Anno 117 Pax Romana's Hidden Gem Reveals Itself as a Impressive First-Person View.

Surprisingly — did you realize gamers have the option to enjoy the game Anno 117 in first-person? If that’s your reaction, you feel equally astonished as my own reaction the moment I learned this hidden feature. Excuse me while briefly leave my empire’s management, delegate it to a trusted assistant, take a wagon, and go for a joyride across the Roman world.

Activating the First-Person Feature

Being a city-building title, the game Anno 117 is normally experienced using a top-down camera. Yet, when you input a hidden code — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on keyboard or else “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can explore the empire as an ordinary Roman. Since a similar easter egg was part of the previous Anno title, I was eager to test it in the latest installment, but I wasn’t sure it would operate prior to being stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this mode can be a little buggy at times).

Discovering the Streets of Rome

Upon freeing myself, I strolled the bustling streets across my settlement and visited shops, taverns, floral patches, and cockle pickers — it felt magnificent to observe all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I detected a variety of intricacies I might have missed from above: Doorway embellishments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, fowl roaming freely, people relaxing on their verandas… Simply noticing the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar proves fascinating to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.

More Than Just Walking

Yet, the experience extends to Anno 117’s first-person mode beyond simply walking the paths. I became extraordinarily excited upon discovering that besides being able to observe crop lands, but also enter them. And even though I thought structures would be inaccessible, I could walk onto clay pits, tour an esteemed educational structure during active classes, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the developers have the budget for that), yet it's completely feasible meander across a cereal plantation, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and look within any modest shelter as long as the door is absent.

Visual Quality and Atmosphere

Even though I expected to see my metropolis represented using primitive rendering, apart from certain rough movements and the occasional civilian resting within a bench rather than on a bench, the immersive perspective seems far superior to anticipations. The meticulously crafted materials (especially stone surfaces) shouldn't logically be this impressive for a title that remains primarily overhead. You might not observe specific hair details, but you will see engravings on walls, flames emitting from lights, discoloration of masonry, pupils, and conifer needles. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and stars shining in the distance, generates a uniquely immersive environment, and proves significantly less intimidating relative to the previous game, now that the citizens don’t look like sleep paralysis demons anymore.

Testing and Personalization

Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode has no guided tutorial, I chose to test various actions, 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 back. I then decided to hit various digit inputs and found I could alter my representative's visual design. Amber garment? Crimson attire? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; when you press the action key, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I attempted, naturally).

Comedy and Population Encounters

But I wouldn’t wish to harm my citizens anyway, as they're remarkably entertaining. Shortly after I activated the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you feed it one more chicken, your elder will punish you.” Rightly so, Roman dad. A friendly native Celtic person then started applauding my outstanding integration methods by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” whereas an irritable elderly woman decided to threaten me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”

The Thrill of Transportation

Just as I assumed I had found everything available within the game's immersive perspective, I found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Completely unexpectedly, I interacted with a cart and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Bovines, equines, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, but don't anticipate any GTA-like shenanigans — you can’t drive into people or other wagons (again, not saying I’ve tried).

Combat Limitations

The only thing that disappointed me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was finding out I couldn’t partake in battle encounters. Equipped in warrior attire, I charged toward adversaries amidst fighting and endeavored to damage them, yet was completely overlooked. The close-up view was still rather spectacular, and seeing opponents retreat, their arms flailing about, felt highly gratifying, though it might have been amazing to successfully impact objects with my burning arrows.

{Conclusion: More to Discover|Final Thoughts: Additional Exploration