Anno 117: Pax Romana's Hidden Gem Is a Stunning First-Person Mode.
Surprisingly — did you realize it's possible to experience Anno 117 Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? If that’s your reaction, your surprise matches as my own reaction the moment I learned this concealed mode. I must briefly leave my empire’s management, leave it in a reliable subordinate, borrow a cart, and enjoy a ride through Ancient Rome.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
As a city-building game, Anno 117 Pax Romana is normally experienced from a bird's-eye view. Yet, when you input a hidden code — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you gain the ability to walk your domain as a common citizen. Because an analogous secret was included in Anno 1800, I looked forward to experience it in the latest installment, yet I had doubts 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).
Exploring the Ancient Streets
Once I crawled out, I walked the bustling streets through my metropolis and visited markets, breweries, flower fields, and cockle pickers — it was glorious to see all my hard work using an entirely new viewpoint. I noticed all kinds of details I might have missed from the top-down view: Front door decorations, an ass transporting a floral pail, chickens running loose, citizens lounging on their terraces… Even just observing the form of a ledge and the coating on a pillar becomes engaging to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Further Than Mere Wandering
However, there's additional content to the first-person feature in Anno 117 than strolling along the road. I was especially delighted the moment I learned that I could not just view agricultural plots, but also step into them. And despite my expectation interiors would be restricted, I could walk onto mud extraction sites, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building while lessons were in session, and invade personal courtyards. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the developers have the budget for that), however, you can definitely stroll around a barley farm, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut provided the entrance is missing.
Graphics and Ambiance
While I was completely ready to observe my settlement depicted in PlayStation 1 graphics, besides some crude animations and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears far superior to anticipations. The meticulously crafted materials (particularly rock faces) are unexpectedly excellent within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, yet you will notice engravings on walls, flames emitting from lights, fading on bricks, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and celestial bodies twinkling afar, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and proves significantly less intimidating versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble nightmarish entities now.
Discovery and Modification
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I opted to try different commands, and immediately located the functions for jumping, dashing, and adjusting the view — the zoom function permitting me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and return. I then decided to hit some number buttons and learned I could modify my avatar's look. Yellow toga? Ruby clothing? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You can wield a blade and protection, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; when you press the action key, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. If you're interested, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Comedy and Population Encounters
However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Only seconds after I landed the immersive perspective, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you feed it one more chicken, your gran will have your head.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A pleasant regional Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies 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 Fun of Vehicle Use
Just when I thought 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 immediately found myself in the driver's position. Cattle, asses, even human-pulled carts; you can control each one as desired. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, travels rather rapidly, but don't anticipate open-world vehicular chaos — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Battle Constraints
The only thing that disappointed me regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in battle encounters. Wearing my military outfit, I ran up to the enemy during active combat and endeavored to damage them, but was entirely disregarded. The close-up view was still rather spectacular, and observing foes flee, their arms flailing about, felt highly gratifying, though it might have been amazing to effectively strike targets via my incendiary bolts.
