Anno 117: Pax Romana's Top Secret Turns Out to Be a Breathtaking First-Person Mode.
Wait — did you know you can play Anno 117 Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? If that’s your reaction, you feel equally astonished as my own reaction when I discovered this secret option. Excuse me while step away from managing my empire, leave it in a reliable subordinate, borrow a cart, and take a spin around the classical city.
Activating the First-Person Feature
As a city-building game, Anno 117 Pax Romana is normally experienced from an overhead perspective. However, if you input a hidden code — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on console — you gain the ability to walk the empire as an ordinary Roman. Since a similar easter egg was part of Anno 1800, I looked forward to test it in the latest installment, though I was uncertain it would work before I discovered myself submerged in a structural glitch (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature is a little buggy at times).
Discovering the Ancient Streets
Once I crawled out, I wandered the bustling streets across my settlement and visited stalls, alehouses, flower fields, and seafood collectors — it felt magnificent to observe all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I noticed a variety of intricacies I might have missed from above: Entryway ornaments, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, poultry scattering about, people relaxing on their verandas… Merely examining the form of a ledge and the paint layers on a column proves fascinating to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
Beyond Simple Strolling
However, there's additional content to Anno 117’s first-person mode beyond simply walking the paths. I became extraordinarily excited when I found out that not only could I look upon crop lands, but also access them. And despite my expectation interiors would be restricted, I could walk onto mud extraction sites, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building as teaching was underway, and invade personal courtyards. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the studio planned for that functionality), but it’s entirely possible wander through a grain field, observe people digging and transporting bags, and look within any modest shelter as long as the door is absent.
Appearance and Mood
While I was completely ready to witness my city rendered with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting in a bench rather than on a bench, the immersive perspective seems far superior to anticipations. The highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, yet you will notice engravings on walls, flames emitting from lights, brick decoloration, eye details, and evergreen foliage. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and celestial bodies twinkling afar, is especially atmospheric, and also a lot less scary versus the earlier title, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble sleep paralysis demons these days.
Discovery and Modification
Given the covert first-person feature doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and immediately located the functions for jumping, dashing, and changing perspective — the zoom function permitting me to change from first-person to third-person mode and return. I then decided to hit some number buttons and learned I could modify my character’s appearance. Amber garment? Crimson attire? Azure and violet outfit? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You can wield a blade and protection, or, preferably, wear an archer's uniform; when you press the action key, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. Should you be curious, harming inhabitants is impossible (not that I attempted, naturally).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, since they're incredibly amusing. Moments after I entered first-person mode, I overheard a father telling his child that “Owning a fox is prohibited and if you offer additional fowl, your grandmother will be furious.” Rightly so, Roman dad. A friendly native Celtic person then started applauding my excellent cross-cultural strategies by calling it the “Best of both worlds,” while some cranky old lady chose to intimidate me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Thrill of Transportation
At the moment I believed I uncovered all possible content in the title's first-person feature, I experienced the pleasure of driving across historical settings. Entirely by accident, I clicked on a wagon and was promptly seated on the box. Cattle, asses, even people-powered transports; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey cart, in particular, moves quite quickly, although you shouldn't expect Grand Theft Auto-style mischief — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Combat Limitations
The only thing that disappointed me within the immersive perspective was discovering my inability to participate in combat situations. Wearing my military outfit, I ran up to the enemy in the midst of battle and attempted to attack them, but was entirely disregarded. The front-row seat was nonetheless magnificent, 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.
