Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Stunning First-Person View.
Wait — did you know you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana in first-person? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as my own reaction when I discovered this secret option. Allow me to briefly leave my empire’s management, leave it in a reliable subordinate, commandere a carriage, and take a spin across the Roman world.
Activating the First-Person View
As a city-building game, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates using a top-down camera. But, should you press a covert button sequence — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — it becomes possible to roam your domain as a common citizen. Since a similar easter egg appeared in Anno 1800, I felt excited to test 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 feature can be somewhat unstable occasionally).
Exploring the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I strolled the lively avenues of my city and visited shops, taverns, flower fields, and shellfish gatherers — it was glorious to see the fruits of my labor through a fresh lens. I observed a variety of intricacies that would escape notice from the top-down view: Doorway embellishments, an ass transporting a floral pail, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Simply noticing the form of a ledge and the paint layers on a column proves fascinating to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
More Than Just Walking
But there’s more to the game's immersive perspective beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that besides being able to look upon farming fields, but also enter them. And even though I thought structures would be inaccessible, I was able to enter clay pits, investigate a respected schoolhouse while lessons were in session, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the studio allocated resources for that), but it’s entirely possible wander through a grain field, observe people digging and transporting bags, and take a peek inside any small shack as long as the door is absent.
Graphics and Ambiance
Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented in PlayStation 1 graphics, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned within a bench instead of on a bench, first-person mode looks far superior to anticipations. The meticulously crafted materials (notably masonry elements) really have no business being this good within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, however, you can observe writings on surfaces, sparks flying from torches, brick decoloration, pupils, and evergreen foliage. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, creates a particularly moody setting, and feels much less frightening relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like terrifying apparitions now.
Experimentation and Customization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the abilities to leap, run, and changing perspective — the last option enabling me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and return. I then experimented with various digit inputs and found I could alter my representative's visual design. Golden robe? Red toga? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you activate the engage command, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. In case you’re wondering, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
However, I had no desire to injure my people, 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 feed it one more chicken, your elder will punish you.” Understandable stance, father character. A pleasant regional Celt then started applauding my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” 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 in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I experienced the pleasure of driving through classical settlements. Completely unexpectedly, I selected a carriage and quickly occupied the transport. Oxen, donkeys, even people-powered transports; you can drive them all at your leisure. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, although you shouldn't expect open-world vehicular chaos — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Battle Constraints
The single feature that frustrated me within the immersive perspective was finding out I couldn’t partake in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I ran up to the enemy during active combat and attempted to attack them, only to be ignored completely. The front-row seat remained quite impressive, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, felt highly gratifying, but it would’ve been cool to successfully impact objects via my incendiary bolts.
