Anno 117: Pax Romana's Top Secret Reveals Itself as a Impressive First-Person Perspective.

Surprisingly — did you realize gamers have the option to enjoy Anno 117 Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? If that’s your reaction, you feel equally astonished as my own reaction upon finding out this concealed mode. Allow me to temporarily abandon my empire’s management, delegate it to a capable deputy, take a wagon, and go for a joyride around the classical city.

How to Access the First-Person Feature

As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played using a top-down camera. Yet, when you input a hidden code — such as “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — it becomes possible to roam the realm as a regular inhabitant. Since a similar easter egg was part of the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to test it in the new release, but I wasn’t sure it would work until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature can be a little buggy at times).

Discovering the Ancient Streets

Upon freeing myself, I strolled the busy roads across my settlement and visited shops, taverns, floral patches, and cockle pickers — it was glorious to observe all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I observed a variety of intricacies that would escape notice from above: Doorway embellishments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Simply noticing the form of a ledge and the paint layers on a column is quite interesting to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.

Beyond Simple Strolling

However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode than strolling along the road. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that besides being able to observe crop lands, but also enter them. And even though I thought interiors would be restricted, I was able to enter earthen quarries, investigate a respected schoolhouse while lessons were in session, and intrude into private gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio planned for that functionality), however, you can definitely meander across a cereal plantation, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and take a peek inside any small shack when there's no doorway obstructing.

Appearance and Mood

While I was completely ready to observe my settlement depicted using primitive rendering, besides some crude animations and sometimes citizens positioned inside seating instead of on a bench, first-person mode looks far superior to anticipations. The highly detailed textures (notably masonry elements) shouldn't logically be this impressive for a title that remains primarily overhead. You may not see any individual strands of hair, yet you will notice engravings on walls, sparks flying from torches, fading on bricks, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, is especially atmospheric, and proves significantly less intimidating relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like nightmarish entities these days.

Experimentation and Customization

Given the covert first-person feature has no guided tutorial, I chose to test various actions, and quickly discovered the options to jump, sprint, and zoom in or out — the last option enabling me to switch between first and third-person views and back. I then decided to hit various digit inputs and discovered that I could change my avatar's look. Golden robe? Crimson attire? Azure and violet outfit? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. If you're interested, it’s not possible to kill civilians (though I didn't test this, obviously).

Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues

However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Only seconds after I landed the first-person view, I heard a parent advising their offspring that he “Can’t have a pet fox and should you provide another poultry, your grandmother will be furious.” Understandable stance, father character. A friendly native Celtic person then proceeded to praise my outstanding integration methods by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” whereas an irritable elderly woman chose to intimidate me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”

The Thrill of Transportation

At the moment I believed I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I found the joys of joyriding in Ancient Rome. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Cattle, asses, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The donkey cart, in particular, is pretty fast, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (once more, not admitting any attempts).

Fighting Restrictions

The only thing that disappointed me regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in combat situations. Wearing my military outfit, I charged toward adversaries amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, only to be ignored completely. The close-up view was still rather spectacular, and observing foes flee, their arms flailing about, seemed enormously rewarding, though it might have been amazing to successfully impact objects using my fiery projectiles.

{Conclusion: More to Discover|Final Thoughts: Additional Exploration