Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Is a Stunning First-Person Perspective.
Hold on — were you aware you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, you’re just as shocked as my own reaction when I discovered this hidden feature. Allow me to step away from my empire’s management, entrust it to a capable deputy, borrow a cart, and go for a joyride through Ancient Rome.
Unlocking the First-Person View
Being a city-building title, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates using a top-down camera. Yet, when you press a covert button sequence — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can explore the empire as an ordinary Roman. Because an analogous secret was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I looked forward to try it out in the new release, but I wasn’t sure it would function before I discovered myself chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (which probably wasn’t intended — this mode tends to be a little buggy at times).
Exploring the Ancient Streets
Upon freeing myself, I strolled the busy roads across my settlement and toured markets, breweries, flower fields, and shellfish gatherers — it felt magnificent to see the fruits of my labor through a fresh lens. I observed a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Entryway ornaments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Simply noticing 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
However, there's additional content to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I became extraordinarily excited upon discovering that besides being able to view farming fields, but also enter them. And despite my expectation interiors would be restricted, I could walk onto clay pits, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building during active classes, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the creators have the budget for that), but it’s entirely possible wander through a grain field, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and look within any modest shelter provided the entrance is missing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Even though I expected to witness my city rendered with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting within a bench rather than on a bench, the first-person view appears far superior to anticipations. The meticulously crafted materials (notably masonry elements) really have no business being this good for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, yet you will notice engravings on walls, fiery particles from lamps, discoloration of masonry, eye details, and conifer needles. The night, featuring dancing flames and stars shining in the distance, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary compared to Anno 1800, now that the citizens don’t look like terrifying apparitions anymore.
Discovery and Modification
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the functions for jumping, dashing, and zoom in or out — with the latter allowing me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and return. I then experimented with certain numeric keys and found I could alter my character’s appearance. Yellow toga? Red toga? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. If you're interested, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
However, I had no desire to injure my people, because they’re way too funny. Only seconds after I landed the immersive perspective, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you feed it one more chicken, your elder will punish you.” Understandable stance, father character. A pleasant regional Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” 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 when I thought I had found everything available in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I experienced the pleasure of driving across historical settings. Totally unintentionally, I interacted with a cart and quickly occupied the transport. Oxen, donkeys, even manually drawn vehicles; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey-powered transport, notably, travels rather rapidly, though you shouldn’t imagine Grand Theft Auto-style mischief — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Fighting Restrictions
The sole aspect that let me down regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in any fighting. Wearing my military outfit, I approached opposing forces amidst fighting and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The proximate observation was still rather spectacular, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to actually hit something using my fiery projectiles.
