Anno 117: Pax Romana's Top Secret Reveals Itself as a Stunning First-Person Mode.
Hold on — were you aware you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? Should that be your response, you feel equally astonished compared to my initial response the moment I learned this concealed mode. Allow me to step away from managing my empire, leave it in a reliable subordinate, take a wagon, and go for a joyride across the Roman world.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
Being a city-building title, Anno 117: Pax Romana is normally experienced from an overhead perspective. But, should you enter a secret combination — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — it becomes possible to roam the realm as a regular inhabitant. Because an analogous secret was included in the previous Anno title, I looked forward to experience it in the latest installment, but I wasn’t sure it would function prior to being submerged in a structural glitch (likely not meant to happen — this option can be prone to glitches now and then).
Roaming the Roman Cityscape
Upon freeing myself, I wandered the bustling streets across my settlement and visited markets, breweries, floral patches, and cockle pickers — the experience was splendid to observe all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I noticed a variety of intricacies that would escape notice from above: Front door decorations, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, poultry scattering about, folks chilling on their balconies… Even just observing the form of a ledge and the coating on a pillar becomes engaging to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
Beyond Simple Strolling
However, there's additional content 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 access them. And even though I thought structures would be inaccessible, I could walk onto clay pits, investigate a respected schoolhouse during active classes, and invade personal courtyards. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the creators have the budget for that), yet it's completely feasible wander through a grain field, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut when there's no doorway obstructing.
Appearance and Mood
While I was completely ready to observe my settlement depicted with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned within a bench instead of on a bench, first-person mode looks much better than expected. The highly detailed textures (especially stone surfaces) are unexpectedly excellent in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You may not see any individual strands of hair, but you will see wall inscriptions, sparks flying from torches, brick decoloration, eye details, and pine tree leaves. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and celestial bodies twinkling afar, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and proves significantly less intimidating relative to the previous game, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble terrifying apparitions these days.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective lacks official documentation, I chose to test various actions, and quickly discovered the options to jump, sprint, and adjusting the view — the zoom function permitting me to switch between first and third-person views and revert. I subsequently tried pressing various digit inputs and discovered that I could change my character’s appearance. Amber garment? Red toga? Azure and violet outfit? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You may carry a sword and shield, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. In case you’re wondering, harming inhabitants is impossible (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Comedy and Population Encounters
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, because they’re way too funny. Moments after I entered the first-person view, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you offer additional fowl, your elder will punish you.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. One lovely local Celt then proceeded to praise my brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” whereas an irritable elderly woman chose to intimidate me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I experienced the pleasure of driving in Ancient Rome. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Oxen, donkeys, even manually drawn vehicles; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey-powered transport, notably, travels rather rapidly, although you shouldn't expect open-world vehicular chaos — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Fighting Restrictions
The sole aspect that let me down within the immersive perspective was finding out I couldn’t partake in any fighting. Wearing my military outfit, I ran up to the enemy 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 arms flailing about, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to actually hit something with my burning arrows.
