Anno 117's Pax Romana's Hidden Gem Is a Stunning First-Person View.
Surprisingly — did you realize it's possible to experience Anno 117: Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches compared to my initial response the moment I learned this concealed mode. I must briefly leave my empire’s management, delegate it to a trusted assistant, take a wagon, and take a spin across the Roman world.
How to Access the First-Person Feature
As a city-building game, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates from a bird's-eye view. Yet, when you enter a secret combination — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — it becomes possible to roam your domain as a common citizen. Since a similar easter egg appeared in the previous Anno title, I felt excited to try it out in the new release, yet I had doubts it would work until I found myself submerged in a structural glitch (likely not meant to happen — this option can be somewhat unstable occasionally).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
Once I crawled out, I strolled the busy roads across my settlement and visited markets, breweries, flower fields, and shellfish gatherers — the experience was splendid to witness the fruits of my labor using an entirely new viewpoint. I observed numerous fine points I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Front door decorations, an ass transporting a floral pail, fowl roaming freely, folks chilling on their balconies… Merely examining the form of a ledge and the coloration on a post becomes engaging to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
More Than Just Walking
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 not only could I look upon agricultural plots, but also enter them. And despite my expectation interiors would be restricted, I could walk onto earthen quarries, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building as teaching was underway, and invade personal courtyards. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio planned for that functionality), but it’s entirely possible meander across a cereal plantation, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and glance into any tiny hut when there's no doorway obstructing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the immersive perspective seems considerably improved over predictions. The meticulously crafted materials (especially stone surfaces) are unexpectedly excellent in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, yet you will notice wall inscriptions, flames emitting from lights, discoloration of masonry, pupils, and pine tree leaves. The night, featuring dancing flames 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 sleep paralysis demons these days.
Experimentation and Customization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective lacks official documentation, I opted to try different commands, and immediately located the abilities to leap, run, and adjusting the view — with the latter allowing me to switch between first and third-person views and revert. I then experimented with certain numeric keys and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Yellow toga? Red toga? 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 hit the interaction button, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. Should you be curious, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
Comedy and Population Encounters
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, as they're remarkably entertaining. Only seconds after I landed the immersive perspective, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you offer additional fowl, your grandmother will be furious.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A pleasant regional Celt then proceeded to praise my outstanding integration methods by describing it as “Ideal combination,” whereas an irritable elderly woman decided to threaten me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just as I assumed I uncovered all possible content in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I experienced the pleasure of driving through classical settlements. Entirely by accident, I selected a carriage and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Bovines, equines, even manually drawn vehicles; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey cart, in particular, travels rather rapidly, but don't anticipate any GTA-like shenanigans — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Battle Constraints
The only thing that disappointed me regarding the first-person view was finding out I couldn’t partake in any fighting. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and attempted to attack them, yet was completely overlooked. The front-row seat was nonetheless magnificent, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, but it would’ve been cool to effectively strike targets using my fiery projectiles.
