Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Stunning First-Person View.
Wait — did you know it's possible to experience Anno 117 Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? Should that be your response, you feel equally astonished as my own reaction the moment I learned this hidden feature. I must temporarily abandon my empire’s management, leave it in a trusted assistant, borrow a cart, and go for a joyride around the classical city.
How to Access the First-Person Mode
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is normally experienced using a top-down camera. Yet, when you press a covert button sequence — 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 empire as an ordinary Roman. Given a comparable hidden feature was included in the previous Anno title, I looked forward to try it out in the latest installment, though I was uncertain it would work prior to being submerged in a structural glitch (possibly an unexpected bug — this mode can be somewhat unstable occasionally).
Exploring the Streets of Rome
After extracting myself, I wandered the bustling streets of my city and explored shops, taverns, blossom gardens, and cockle pickers — it felt magnificent to witness my diligent efforts from a brand-new perspective. I detected all kinds of details I wouldn’t have spotted when viewing from overhead: Doorway embellishments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, chickens running loose, citizens lounging on their terraces… Merely examining the design of a windowsill and the coating on a pillar proves fascinating to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
More Than Just Walking
However, there's additional content to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I was especially delighted when I found out that I could not just view farming fields, but also enter 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. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the studio allocated resources for that), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and take a peek inside any small shack as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, besides some crude animations and sometimes citizens positioned within a bench rather than on a bench, first-person mode looks considerably improved over predictions. The highly detailed textures (notably masonry elements) shouldn't logically be this impressive in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You might not observe any individual strands of hair, however, you can observe writings on surfaces, fiery particles from lamps, brick decoloration, eye details, and pine tree leaves. The night, featuring dancing flames and distant stellar illumination, creates a particularly moody setting, and proves significantly less intimidating versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble nightmarish entities now.
Testing and Personalization
Given the covert first-person feature doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and changing perspective — the last option enabling me to switch between first and third-person views and revert. I then experimented with some number buttons and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Amber garment? Crimson attire? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You can wield a blade and protection, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you activate the engage command, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. If you're interested, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
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 should you provide another poultry, your grandmother will be furious.” Understandable stance, father character. One lovely local Celt then began complimenting my excellent cross-cultural strategies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female opted to menace me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
The Joy of Joyriding
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 across historical settings. Completely unexpectedly, I interacted with a cart and was promptly seated on the box. Cattle, asses, even manually drawn vehicles; you can drive them all at your leisure. The donkey-powered transport, notably, travels rather rapidly, although you shouldn't expect any GTA-like shenanigans — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Fighting Restrictions
The sole aspect that let me down regarding the first-person view was finding out I couldn’t partake in battle encounters. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The front-row seat remained quite impressive, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, proved very satisfying, yet it would have been exciting to effectively strike targets via my incendiary bolts.
