Anno 117's Pax Romana's Top Secret Is a Impressive First-Person View.
Surprisingly — did you realize you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana using a first-person camera? Should that be your response, you feel equally astonished compared to my initial response upon finding out this secret option. I must temporarily abandon overseeing my civilization, delegate it to a trusted assistant, commandere a carriage, and enjoy a ride across the Roman world.
Activating the First-Person View
As a city-building game, Anno 117 Pax Romana is typically played using a top-down camera. Yet, when you press a covert button sequence — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — you gain the ability to walk the realm as a regular inhabitant. Given a comparable hidden feature was part of Anno 1800, I looked forward to test it in the latest installment, but I wasn’t sure it would work prior to being stuck in a Celtic building (likely not meant to happen — this option can be prone to glitches now and then).
Roaming the Streets of Rome
After extracting myself, I strolled the busy roads of my city and visited markets, breweries, floral patches, and cockle pickers — the experience was splendid to witness all my hard work using an entirely new viewpoint. I observed a variety of intricacies 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… Merely examining the shape of a window sill and the paint layers on a column is quite interesting to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
More Than Just Walking
However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode beyond simply walking the paths. I became extraordinarily excited the moment I learned that besides being able to view farming fields, but also enter them. And despite my expectation interiors would be restricted, I managed to access clay pits, investigate a respected schoolhouse during active classes, and invade personal courtyards. Don't bother with door access (not even the developers allocated resources for that), however, you can definitely stroll around a barley farm, observe people digging and transporting bags, and look within any modest shelter provided the entrance is missing.
Graphics and Ambiance
While I was completely ready to observe my settlement depicted in PlayStation 1 graphics, besides some crude animations and sometimes citizens positioned inside seating instead of on a bench, the first-person view appears far superior to anticipations. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) really have no business being this good in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You may not see specific hair details, but you will see wall inscriptions, fiery particles from lamps, fading on bricks, eye details, and conifer needles. The night, featuring dancing flames and stars shining in the distance, is especially atmospheric, and feels much less frightening compared to Anno 1800, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble sleep paralysis demons anymore.
Experimentation and Customization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I opted to try different commands, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and adjusting the view — the zoom function permitting me to change from first-person to third-person mode and back. I subsequently tried pressing some number buttons and found I could alter my avatar's look. Yellow toga? Crimson attire? Azure and violet outfit? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You can wield a blade and protection, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
Comedy and Population Encounters
However, I had no desire to injure my people, as they're remarkably entertaining. Moments after I entered first-person mode, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you feed it one more chicken, your grandmother will be furious.” Rightly so, Roman dad. A pleasant regional Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female decided to threaten me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Joy of Joyriding
Just when I thought I had found everything available in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I encountered the delight of riding in Ancient Rome. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Oxen, donkeys, even human-pulled carts; you can control each one as desired. The donkey-powered transport, notably, travels rather rapidly, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Battle Constraints
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I approached opposing forces amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, but was entirely disregarded. The close-up view remained quite impressive, and watching the enemy run, their arms flailing about, proved very satisfying, yet it would have been exciting to successfully impact objects using my fiery projectiles.
