Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Breathtaking First-Person View.
Wait — did you know you can play Anno 117 Pax Romana in first-person? Should that be your response, your surprise matches as I was upon finding out this secret option. Allow me to briefly leave managing my empire, entrust it to a capable deputy, take a wagon, and take a spin across the Roman world.
Activating the First-Person View
As a city-building game, Anno 117 Pax Romana is normally experienced from an overhead perspective. However, if you enter a secret combination — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can explore the realm as a regular inhabitant. Because an analogous secret was part of Anno 1800, I felt excited to experience it in Ubisoft's newest game, but I wasn’t sure it would operate before I discovered myself submerged in a structural glitch (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature can be a little buggy at times).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
Upon freeing myself, I walked the busy roads through my metropolis and explored shops, taverns, floral patches, and seafood collectors — the experience was splendid to witness all my hard work through a fresh lens. I noticed a variety of intricacies I might have missed when viewing from overhead: Doorway embellishments, an ass transporting a floral pail, poultry scattering about, people relaxing on their verandas… Even just observing the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar proves fascinating for those not residing in classical times.
Further Than Mere Wandering
However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that besides being able to view farming fields, but also enter them. And although I’d assumed interiors would be restricted, I could walk onto mud extraction sites, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building as teaching was underway, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the creators allocated resources for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, observe people digging and transporting bags, and take a peek inside any small shack provided the entrance is missing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented using primitive rendering, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned inside seating instead of on a bench, first-person mode looks far superior to anticipations. The highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good for a title that remains primarily overhead. You may not see specific hair details, yet you will notice engravings on walls, fiery particles from lamps, fading on bricks, pupils, and conifer needles. Evening, with glowing light sources and distant stellar illumination, is especially atmospheric, and feels much less frightening relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like nightmarish entities now.
Experimentation and Customization
Given the covert first-person feature doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and immediately located the functions for jumping, dashing, and adjusting the view — with the latter allowing me to switch between first and third-person views and return. I then experimented with various digit inputs and found I could alter my representative's visual design. Yellow toga? Ruby clothing? Azure and violet outfit? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; 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).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, since they're incredibly amusing. Shortly after I activated the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you offer additional fowl, your elder will punish you.” Understandable stance, father character. One lovely local Celt then proceeded to praise my outstanding integration methods by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” while some cranky old lady decided to threaten me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just when I thought I had found everything available within the game's immersive perspective, I encountered the delight of riding 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 can drive them all at your leisure. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, although you shouldn't expect any GTA-like shenanigans — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Combat Limitations
The sole aspect that let me down regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in any fighting. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries during active combat and endeavored to damage them, yet was completely overlooked. The close-up view was still rather spectacular, and observing foes flee, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to successfully impact objects using my fiery projectiles.
