Anno 117: Pax Romana Review – This City Builder Rules

Anno 117: Pax Romana Review

Although I never fancied myself as the Indiana Jones type, I loved archaeology as a kid. I thought making reproductions of Sumerian cuneiform tablets and trying to recreate Egyptian papyrus was fun. Yes, I was THAT nerdy. Fast forward several — who am I kidding, many — decades, and I get to play Anno 117: Pax Romana. It combines two of my favorite things, city builders and ancient history. Win-win for me.

Rome’s Last Hurrah

Anno games have previously covered historical periods from the European Age of Enlightenment through the speculative far future. Although the details are different, the basic template remains consistent. Your task is always to create a series of thriving cities, keep the population happy, establish trade routes, and raise a military for defense or domination. Anno 117 is not a pure city builder, so you’re not worried about the electric power grid, traffic flow, or underground sewer systems. Well, that’s not entirely true. Aqueducts are a thing.

As the title suggests, the game takes place in a period of relative peace and prosperity, Rome’s golden age. It was marked by wise leadership, territorial expansion, and overall prosperity throughout the Empire. Little did the content Roman citizens know that their happy lives would be upended by a contentious Emperor and decades of civil war, strife, and a collapsing sphere of influence.

The game’s campaign serves as an extended tutorial, though it’s a relatively bland drama. You have a choice of two characters (whose stories eventually connect), and start in either the fog-shrouded Celtic land of Albion or sunny Italy. Either way, the player learns the game’s basic systems. The campaign is well-acted and written, and short enough to make it worth playing.

In a Box of Sand

I suspect that many experienced Anno players with forego the campaign and jump headfirst into the endless sandbox mode. Many fans will start in Albion, as it presents some interesting features and complications. For one thing, there are lots of decision points having to do with either preserving or subsuming ancient Celtic traditions. Both choices come with positive and negative consequences. Maybe most significant has to do with whether your citizens retain their old religious beliefs or turn to the Roman pantheon of gods. The Italian countryside is a little more hospitable at the start.

Either way, you begin with a seaside or inland trading post, then build the usual infrastructure like simple housing, logging camps, warehouses, and roads to connect everything. Establishing satellite cities or production-centric towns, building alliances and trade routes, and funding a navy or land-based troops follow in short order. Often, unlocking new abilities or facilities is tied to reaching certain goals. Naturally, nearly every facet of building in Anno 117: Pax Romana has multiple prerequisites.

All this suggests depth and complexity, and that’s certainly the case. The game is constantly alerting the player about one failure, opportunity, or missing piece of one type or another. Your little town will probably never just happily hum along for very long, if ever. Generally, the game does a pretty good job of making actionable information accessible via the UI.  However, it will take some time to discover where things are hidden. I played both with a controller and a mouse/keyboard. I always prefer the latter for these kinds of games.

A Beautiful Vision of Imperial Life

From its wealth of cultural and architectural detail to the ravishing landscapes, Anno 117 looks fantastic, definitely the best in the franchise so far. The day and night cycle, weather, and lighting are all evocative. It doesn’t take too long before a primitive village transforms into a thriving town. Watching the citizens go about their daily lives, battle, or sail around the islands is engrossing. The talking heads of the campaign characters aren’t incredibly impressive, but they don’t seriously degrade the experience.

Anno 117’s orchestral musical score is easily one of this year’s best and rewards listening outside of the game. Performances in the campaign and overall environmental audio design help bring the world to life. Aside from some small issues with a hard-to-tame camera, the technical state of Anno 117 is solid. There are many options for adjusting not only the audio and graphics performance, but also tweaking the various parameters of difficulty and assistance in the campaign and sandbox. Unless I missed it, there’s no map editor, which is disappointing. You can, however, make adjustments to the map prior to its generation.

Calm Before the Storm

Anno 117: Pax Romana takes the series into fertile new historical territory and is one of the best games in the Anno franchise, as well as being one of the most enjoyable city builder sims in recent memory. Polished, incredibly detailed, and beautiful to look at, Anno 117 hides imposing systems depth and complexity behind a relatively accessible interface. Like the Roman Empire itself, the game is a perfect platform for inevitable expansion. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of quality content for fans of the genre.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***