Anno 117: Pax Romana's Top Secret Is a Impressive First-Person Mode.
Wait — did you know it's possible to experience Anno 117: Pax Romana using a first-person camera? If you're thinking that, you feel equally astonished compared to my initial response upon finding out this hidden feature. Allow me to step away from managing my empire, leave it in a trusted assistant, commandere a carriage, and enjoy a ride across the Roman world.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
In its role as a city-builder, Anno 117: Pax Romana usually operates from an overhead perspective. However, if you enter a secret combination — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you can explore the realm as a regular inhabitant. Because an analogous secret was part of the earlier game Anno 1800, I looked forward to try it out in the latest installment, but I wasn’t sure it would work before I discovered myself submerged in a structural glitch (likely not meant to happen — this option is a little buggy at times).
Exploring the Ancient Streets
Once I crawled out, I walked the busy roads across my settlement and explored stalls, alehouses, floral patches, and seafood collectors — it was glorious to see all my hard work using an entirely new viewpoint. I detected a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Doorway embellishments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Even just observing the design of a windowsill and the paint layers on a column is quite interesting for those not residing in classical times.
More Than Just Walking
Yet, the experience extends to the game's immersive perspective than strolling along the road. I became extraordinarily excited upon discovering that besides being able to view crop lands, but also step into them. And despite my expectation interiors would be restricted, I could walk onto earthen quarries, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building during active classes, and intrude into private gardens. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the developers planned for that functionality), yet it's completely feasible stroll around a barley farm, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and look within any modest shelter as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Although I was fully prepared to observe my settlement depicted with outdated visual quality, apart from certain rough movements and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench rather than on a bench, the immersive perspective seems much better than expected. The highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) shouldn't logically be this impressive within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, however, you can observe writings on surfaces, sparks flying from torches, brick decoloration, eye details, and evergreen foliage. Evening, with glowing light sources and stars shining in the distance, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and also a lot less scary versus the earlier title, now that the citizens don’t look like sleep paralysis demons anymore.
Experimentation and Customization
Given the covert first-person feature lacks official documentation, I chose to test various actions, and immediately located the abilities to leap, run, and zoom in or out — the zoom function permitting me to switch between first and third-person views and return. I subsequently tried pressing various digit inputs and learned I could modify my representative's visual design. Yellow toga? Ruby clothing? Blue and purple toga? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You may carry a sword and shield, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; if you activate the engage command, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. Should you be curious, harming inhabitants is impossible (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Comedy and Population Encounters
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, because they’re way too funny. Shortly after I activated first-person mode, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “Owning a fox is prohibited and should you provide another poultry, your grandmother will be furious.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A friendly native Celtic person then began complimenting my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” whereas an irritable elderly woman decided to threaten me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just as I assumed I had found everything available within the game's immersive perspective, 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 human-pulled carts; you can drive them all at your leisure. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, moves quite quickly, although you shouldn't expect Grand Theft Auto-style mischief — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Combat Limitations
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I charged toward adversaries during active combat and attempted to attack them, but was entirely disregarded. The front-row seat was still rather spectacular, and watching the enemy run, their appendages thrashing around, proved very satisfying, though it might have been amazing to effectively strike targets via my incendiary bolts.
