Anno 117's Pax Romana's Hidden Gem Turns Out to Be a Breathtaking First-Person Mode.
Wait — did you know it's possible to experience the game Anno 117 in first-person? Should that be your response, your surprise matches compared to my initial response when I discovered this concealed mode. Allow me to briefly leave my empire’s management, entrust it to a trusted assistant, take a wagon, and go for a joyride across the Roman world.
Activating the First-Person Mode
Being a city-building title, Anno 117 Pax Romana is normally experienced from an overhead perspective. However, if you enter a secret combination — such as “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — it becomes possible to roam the empire as an ordinary Roman. Since a similar easter egg was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to test it in the latest installment, but I wasn’t sure it would work before I discovered myself chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (likely not meant to happen — this mode tends to be a little buggy at times).
Discovering the Roman Cityscape
Once I crawled out, I strolled the busy roads of my city and toured stalls, alehouses, flower fields, and cockle pickers — the experience was splendid to see my diligent efforts using an entirely new viewpoint. I detected numerous fine points that would escape notice from the top-down view: Front door decorations, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, people relaxing on their verandas… Simply noticing the form of a ledge and the coating on a pillar proves fascinating for those not residing in classical times.
Further Than Mere Wandering
But there’s more to the first-person feature in Anno 117 aside from meandering through streets. I became extraordinarily excited the moment I learned that I could not just view farming fields, but also enter them. And despite my expectation structures would be inaccessible, I managed to access mud extraction sites, tour an esteemed educational structure during active classes, and invade personal courtyards. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio allocated resources for that), yet it's completely feasible wander through a grain field, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and look within any modest shelter as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Even though I expected to observe my settlement depicted in PlayStation 1 graphics, apart from certain rough movements and sometimes citizens positioned inside seating as opposed to atop a bench, the immersive perspective seems much better than expected. The meticulously crafted materials (notably masonry elements) are unexpectedly excellent within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You might not observe separate follicular elements, but you will see writings on surfaces, sparks flying from torches, fading on bricks, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and celestial bodies twinkling afar, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary versus the earlier title, given that the populace appears unlike terrifying apparitions these days.
Discovery and Modification
Given the covert first-person feature has no guided tutorial, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and adjusting the view — the last option enabling me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and back. I then experimented with some number buttons and learned I could modify my representative's visual design. Amber garment? Crimson attire? Azure and violet outfit? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? 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. In case you’re wondering, harming inhabitants is impossible (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Shortly after I activated the immersive perspective, I overheard a father telling his child that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you feed it one more chicken, your elder will punish you.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. One lovely local Celt then started applauding my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female opted to menace me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Joy of Joyriding
Just as I assumed I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I encountered the delight of riding across historical settings. Totally unintentionally, I interacted with a cart and quickly occupied the transport. Bovines, equines, even human-pulled carts; you may operate any of them freely. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, moves quite quickly, although you shouldn't expect open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Battle Constraints
The single feature that frustrated me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was discovering my inability to participate in any fighting. Wearing my military outfit, I charged toward adversaries amidst fighting and endeavored to damage them, but was entirely disregarded. The front-row seat was still rather spectacular, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, felt highly gratifying, though it might have been amazing to successfully impact objects via my incendiary bolts.
