating the First-Person Feature
Being a city-building title, Anno 117 Pax Romana is normally experienced from a bird's-eye view. However, if you enter a secret combination — such as “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — it becomes possible to roam your domain as a common citizen. Given a comparable hidden feature appeared in Anno 1800, I looked forward to experience it in the latest installment, yet I had doubts it would operate prior to being chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (likely not meant to happen — this option tends to be prone to glitches now and then).
Discovering the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I strolled the bustling streets across my settlement and visited stalls, alehouses, blossom gardens, and shellfish gatherers — the experience was splendid to observe the fruits of my labor through a fresh lens. I noticed a variety of intricacies I might have missed from the top-down view: Front door decorations, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, fowl roaming freely, people relaxing on their verandas… Simply noticing 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
Yet, the experience extends to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I was especially delighted the moment I learned that I could not just look upon farming fields, but also access them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto earthen quarries, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building while lessons were in session, and intrude into private gardens. 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 take a peek inside any small shack as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Although I was fully prepared to observe my settlement depicted using primitive rendering, apart from certain rough movements and sometimes citizens positioned inside seating as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears considerably improved over predictions. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) are unexpectedly excellent within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You might not observe specific hair details, but you will see engravings on walls, fiery particles from lamps, brick decoloration, pupils, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and celestial bodies twinkling afar, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and feels much less frightening versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble nightmarish entities these days.
Testing and Personalization
Given the covert first-person feature doesn’t come with an instruction manual, 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 return. I then decided to hit some number buttons and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Golden robe? Red toga? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You may carry a sword and shield, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; when you press the action key, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, eliminating citizens cannot be done (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
However, I had no desire to injure my people, as they're remarkably entertaining. Only seconds after I landed the first-person view, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you feed it one more chicken, your elder will punish you.” Rightly so, Roman dad. A friendly native Celtic person then began complimenting my outstanding integration methods by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female opted to menace me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Thrill of Transportation
Just when I thought I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I experienced the pleasure of driving in Ancient Rome. Completely unexpectedly, I selected a carriage and was promptly seated on the box. Cattle, asses, even human-pulled carts; you can control each one as desired. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, although you shouldn't expect Grand Theft Auto-style mischief — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Battle Constraints
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in combat situations. Sporting my soldier fit, I ran up to the enemy amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, but was entirely disregarded. The proximate observation was nonetheless magnificent, and observing foes flee, their appendages thrashing around, felt highly gratifying, though it might have been amazing to actually hit something using my fiery projectiles.
