Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Breathtaking First-Person Perspective.
Wait — did you know it's possible to experience Anno 117: Pax Romana in first-person? If you're thinking that, you’re just as shocked compared to my initial response the moment I learned this hidden feature. Allow me to briefly leave my empire’s management, delegate it to a reliable subordinate, borrow a cart, and take a spin across the Roman world.
How to Access the First-Person Mode
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana usually operates from a bird's-eye view. However, if you enter a secret combination — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you gain the ability to walk the realm as a regular inhabitant. Given a comparable hidden feature was part of the earlier game Anno 1800, I looked forward to test it in the latest installment, yet I had doubts it would operate before I discovered myself stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature can be prone to glitches now and then).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
After extracting myself, I walked the bustling streets of my city and toured markets, breweries, floral patches, and seafood collectors — the experience was splendid to witness the fruits of my labor using an entirely new viewpoint. I noticed all kinds of details I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Front door decorations, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, chickens running loose, folks chilling on their balconies… Even just observing the shape of a window sill and the coloration on a post is quite interesting for those not residing in classical times.
Beyond Simple Strolling
Yet, the experience extends to the first-person feature in Anno 117 than strolling along the road. I felt particularly pleased when I found out that besides being able to observe farming fields, but also step into them. And although I’d assumed interiors would be restricted, I was able to enter earthen quarries, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building during active classes, and invade personal courtyards. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the creators allocated resources for that), however, you can definitely meander across a cereal plantation, observe people digging and transporting bags, and take a peek inside any small shack when there's no doorway obstructing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
While I was completely ready 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 highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You may not see specific hair details, yet you will notice writings on surfaces, fiery particles from lamps, brick decoloration, pupils, and conifer needles. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, is especially atmospheric, and proves significantly less intimidating versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble nightmarish entities anymore.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and quickly discovered the options to jump, sprint, and changing perspective — the zoom function permitting me to switch between first and third-person views and revert. I then decided to hit some number buttons and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Amber garment? Red toga? Azure and violet outfit? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You can wield a blade and protection, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; if you hit the interaction button, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. In case you’re wondering, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Comedy and Population Encounters
However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Only seconds after I landed the first-person view, I heard a parent advising their offspring that he “Can’t have a pet fox and should you provide another poultry, your elder will punish you.” Understandable stance, father character. A pleasant regional Celt then proceeded to praise my outstanding integration methods by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” whereas an irritable elderly woman chose to intimidate me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Thrill of Transportation
At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I experienced the pleasure of driving in Ancient Rome. Completely unexpectedly, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Oxen, donkeys, even people-powered transports; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey-powered transport, notably, moves quite quickly, though you shouldn’t imagine any GTA-like shenanigans — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Fighting Restrictions
The only thing that disappointed me within the immersive perspective was discovering my inability to participate in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I charged toward adversaries amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, yet was completely overlooked. The close-up view remained quite impressive, and watching the enemy run, their arms flailing about, felt highly gratifying, though it might have been amazing to successfully impact objects with my burning arrows.