Anno 117's Pax Romana's Hidden Gem Is a Stunning First-Person View.
Surprisingly — did you realize gamers have the option to enjoy the game Anno 117 from a first-person viewpoint? If that’s your reaction, you feel equally astonished compared to my initial response upon finding out this concealed mode. I must briefly leave managing my empire, leave it in a trusted assistant, take a wagon, and go for a joyride around the classical city.
How to Access the First-Person View
As a city-building game, 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” using PC controls or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you can explore the realm as a regular inhabitant. Since a similar easter egg appeared in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to try it out in the latest installment, though I was uncertain it would work prior to being stuck in a Celtic building (likely not meant to happen — this option tends to be a little buggy at times).
Exploring the Streets of Rome
Once I crawled out, I strolled the busy roads through my metropolis and explored markets, breweries, blossom gardens, and seafood collectors — it was glorious to see all my hard work through a fresh lens. I detected numerous fine points I might have missed from the top-down view: Doorway embellishments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Even just observing the form of a ledge and the coloration on a post proves fascinating for those not residing in classical times.
Beyond Simple Strolling
However, there's additional content to the first-person feature in Anno 117 aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased the moment I learned that besides being able to view crop lands, but also enter them. And despite my expectation structures would be inaccessible, I was able to enter earthen quarries, tour an esteemed educational structure while lessons were in session, and invade personal courtyards. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio have the budget for that), however, you can definitely stroll around a barley farm, observe people digging and transporting bags, and glance into any tiny hut when there's no doorway obstructing.
Appearance and Mood
While I was completely ready to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, apart from certain rough movements and sometimes citizens positioned within a bench rather than on a bench, the first-person view appears considerably improved over predictions. The meticulously crafted materials (especially stone surfaces) shouldn't logically be this impressive within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You might not observe any individual strands of hair, but you will see engravings on walls, fiery particles from lamps, discoloration of masonry, pupils, and conifer needles. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary relative to the previous game, given that the populace appears unlike nightmarish entities now.
Discovery and Modification
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I opted to try different commands, and promptly found the abilities to leap, run, and zoom in or out — the last option enabling me to change from first-person to third-person mode and back. I then experimented with some number buttons and learned I could modify my representative's visual design. Yellow toga? Crimson attire? Blue and purple toga? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You can wield a blade and protection, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you activate the engage command, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. Should you be curious, harming inhabitants is impossible (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, as they're remarkably entertaining. Moments after I entered the first-person view, I overheard a father telling his child that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you feed it one more chicken, your gran will have your head.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. One lovely local Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” whereas an irritable elderly woman chose to intimidate me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Joy of Joyriding
At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and was promptly seated on the box. Bovines, equines, even human-pulled carts; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey-powered transport, notably, moves quite quickly, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Fighting Restrictions
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I ran up to the enemy amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, but was entirely disregarded. The proximate observation was still rather spectacular, and observing foes flee, their arms flailing about, proved very satisfying, but it would’ve been cool to effectively strike targets with my burning arrows.
