Anno 117 Pax Romana's Hidden Gem Turns Out to Be a Breathtaking First-Person View.
Wait — did you know you can play Anno 117: Pax Romana in first-person? Should that be your response, your surprise matches compared to my initial response the moment I learned this hidden feature. Allow me to step away from my empire’s management, delegate it to a reliable subordinate, commandere a carriage, and take a spin around the classical city.
How to Access the First-Person Mode
As a city-building game, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates from a bird's-eye view. But, should you press a covert button sequence — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or “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. Since a similar easter egg was included in Anno 1800, I looked forward to test it in Ubisoft's newest game, though I was uncertain it would work prior to being submerged in a structural glitch (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature is somewhat unstable occasionally).
Exploring the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I strolled the busy roads of my city and explored stalls, alehouses, flower fields, and seafood collectors — it felt magnificent to observe all my hard work through a fresh lens. I noticed all kinds of details I wouldn’t have spotted from above: Entryway ornaments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, chickens running loose, citizens lounging on their terraces… Merely examining the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting for those not residing in classical times.
Further Than Mere Wandering
But there’s more to the first-person feature in Anno 117 beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that not only could I observe farming fields, but also enter them. And even though I thought the building models would be off-limits, I managed to access earthen quarries, tour an esteemed educational structure during active classes, and intrude into private gardens. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the developers planned for that functionality), but it’s entirely possible wander through a grain field, observe people digging and transporting bags, and look within any modest shelter as long as the door is absent.
Appearance and Mood
Even though I expected to witness my city rendered in PlayStation 1 graphics, excluding a few unpolished motions and sometimes citizens positioned in a bench instead of on a bench, first-person mode looks far superior to anticipations. The highly detailed textures (especially stone surfaces) really have no business being this good for a title that remains primarily overhead. You may not see any individual strands of hair, but you will see engravings on walls, sparks flying from torches, fading on bricks, iris elements, and evergreen foliage. The night, featuring dancing flames and celestial bodies twinkling afar, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble nightmarish entities these days.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective has no guided tutorial, I opted to try different commands, and promptly found 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 some number buttons and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Yellow toga? Red toga? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You can wield a blade and protection, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, it’s not possible to kill civilians (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, because they’re way too funny. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring that he “Can’t have a pet fox and if you feed it one more chicken, your grandmother will be furious.” Understandable stance, father character. A pleasant regional Celt then proceeded to praise my outstanding integration methods by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” whereas an irritable elderly woman decided to threaten me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just when I thought I had found everything available in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I encountered the delight of riding across historical settings. Completely unexpectedly, I selected a carriage and was promptly seated on the box. Bovines, equines, even manually drawn vehicles; you may operate any of them freely. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, but don't anticipate any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Battle Constraints
The only thing that disappointed me regarding the first-person view was finding out I couldn’t partake in combat situations. Wearing my military outfit, I ran up to the enemy in the midst of battle and endeavored to damage them, yet was completely overlooked. The proximate observation remained quite impressive, and watching the enemy run, their appendages thrashing around, proved very satisfying, but it would’ve been cool to effectively strike targets using my fiery projectiles.
