Anno 117: Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Impressive First-Person View.
Surprisingly — did you realize you can play Anno 117 Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? Should that be your response, you feel equally astonished as I was the moment I learned this hidden feature. Allow me to temporarily abandon my empire’s management, delegate it to a capable deputy, take a wagon, and take a spin through Ancient Rome.
Activating the First-Person View
Being a city-building title, Anno 117 Pax Romana is normally experienced using a top-down camera. Yet, when you input a hidden code — 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 gain the ability to walk the realm as a regular inhabitant. Given a comparable hidden feature was part of the previous Anno title, I looked forward to try it out in the new release, though I was uncertain it would function until I found myself chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (which probably wasn’t intended — this feature is prone to glitches now and then).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
Upon freeing myself, I walked the lively avenues through my metropolis and explored stalls, alehouses, blossom gardens, and seafood collectors — it felt magnificent to observe the fruits of my labor from a brand-new perspective. I noticed a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Entryway ornaments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… 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.
Further Than Mere Wandering
But there’s more to the first-person feature in Anno 117 aside from meandering through streets. I became extraordinarily excited upon discovering that I could not just observe crop lands, but also access them. And although I’d assumed the building models would be off-limits, I was able to enter earthen quarries, investigate a respected schoolhouse during active classes, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the studio have the budget for that), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Even though I expected to see my metropolis represented using primitive rendering, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting inside seating as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears much better than expected. The highly detailed textures (especially stone surfaces) really have no business being this good in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You might not observe any individual strands of hair, yet you will notice writings on surfaces, flames emitting from lights, brick decoloration, iris elements, and evergreen foliage. Evening, with glowing light sources and stars shining in the distance, creates a particularly moody setting, and feels much less frightening relative to the previous game, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble terrifying apparitions anymore.
Experimentation and Customization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective lacks official documentation, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the abilities to leap, run, and adjusting the view — with the latter allowing me to switch between first and third-person views and return. I then decided to hit certain numeric keys and discovered that I could change my character’s appearance. Amber garment? Ruby clothing? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; when you press the action key, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. In case you’re wondering, it’s not possible to kill civilians (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Comedy and Population Encounters
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, as they're remarkably entertaining. Only seconds after I landed first-person mode, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you feed it one more chicken, your grandmother will be furious.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. One lovely local Celt then began complimenting my outstanding integration methods by describing it as “Ideal combination,” whereas an irritable elderly woman opted to menace me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just as I assumed I had found everything available in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I found the joys of joyriding in Ancient Rome. Totally unintentionally, I interacted with a cart and was promptly seated on the box. Bovines, equines, even human-pulled carts; you can control each one as desired. The donkey-powered transport, notably, is pretty fast, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Combat Limitations
The single feature that frustrated me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was finding out I couldn’t partake in combat situations. Sporting my soldier fit, I ran up to the enemy in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, only to be ignored completely. The proximate observation was nonetheless magnificent, and observing foes flee, their limbs waving wildly, seemed enormously rewarding, but it would’ve been cool to effectively strike targets with my burning arrows.
