Anno 117 Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Turns Out to Be a Impressive First-Person View.
Wait — did you know you can play Anno 117 Pax Romana from a first-person viewpoint? Should that be your response, you’re just as shocked as I was upon finding out this hidden feature. I must temporarily abandon managing my empire, leave it in a capable deputy, take a wagon, and enjoy a ride through Ancient Rome.
Unlocking the First-Person Feature
In its role as a city-builder, Anno 117 Pax Romana usually operates from a bird's-eye view. Yet, when you press a covert button sequence — such as “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” on a keyboard or “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can explore your domain as a common citizen. Since a similar easter egg was part of the earlier game Anno 1800, I felt excited to test it in the new release, but I wasn’t sure it would work until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (likely not meant to happen — this feature tends to be a little buggy at times).
Roaming the Ancient Streets
After extracting myself, I strolled the bustling streets through my metropolis and explored shops, taverns, floral patches, and shellfish gatherers — it felt magnificent to observe the fruits of my labor through a fresh lens. I observed numerous fine points that would escape notice when viewing from overhead: Doorway embellishments, a donkey carrying a flower bucket, chickens running loose, citizens lounging on their terraces… Merely examining the design of a windowsill and the paint layers on a column becomes engaging for those not residing in classical times.
Further Than Mere Wandering
But there’s more to Anno 117’s first-person mode beyond simply walking the paths. I felt particularly pleased the moment I learned that I could not just view farming fields, but also step into them. And although I’d assumed the building models would be off-limits, I could walk onto mud extraction sites, explore a prestigious Grammaticus building during active classes, and invade personal courtyards. Avoid attempting to open doors (not even the developers allocated resources for that), but it’s entirely possible stroll around a barley farm, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and look within any modest shelter when there's no doorway obstructing.
Visual Quality and Atmosphere
Even though I expected to see my metropolis represented using primitive rendering, besides some crude animations and the occasional civilian resting inside seating as opposed to atop a bench, the first-person view appears much better than expected. The highly detailed textures (particularly rock faces) shouldn't logically be this impressive for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice separate follicular elements, but you will see wall inscriptions, sparks flying from torches, brick decoloration, eye details, and evergreen foliage. The night, featuring dancing flames and celestial bodies twinkling afar, is especially atmospheric, and feels much less frightening compared to Anno 1800, given that the populace appears unlike sleep paralysis demons now.
Testing and Personalization
Given the covert first-person feature has no guided tutorial, I opted to try different commands, and immediately located the abilities to leap, run, and adjusting the view — with the latter allowing me to switch between first and third-person views and revert. I then decided to hit various digit inputs and discovered that I could change my avatar's look. Amber garment? Red toga? Sapphire and amethyst dress? Or — potentially preferable — armored suit? You can wield a blade and protection, or, personally chosen, equip a shooter's costume; if you activate the engage command, you launch incendiary bolts heavenward. Should you be curious, it’s not possible to kill civilians (not that I attempted, naturally).
Amusement and Inhabitant Dialogues
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, because they’re way too funny. Only seconds after I landed the immersive perspective, I listened to a dad instructing his kid that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you offer additional fowl, your elder will punish you.” Understandable stance, father character. A pleasant regional Celt then started applauding my excellent cross-cultural strategies by describing it as “Ideal combination,” 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 had found everything available in Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first-person mode, I found the joys of joyriding across historical settings. Completely unexpectedly, I selected a carriage and was promptly seated on the box. Bovines, equines, even human-pulled carts; you can control each one as desired. The ass-drawn vehicle, specifically, moves quite quickly, although you shouldn't expect open-world vehicular chaos — impacting citizens or additional vehicles cannot occur (reiterating, without confirming testing).
Fighting Restrictions
The single feature that frustrated me regarding the first-person view was learning about my exclusion from in combat situations. Equipped in warrior attire, I approached opposing forces in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, but was entirely disregarded. The close-up view remained quite impressive, and watching the enemy run, their appendages thrashing around, felt highly gratifying, but it would’ve been cool to actually hit something using my fiery projectiles.
