Anno 117: Pax Romana's Best-Kept Secret Is a Stunning First-Person Perspective.
Surprisingly — did you realize gamers have the option to enjoy the game Anno 117 using a first-person camera? If that’s your reaction, you’re just as shocked as I was when I discovered this hidden feature. I must temporarily abandon my empire’s management, delegate it to a capable deputy, take a wagon, and take a spin through Ancient Rome.
How to Access the First-Person Feature
As a city-building game, the game Anno 117 is typically played from a bird's-eye view. Yet, when you enter a secret combination — for example “Ctrl,” “Shift,” and “R” using PC controls alternatively “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B/Circle, A/X” on a controller — you can explore your domain as a common citizen. Given a comparable hidden feature appeared in the previous Anno title, I was eager to try it out in the new release, yet I had doubts it would operate until I found myself stuck in a Celtic building (possibly an unexpected bug — this feature can be a little buggy at times).
Exploring the Roman Cityscape
After extracting myself, I strolled the bustling streets through my metropolis and visited shops, taverns, flower fields, and cockle pickers — it felt magnificent to see all my hard work from a brand-new perspective. I noticed a variety of intricacies I might have missed from the top-down view: Front door decorations, an ass transporting a floral pail, chickens running loose, folks chilling on their balconies… Simply noticing the design of a windowsill and the paint layers on a column is quite interesting to modern individuals unfamiliar with ancient life.
Further Than Mere Wandering
However, there's additional content to the first-person feature in Anno 117 than strolling along the road. I became extraordinarily excited upon discovering that I could not just look upon farming fields, but also step into them. And even though I thought the building models would be off-limits, I was able to enter clay pits, tour an esteemed educational structure during active classes, and intrude into private gardens. Don’t try to open any doors (not even the studio have the budget for that), however, you can definitely wander through a grain field, see citizens working with tools and burdens, and glance into any tiny hut as long as the door is absent.
Graphics and Ambiance
Even though I expected to witness my city rendered with outdated visual quality, excluding a few unpolished motions and periodic inhabitants sitting inside seating rather than on a bench, the first-person view appears considerably improved over predictions. The meticulously crafted materials (particularly rock faces) really have no business being this good for a title that remains primarily overhead. You won't necessarily notice specific hair details, but you will see writings on surfaces, fiery particles from lamps, fading on bricks, iris elements, and evergreen foliage. The night, featuring dancing flames and stars shining in the distance, creates a particularly moody setting, and feels much less frightening versus the earlier title, given that the populace appears unlike terrifying apparitions now.
Testing and Personalization
Because the game's hidden immersive perspective doesn’t come with an instruction manual, I decided to experiment a bit, and promptly found the abilities to leap, run, and changing perspective — the last option enabling me to switch between first and third-person views and return. I then experimented with some number buttons and discovered that I could change my character’s appearance. Yellow toga? Crimson attire? Azure and violet outfit? Or — maybe superior — complete battle gear? You can wield a blade and protection, or, my favorite, don a marksman outfit; if you hit the interaction button, you shoot flaming projectiles upward. Should you be curious, eliminating citizens cannot be done (not that I attempted, naturally).
Comedy and Population Encounters
Yet, I didn't want to damage my population, as they're remarkably entertaining. Moments after I entered first-person mode, I overheard a father telling his child that “You cannot keep a fox as a pet and if you feed it one more chicken, your grandmother will be furious.” Appropriate response, paternal figure. A pleasant regional Celt then proceeded to praise 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 Fun of Vehicle Use
Just as I assumed I had found everything available in the title's first-person feature, I encountered the delight of riding through classical settlements. Entirely by accident, I selected a carriage and quickly occupied the transport. Bovines, equines, even manually drawn vehicles; you may operate any of them freely. The donkey cart, in particular, is pretty fast, but don't anticipate open-world vehicular chaos — colliding with pedestrians or other carts is impossible (again, not saying I’ve tried).
Battle Constraints
The single feature that frustrated me in Anno 117’s first-person mode was finding out I couldn’t partake in combat situations. Wearing my military outfit, I approached opposing forces in the midst of battle and tried to harm them, only to be ignored completely. The close-up view was still rather spectacular, and observing foes flee, their appendages thrashing around, proved very satisfying, but it would’ve been cool to successfully impact objects via my incendiary bolts.
