Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Stunning First-Person View.
Wait — did you know you can play Anno 117 Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? If you're thinking that, your surprise matches as my own reaction upon finding out this hidden feature. Allow me to step away from managing my empire, delegate it to a reliable subordinate, take a wagon, and go for a joyride through Ancient Rome.
How to Access the First-Person Feature
Being a city-building title, Anno 117: Pax Romana usually operates from a bird's-eye view. But, should you enter a secret combination — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard 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. Given a comparable hidden feature appeared in Anno 1800, I was eager to try it out in the new release, yet I had doubts it would work until I found myself chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature tends to be somewhat unstable occasionally).
Roaming the Ancient Streets
Once I crawled out, I strolled the lively avenues across my settlement and visited markets, breweries, floral patches, and seafood collectors — it felt magnificent to observe all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I noticed a variety of intricacies that would escape notice from above: Entryway ornaments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Simply noticing the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar is quite interesting to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
More Than Just Walking
However, there's additional content to the game's immersive perspective beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased when I found out that not only could I look upon farming fields, but also step into them. And although I’d assumed interiors would be restricted, I managed to access mud extraction sites, investigate a respected schoolhouse during active classes, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the developers allocated resources for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and glance into any tiny hut when there's no doorway obstructing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Even though I expected to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, besides some crude animations and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, first-person mode looks far superior to anticipations. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) shouldn't logically be this impressive for a title that remains primarily overhead. You may not see separate follicular elements, however, you can observe engravings on walls, fiery particles from lamps, discoloration of masonry, iris elements, and evergreen foliage. Evening, with glowing light sources and distant stellar illumination, creates a particularly moody setting, and proves significantly less intimidating compared to Anno 1800, given that the populace appears unlike sleep paralysis demons anymore.
Experimentation and Customization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective lacks official documentation, I chose to test various actions, and quickly discovered the options to jump, sprint, and changing perspective — the zoom function permitting me to change from first-person to third-person mode and back. I then experimented with certain numeric keys and discovered that I could change my avatar's look. Yellow toga? Ruby clothing? Azure and violet outfit? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You may carry a sword and shield, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; if you activate the engage command, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, harming inhabitants is impossible (not that I attempted, naturally).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, as they're remarkably entertaining. Only seconds after I landed the immersive perspective, I heard a parent advising their offspring that he “Can’t have a pet fox and should you provide another poultry, your gran will have your head.” Rightly so, Roman dad. A pleasant regional Celt then started applauding my excellent cross-cultural strategies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” whereas an irritable elderly woman chose to intimidate me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
Just as I assumed I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I found the joys of joyriding through classical settlements. Completely unexpectedly, I interacted with a cart and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Bovines, equines, even people-powered transports; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey-powered transport, notably, moves quite quickly, although you shouldn't expect any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Battle Constraints
The sole aspect that let me down within the immersive perspective was discovering my inability to participate in combat situations. Wearing my military outfit, I charged toward adversaries amidst fighting and attempted to attack them, only to be ignored completely. The close-up view was nonetheless magnificent, and watching the enemy run, their arms flailing about, felt highly gratifying, but it would’ve been cool to successfully impact objects via my incendiary bolts.
