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Surprisingly — did you realize it's possible to experience Anno 117 Pax Romana using a first-person camera? If you're thinking that, your surprise matches compared to my initial response when I discovered this hidden feature. Excuse me while temporarily abandon overseeing my civilization, entrust it to a capable deputy, take a wagon, and enjoy a ride through Ancient Rome.

Activating the First-Person Mode

In its role as a city-builder, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played from a bird's-eye view. Yet, when you input a hidden code — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a 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. Because an analogous secret was part of Anno 1800, I felt excited to experience it in the latest installment, though I was uncertain it would operate before I discovered myself chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (likely not meant to happen — this option is somewhat unstable occasionally).

Roaming the Roman Cityscape

After extracting myself, I wandered the bustling streets of my city and explored markets, breweries, blossom gardens, and seafood collectors — it was glorious to witness all my hard work through a fresh lens. I observed a variety of intricacies I wouldn’t have spotted from the top-down view: Entryway ornaments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, chickens running loose, folks chilling on their balconies… Even just observing the shape of a window sill and the paint layers on a column becomes engaging to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.

Further Than Mere Wandering

But there’s more to Anno 117’s first-person mode than strolling along the road. I felt particularly pleased upon discovering that I could not just view agricultural plots, but also step into them. And despite my expectation the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto earthen quarries, tour an esteemed educational structure while lessons were in session, and even trespass into people’s gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the studio allocated resources for that), however, you can definitely stroll around a barley farm, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and take a peek inside any small shack as long as the door is absent.

Appearance and Mood

Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting within a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears far superior to anticipations. The meticulously crafted materials (especially stone surfaces) really have no business being this good within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You might not observe any individual strands of hair, yet you will notice engravings on walls, sparks flying from torches, fading on bricks, eye details, and conifer needles. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble terrifying apparitions now.

Discovery and Modification

Given the covert first-person feature has no guided tutorial, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the options to jump, sprint, and zoom in or out — with the latter allowing me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and return. I subsequently tried pressing some number buttons and discovered that I could change my avatar's look. Amber garment? Ruby clothing? Azure and violet outfit? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; 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).

Comedy and Population Encounters

However, I had no desire to injure my people, because they’re way too funny. Only seconds after I landed first-person mode, 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 brilliant Romano-Celtic policies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” while some cranky old lady chose to intimidate me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”

The Joy of Joyriding

At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content within the game's immersive perspective, I experienced the pleasure of driving through classical settlements. Entirely by accident, I interacted with a cart and quickly occupied the transport. Oxen, donkeys, even people-powered transports; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey cart, in particular, is pretty fast, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (reiterating, without confirming testing).

Battle Constraints

The single feature that frustrated me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was learning about my exclusion from in battle encounters. Wearing my military outfit, I ran up to the enemy amidst fighting and endeavored to damage them, only to be ignored completely. The close-up view remained quite impressive, and seeing opponents retreat, their limbs waving wildly, felt highly gratifying, though it might have been amazing to actually hit something using my fiery projectiles.

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