Anno 117's Pax Romana's Top Secret Is a Breathtaking First-Person Perspective.
Hold on — were you aware it's possible to experience Anno 117: Pax Romana using a first-person camera? If you're thinking that, your surprise matches compared to my initial response upon finding out this concealed mode. Allow me to briefly leave my empire’s management, delegate it to a trusted assistant, take a wagon, and take a spin around the classical city.
How to Access the First-Person View
In its role as a city-builder, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates from an overhead perspective. Yet, when you enter a secret combination — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you can explore your domain as a common citizen. Given a comparable hidden feature was part of the previous Anno title, I was eager to experience it in Ubisoft's newest game, but I wasn’t sure it would function until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this mode tends to be prone to glitches now and then).
Exploring the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I walked the bustling streets of my city and explored markets, breweries, flower fields, and seafood collectors — the experience was splendid to witness my diligent efforts through a fresh lens. I noticed a variety of intricacies I might have missed when viewing from overhead: Front door decorations, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, chickens running loose, people relaxing on their verandas… Merely examining the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar becomes engaging to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Beyond Simple Strolling
But there’s more to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I became extraordinarily excited when I found out that not only could I look upon crop lands, but also access them. And despite my expectation interiors would be restricted, I was able to enter mud extraction sites, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building as teaching was underway, and invade personal courtyards. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the developers have the budget for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut when there's no doorway obstructing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Even though I expected to observe my settlement depicted with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and the occasional civilian resting within a bench rather than on a bench, the immersive perspective seems far superior to anticipations. The intricately designed surfaces (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good for a title that remains primarily overhead. You might not observe specific hair details, but you will see writings on surfaces, flames emitting from lights, brick decoloration, eye details, and pine tree leaves. The night, featuring dancing flames and stars shining in the distance, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and also a lot less scary compared to Anno 1800, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble terrifying apparitions these days.
Experimentation and Customization
Given the covert first-person feature doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and quickly discovered the functions for jumping, dashing, and changing perspective — the zoom function permitting me to change from first-person to third-person mode and return. I subsequently tried pressing certain numeric keys and found I could alter my avatar's look. Amber garment? Ruby clothing? Azure and violet outfit? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; if you hit the interaction button, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. Should you be curious, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
Comedy and Population Encounters
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, since they're incredibly amusing. Moments after I entered first-person mode, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you offer additional fowl, your gran will have your head.” Rightly so, Roman dad. A pleasant regional Celt then began complimenting my excellent cross-cultural strategies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” whereas an irritable elderly woman decided to threaten me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just when I thought I uncovered all possible content in the title's first-person feature, I encountered the delight of riding through classical settlements. Totally unintentionally, I interacted with a cart and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Bovines, equines, even people-powered transports; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey cart, in particular, travels rather rapidly, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Fighting Restrictions
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in any fighting. Wearing my military outfit, I ran up to the enemy in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, only to be ignored completely. The front-row seat remained quite impressive, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, felt highly gratifying, yet it would have been exciting to actually hit something using my fiery projectiles.
