Anno 117's Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Reveals Itself as a Breathtaking First-Person Mode.
Hold on — were you aware you can play the game Anno 117 from a first-person viewpoint? Should that be your response, your surprise matches as my own reaction upon finding out this concealed mode. I must briefly leave my empire’s management, leave it in a trusted assistant, take a wagon, and go for a joyride through Ancient Rome.
How to Access the First-Person Feature
As a city-building game, Anno 117: Pax Romana is typically played from a bird's-eye view. But, should you input a hidden code — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls or else “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. Since a similar easter egg was part of Anno 1800, I was eager to experience it in the new release, though I was uncertain it would work until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature can be prone to glitches now and then).
Exploring the Roman Cityscape
Upon freeing myself, I wandered the busy roads through my metropolis and toured shops, taverns, floral patches, and cockle pickers — it felt magnificent to witness my diligent efforts using an entirely new viewpoint. I observed all kinds of details I might have missed from above: Entryway ornaments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, poultry scattering about, people relaxing on their verandas… Simply noticing the shape of a window sill and the coating on a pillar proves fascinating for those not residing in classical times.
Further Than Mere Wandering
However, there's additional content to the game's immersive perspective than strolling along the road. I felt particularly pleased when I found out that I could not just look upon agricultural plots, but also step into them. And despite my expectation structures would be inaccessible, I could walk onto mud extraction sites, 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, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut as long as the door is absent.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Although I was fully prepared to see my metropolis represented using primitive rendering, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting within a bench as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears much better than expected. The intricately designed surfaces (notably masonry elements) really have no business being this good for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice any individual strands of hair, yet you will notice engravings on walls, flames emitting from lights, brick decoloration, iris elements, and evergreen foliage. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and distant stellar illumination, is especially atmospheric, and feels much less frightening compared to Anno 1800, now that the citizens don’t look like sleep paralysis demons anymore.
Experimentation and Customization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective has no guided tutorial, I opted to try different commands, and immediately located the abilities to leap, run, and changing perspective — the zoom function permitting me to alternate between immersive and external perspectives and revert. I then decided to hit some number buttons and discovered that I could change my avatar's look. Yellow toga? Crimson attire? Blue and purple toga? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You can wield a blade and protection, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; if you activate the engage command, you’ll fire burning arrows into the sky. If you're interested, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I attempted, naturally).
Comedy and Population Encounters
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, since they're incredibly amusing. 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 if you offer additional fowl, your gran will have your head.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. One lovely local Celt then began complimenting my outstanding integration methods by describing it as “Ideal combination,” while some cranky old lady opted to menace me: “Repeat that statement, and your disappearance will be permanent.”
The Thrill of Transportation
Just as I assumed I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Totally unintentionally, I clicked on a wagon and was promptly seated on the box. Oxen, donkeys, even human-pulled carts; you can drive them all at your leisure. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, though you shouldn’t imagine open-world vehicular chaos — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Battle Constraints
The only thing that disappointed me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was learning about my exclusion from in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, I approached opposing forces during active combat and attempted to attack them, but was entirely disregarded. The proximate observation was nonetheless magnificent, and seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, proved very satisfying, yet it would have been exciting to effectively strike targets via my incendiary bolts.
