Anno 117: Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Stunning First-Person Perspective.
Surprisingly — did you realize it's possible to experience Anno 117 Pax Romana in first-person? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as I was the moment I learned this secret option. I must briefly leave my empire’s management, entrust it to a capable deputy, commandere a carriage, and go for a joyride around the classical city.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
In its role as a city-builder, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates from a bird's-eye view. However, if you press a covert button sequence — such as “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — you can explore your domain as a common citizen. Because an analogous secret was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to experience it in the latest installment, though I was uncertain it would function until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature can be somewhat unstable occasionally).
Roaming the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I strolled the bustling streets across my settlement and toured shops, taverns, flower fields, and cockle pickers — the experience was splendid to witness the fruits of my labor through a fresh lens. I detected all kinds of details I might have missed from the top-down view: Doorway embellishments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, fowl roaming freely, people relaxing on their verandas… Simply noticing the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
Further Than Mere Wandering
But there’s more to the first-person feature in Anno 117 beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased when I found out that not only could I view crop lands, but also access them. And even though I thought structures would be inaccessible, I could walk onto earthen quarries, investigate a respected schoolhouse during active classes, and intrude into private gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the studio have the budget for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and look within any modest shelter when there's no doorway obstructing.
Graphics and Ambiance
While I was completely ready to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned in a bench instead of on a bench, the first-person view appears far superior to anticipations. The intricately designed surfaces (particularly rock faces) are unexpectedly excellent for a title that remains primarily overhead. You might not observe any individual strands of hair, but you will see writings on surfaces, flames emitting from lights, brick decoloration, eye details, and evergreen foliage. The night, featuring dancing flames and distant stellar illumination, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and feels much less frightening compared to Anno 1800, given that the populace appears unlike nightmarish entities now.
Experimentation and Customization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I opted to try different commands, and immediately located the abilities to leap, run, and zoom in or out — with the latter allowing me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and return. I subsequently tried pressing certain numeric keys 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, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you activate the engage command, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. Should you be curious, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, since they're incredibly amusing. Shortly after I activated first-person mode, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and should you provide another poultry, your elder will punish you.” Rightly so, Roman dad. A pleasant regional Celt then started applauding my excellent cross-cultural strategies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” whereas an irritable elderly woman opted to menace me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Thrill of Transportation
Just as I assumed I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Totally unintentionally, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Cattle, asses, even manually drawn vehicles; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey cart, in particular, travels rather rapidly, but don't anticipate open-world vehicular chaos — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Combat Limitations
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in battle encounters. Sporting my soldier fit, I charged toward adversaries during active combat and endeavored to damage them, only to be ignored completely. The front-row seat remained quite impressive, and watching the enemy run, their limbs waving wildly, proved very satisfying, yet it would have been exciting to successfully impact objects using my fiery projectiles.
