Anno 117's Pax Romana's Top Secret Turns Out to Be a Impressive First-Person Mode.
Wait — did you know gamers have the option to enjoy Anno 117: Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? If you're thinking that, you feel equally astonished as my own reaction the moment I learned this hidden feature. Allow me to temporarily abandon managing my empire, leave it in a reliable subordinate, take a wagon, and take a spin through Ancient Rome.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
Being a city-building title, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates from a bird's-eye view. However, if you enter a secret combination — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or else “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 appeared in Anno 1800, I looked forward to experience it in the latest installment, but I wasn’t sure it would function until I found myself submerged in a structural glitch (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature is somewhat unstable occasionally).
Discovering the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I strolled the bustling streets through my metropolis and explored markets, breweries, blossom gardens, and shellfish gatherers — it felt magnificent to observe all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I observed a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Front door decorations, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, chickens running loose, people relaxing on their verandas… Merely examining the form of a ledge and the coloration on a post becomes engaging to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
Further Than Mere Wandering
However, there's additional content to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased when I found out that I could not just look upon farming fields, but also access them. And although I’d assumed interiors would be restricted, I managed to access earthen quarries, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building during active classes, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the creators have the budget for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, observe people digging and transporting bags, and look within any modest shelter as long as the door is absent.
Appearance and Mood
Although I was fully prepared to witness my city rendered in PlayStation 1 graphics, apart from certain rough movements and periodic inhabitants sitting inside seating as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears considerably improved over predictions. The highly detailed textures (especially stone surfaces) are unexpectedly excellent in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, but you will see writings on surfaces, sparks flying from torches, fading on bricks, pupils, and conifer needles. The night, featuring dancing flames and stars shining in the distance, creates a particularly moody setting, and feels much less frightening relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like terrifying apparitions now.
Testing and Personalization
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode lacks official documentation, I opted to try different commands, and promptly found the abilities to leap, run, and zoom in or out — with the latter allowing me to change from first-person to third-person mode and revert. I then experimented with some number buttons and learned I could modify my representative's visual design. Amber garment? Ruby clothing? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You can wield a blade and protection, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; when you press the action key, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. Should you be curious, eliminating citizens cannot be done (though I didn't test this, obviously).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, as they're remarkably entertaining. Only seconds after I landed first-person mode, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you feed it one more chicken, your grandmother will be furious.” Understandable stance, father character. A friendly native Celtic person then proceeded to praise my excellent cross-cultural strategies by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female decided to threaten me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Thrill of Transportation
Just as I assumed I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I found the joys of joyriding in Ancient Rome. Completely unexpectedly, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Bovines, equines, even people-powered transports; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey-powered transport, notably, 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).
Combat Limitations
The sole aspect that let me down regarding the first-person view was discovering my inability to participate in combat situations. Sporting my soldier fit, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The front-row seat was still rather spectacular, and watching the enemy run, their appendages thrashing around, seemed enormously rewarding, yet it would have been exciting to successfully impact objects via my incendiary bolts.
