Hold on — were you aware gamers have the option to enjoy Anno 117: Pax Romana in first-person? If you're thinking that, you’re just as shocked as my own reaction the moment I learned this concealed mode. Allow me to temporarily abandon overseeing my civilization, entrust it to a reliable subordinate, take a wagon, and enjoy a ride through Ancient Rome.
As a city-building game, the game Anno 117 is normally experienced from a bird's-eye view. But, should you enter a secret combination — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you gain the ability to walk your domain as a common citizen. Given a comparable hidden feature appeared in the earlier game Anno 1800, I looked forward to test it in the new release, but I wasn’t sure it would work prior to being chin-deep in a Celtic floorboard (likely not meant to happen — this feature can be prone to glitches now and then).
Once I crawled out, I strolled the bustling streets across my settlement and visited stalls, alehouses, flower fields, and cockle pickers — it felt magnificent to observe all my hard work through a fresh lens. I detected a variety of intricacies that would escape notice when viewing from overhead: Doorway embellishments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, fowl roaming freely, citizens lounging on their terraces… Even just observing the form of a ledge and the coloration on a post proves fascinating to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased the moment I learned that not only could I look upon farming fields, but also step into them. And even though I thought structures would be inaccessible, I was able to enter earthen quarries, tour an esteemed educational structure during active classes, and intrude into private gardens. Don't bother with door access (not even the studio planned for that functionality), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut when there's no doorway obstructing.
Even though I expected to witness my city rendered with outdated visual quality, apart from certain rough movements and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the immersive perspective seems much better than expected. The intricately designed surfaces (especially stone surfaces) shouldn't logically be this impressive for a title that remains primarily overhead. You may not see specific hair details, yet you will notice writings on surfaces, flames emitting from lights, brick decoloration, iris elements, and pine tree leaves. Evening, with glowing light sources and stars shining in the distance, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary versus the earlier title, now that the citizens don’t look like terrifying apparitions anymore.
Since Anno 117’s super-secret first-person mode lacks official documentation, I opted to try different commands, and promptly found the functions for jumping, dashing, and changing perspective — 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 avatar's look. Yellow toga? Ruby clothing? Azure and violet outfit? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You can wield a blade and protection, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; when you press the action key, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. In case you’re wondering, eliminating citizens cannot be done (though I didn't test this, obviously).
However, I had no desire to injure my people, since they're incredibly amusing. Moments after I entered the immersive perspective, I overheard a father telling his child that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you feed it one more chicken, your elder will punish you.” Understandable stance, father character. A friendly native Celtic person then proceeded to praise my outstanding integration methods by describing it as “Ideal combination,” whereas an irritable elderly woman opted to menace me: “Utter those words again, and your fate will be sealed.”
At the moment I believed I had found everything available in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I found the joys of joyriding in Ancient Rome. Completely unexpectedly, I clicked on a wagon and quickly occupied the transport. Oxen, donkeys, even manually drawn vehicles; you can control each one as desired. The donkey cart, in particular, is pretty fast, although you shouldn't expect open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (again, not saying I’ve tried).
The sole aspect that let me down in Anno 117’s first-person mode was discovering my inability to participate in any fighting. Wearing my military outfit, I charged toward adversaries during active combat and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The front-row seat was still rather spectacular, and observing foes flee, their appendages thrashing around, proved very satisfying, yet it would have been exciting to actually hit something via my incendiary bolts.
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