Anno 117 Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Impressive First-Person Mode.
Hold on — were you aware gamers have the option to enjoy the game Anno 117 from a first-person viewpoint? If you're thinking that, your surprise matches compared to my initial response upon finding out this secret option. I must step away from managing my empire, delegate it to a reliable subordinate, take a wagon, and take a spin through Ancient Rome.
How to Access the First-Person Mode
As a city-building game, the game Anno 117 is typically played using a top-down camera. However, if you enter a secret combination — including “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on 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 was included in the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to experience it in the new release, but I wasn’t sure it would work prior to being stuck in a Celtic building (which probably wasn’t intended — this option is a little buggy at times).
Discovering the Streets of Rome
After extracting myself, I walked the bustling streets across my settlement and explored stalls, alehouses, blossom gardens, and shellfish gatherers — the experience was splendid to see all my hard work using an entirely new viewpoint. I observed a variety of intricacies that would escape notice from the top-down view: Front door decorations, a beast of burden holding a blossom container, fowl roaming freely, people relaxing on their verandas… Simply noticing the form of a ledge and the paint layers on a column proves fascinating to someone who doesn’t live in Ancient Rome.
Beyond Simple Strolling
However, there's additional content to the game's immersive perspective aside from meandering through streets. I felt particularly pleased the moment I learned that not only could I look upon crop lands, but also enter them. And although I’d assumed the building models would be off-limits, I managed to access clay pits, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building as teaching was underway, and intrude into private gardens. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the creators allocated resources for that), but it’s entirely possible meander across a cereal plantation, watch folks shoveling and carrying sacks, and look within any modest shelter provided the entrance is missing.
Appearance and Mood
While I was completely ready to observe my settlement depicted in PlayStation 1 graphics, besides some crude animations and periodic inhabitants sitting within a bench rather than on a bench, first-person mode looks considerably improved over predictions. The meticulously crafted materials (notably masonry elements) are unexpectedly excellent within a game that's fundamentally a city-builder. You might not observe specific hair details, but you will see writings on surfaces, flames emitting from lights, fading on bricks, eye details, and evergreen foliage. Nighttime, with its flickering fires and stars shining in the distance, creates a particularly moody setting, and proves significantly less intimidating relative to the previous game, especially since the inhabitants no longer resemble sleep paralysis demons anymore.
Testing and Personalization
Given the covert first-person feature lacks official documentation, I opted to try different commands, and quickly discovered the functions for jumping, dashing, and adjusting the view — the zoom function permitting me to change from first-person to third-person mode and return. I then experimented with various digit inputs and found I could alter my character’s appearance. Yellow toga? Ruby clothing? Azure and violet outfit? Or — perhaps even better — full armor? You might hold a weapon and defense, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. If you're interested, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I’ve tried, of course).
Humor and Citizen Interactions
However, I had no desire to injure my people, as they're remarkably entertaining. Moments after I entered the first-person view, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet 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 calling it the “Best of both worlds,” meanwhile a grumpy senior female opted to menace me: “Say that one more time, and they’ll never find your body.”
The Fun of Vehicle Use
At the moment I believed I’d discovered all there is to discover in the title's first-person feature, I encountered the delight of riding across historical settings. Completely unexpectedly, I interacted with a cart and immediately found myself in the driver's position. Cattle, asses, even people-powered transports; you can control each one as desired. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, is pretty fast, but don't anticipate any GTA-like shenanigans — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (once more, not admitting any attempts).
Fighting Restrictions
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in any fighting. Sporting my soldier fit, 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 seeing opponents retreat, their appendages thrashing around, proved very satisfying, though it might have been amazing to actually hit something with my burning arrows.
