Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Breathtaking First-Person Perspective.
Hold on — were you aware it's possible to experience the game Anno 117 in first-person? If that’s your reaction, you’re just as shocked as I was the moment I learned this secret option. Excuse me while briefly leave managing my empire, leave it in a reliable subordinate, borrow a cart, and take a spin through Ancient Rome.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
As a city-building game, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates using a top-down camera. But, should you enter a secret combination — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” with a gamepad — you gain the ability to walk the empire as an ordinary Roman. Given a comparable hidden feature was part of Anno 1800, I looked forward to test it in the latest installment, yet I had doubts it would function before I discovered myself submerged in a structural glitch (which probably wasn’t intended — this feature is prone to glitches now and then).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
After extracting myself, I wandered the busy roads through my metropolis and explored shops, taverns, blossom gardens, and cockle pickers — the experience was splendid to observe all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I observed all kinds of details that would escape notice when viewing from overhead: Entryway ornaments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, chickens running loose, citizens lounging on their terraces… Even just observing the design of a windowsill and the coating on a pillar proves fascinating to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Further Than Mere Wandering
Yet, the experience extends to Anno 117’s first-person mode aside from meandering through streets. I became extraordinarily excited upon discovering that besides being able to observe farming fields, but also enter them. And despite my expectation structures would be inaccessible, I could walk onto clay pits, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building during active classes, and intrude into private gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the developers planned for that functionality), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut provided the entrance is missing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Even though I expected to see my metropolis represented in PlayStation 1 graphics, besides some crude animations and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench instead of on a bench, first-person mode looks much better than expected. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) shouldn't logically be this impressive in what is still, essentially, a top-down game. You won't necessarily notice specific hair details, however, you can observe wall inscriptions, sparks flying from torches, fading on bricks, eye details, and evergreen foliage. The night, featuring dancing flames and distant stellar illumination, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like nightmarish entities anymore.
Discovery and Modification
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode has no guided tutorial, I decided to experiment a bit, and immediately located the functions for jumping, dashing, and changing perspective — the zoom function permitting me to change from first-person to third-person mode and revert. I subsequently tried pressing certain numeric keys and discovered that I could change my representative's visual design. Golden robe? Red toga? Azure and violet outfit? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? 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. If you're interested, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, since they're incredibly amusing. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and should you provide another poultry, your elder will punish you.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A friendly native Celtic person then proceeded to praise my outstanding integration methods by labeling it “Perfect fusion,” while some cranky old lady chose to intimidate me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
At the moment I believed I had found everything available within the game's immersive perspective, I experienced the pleasure of driving in Ancient Rome. Completely unexpectedly, I interacted with a cart and quickly occupied the transport. Cattle, asses, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The donkey cart, in particular, travels rather rapidly, but don't anticipate any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Fighting Restrictions
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in any fighting. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, yet was completely overlooked. The proximate observation was still rather spectacular, and seeing opponents retreat, their limbs waving wildly, proved very satisfying, though it might have been amazing to successfully impact objects via my incendiary bolts.