Anno 117: Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Is a Stunning First-Person Mode.

Surprisingly — did you realize you can play the game Anno 117 using a first-person camera? If you're thinking that, your surprise matches as I was the moment I learned this hidden feature. Excuse me while temporarily abandon managing my empire, delegate it to a capable deputy, borrow a cart, and go for a joyride around the classical city.

Activating the First-Person Feature

As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played from a bird's-eye view. However, if you input a hidden code — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard 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. Since a similar easter egg was included in Anno 1800, I felt excited to experience it in the latest installment, but I wasn’t sure it would work until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (which probably wasn’t intended — this feature is somewhat unstable occasionally).

Discovering the Ancient Streets

Upon freeing myself, I strolled the bustling streets across my settlement and visited stalls, alehouses, blossom gardens, and seafood collectors — it felt magnificent to see all my hard work through a fresh lens. I observed a variety of intricacies that would escape notice 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 coating on a pillar becomes engaging to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.

More Than Just Walking

However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode aside from meandering through streets. I was especially delighted when I found out that I could not just observe crop lands, but also access them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto earthen quarries, investigate a respected schoolhouse while lessons were in session, and invade personal courtyards. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the developers have the budget for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, observe people digging and transporting bags, and glance into any tiny hut when there's no doorway obstructing.

Appearance and Mood

Even though I expected to witness my city rendered with outdated visual quality, besides some crude animations and sometimes citizens positioned in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, first-person mode looks considerably improved over predictions. The intricately designed surfaces (particularly rock faces) are unexpectedly excellent within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You may not see specific hair details, but you will see writings on surfaces, fiery particles from lamps, fading on bricks, eye details, and pine tree leaves. Evening, with glowing light sources and stars shining in the distance, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary versus the earlier title, now that the citizens don’t look like terrifying apparitions these days.

Experimentation and Customization

Because the game's hidden immersive perspective has no guided tutorial, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and zoom in or out — the last option enabling me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and return. I then decided to hit certain numeric keys and found I could alter my representative's visual design. Yellow toga? Red toga? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You may carry a sword and shield, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; when you press the action key, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. If you're interested, eliminating citizens cannot be done (though I didn't test this, obviously).

Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues

However, I had no desire to injure my people, as they're remarkably entertaining. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring 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. One lovely local Celt then proceeded to praise my excellent cross-cultural strategies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” while some cranky old lady opted to menace me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”

The Thrill of Transportation

At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I experienced the pleasure of driving in Ancient Rome. Completely unexpectedly, I clicked on a wagon and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Cattle, asses, even people-powered transports; you may operate any of them freely. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, although you shouldn't expect open-world vehicular chaos — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).

Battle Constraints

The only thing that disappointed me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was learning about my exclusion from in battle encounters. Wearing my military outfit, I charged toward adversaries amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, only to be ignored completely. The close-up view remained quite impressive, and watching the enemy run, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to actually hit something via my incendiary bolts.

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