While the city-builder genre is far from its heyday when it comes to popularity, these kinds of games have essentially been relegated to the indie space and one AAA franchise—Anno, which has done a pretty good job of keeping up with the times. The genre has seen all kinds of games, from more free-form sandbox-style gameplay, such as the Manor Lords and Farthest Frontier franchises, to more objective-oriented games like Frostpunk. The Anno series has always fallen somewhere in between these two styles; they’ve offered fun stories through their campaigns while also featuring plenty of freedom in their sandbox modes.
The latest in the franchise – Anno 117: Pax Romana – is the farthest back in time that the series has gone so far, focusing on the height of the Roman Empire. While this might sound like a superficial aspect of the title, the setting for each Anno game has always had a deep impact on its gameplay. Much of the franchise revolves around establishing and managing supply chains and trade to ensure that your citizens are happy, employed, and have just about everything they need to prosper.
“Much like previous entries, the early hours of the campaign serves as a long tutorial with a narrative framework that introduces new gameplay concepts at a gradual pace.”
The supply chains are a great example of just how much the change in setting is more than superficial. Whereas Anno 1800 revolved more around the Industrial Revolution, with players setting up everything that an epic factory or three would need, Anno 117: Pax Romana instead has smaller-scale supply chains, especially at the beginning. You’re not going to be leaving your starting island in search of new resources as quickly as you did in the previous title. Instead, the focus is on agriculture and small-scale industry, i.e. setting up bakeries and the facilities needed to create pots out of clay. Not to say that things don’t quickly surge in complexity, but Anno 117‘s gradual introduction to its mechanics ensures a smooth learning curve.
Much like previous entries, the early hours of the campaign serves as a long tutorial with a narrative framework that introduces new gameplay concepts at a gradual pace. You start by picking your character and joining a major Senatorial family, and then getting tasked with building out a new settlement on an island ravaged by a volcanic eruption. You’ll start small, learning how to build houses and upgrade them to attract different kinds of citizens before delving into producing necessities like food and clothing to ensure that your citizens are as happy and productive as possible.
The campaign also has you partaking in some light instances of courtroom and senatorial drama in the Roman Empire, culminating in the player assuming duties over their own house. With that out of the way, we can finally talk about the main attraction of Anno 117: Pax Romana – the sandbox mode, where all the shackles come off and you’re thrown right into the thick of it.
“Anno 117: Pax Romana is the farthest back in time that the series has gone so far, focusing on the height of the Roman Empire.”
The 117 AD setting of the game offers interesting challenges, especially for those accustomed to the luxuries of later time periods. Along with providing a glimpse into the daily life of the era, from the various classes of citizens, to how industry and culture evolved, Pax Romana also offers some unique gameplay by tapping into how the Roman Empire dealt with the denizens of some of the lands they had settled. Throughout the campaign and in the sandbox mode, you can build out cities closer to Rome or expand out into islands with settlers. While not much has changed in the typical minute-to-minute city-building and planning gameplay, the Ancient Rome setting does add a few new interesting wrinkles in various forms, ranging from diplomacy to how you go about handling the needs of your citizens, from their desire for higher education and hygiene to even just wanting a communal place to hang out.
However, as grand as these might sound, in broad strokes, they don’t really represent a brand-new frontier for the franchise. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Anno 117: Pax Romana doesn’t tap as deeply into its excellent setting as classic city builders did once upon a time. The arenas you can construct in your city don’t do much more than contribute a few more points towards fulfilling a villager’s need for entertainment. All in all, while there are a few meaningful changes compared to its predecessor, it’s baffling that some of the more interesting aspects of the Roman Empire setting were left on the table (likely for post-launch expansions to pick up the slack).
While trade and industry make up much of the gameplay, there is also the option to form an army and flex your military might over the entire region. You can set up armies of varying sizes and grades, across a variety of weapon types. Military combat in Anno 117: Pax Romana works on a rock-paper-scissors system where spears can defeat cavalry, which in turn can defeat ranged soldiers, who are adept at taking out spearmen. You might even find yourself forming a military without any plans of forceful expansion, since some maps in the sandbox mode have the tendency of throwing raiders at you that can steal your resources, and even destroy your buildings. While it might be quite basic, the military based gameplay does its job well enough. Don’t expect anything as deep as an actual real-time strategy game would offer, however. If soldiers and armies are what you enjoy about the Roman Empire, other games might be more your speed.
Mind you, that’s not to say that Anno 117: Pax Romana doesn’t excel at its main focus, city-building. It offers some excellent refinements over Anno 1800, and visually speaking, you’d have to search far and wide for other games in the same league. Similarly, even the sound design and soundtrack are quite good, immersing you in its world thanks to calming music, the chatter of villagers going about their day, and the sounds of industry coming in from where you might have set down your stone workers and wood cutters.
“Pax Romana also offers some unique gameplay by tapping into how the Roman Empire dealt with the denizens of some of the lands they had settled.”
The visuals are especially helped by the fact that Anno 117: Pax Romana runs quite well. On a PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32 GB of RAM and an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, I was able to get fantastically smooth frame rates that remained well over 60 FPS on average at 1440p, even when things started getting much busier with several active buildings and villagers walking around. The only time I was able to notice any hitches was a few micro stutters when zooming all the way out of the map in an effort to coordinate the exploration missions of my various ships.
Anno 117: Pax Romana offers the most polished and streamlined gameplay in the city-building franchise so far, without sacrificing too much in terms of depth. However, the previous entry is much more feature-complete than this, thanks to its plethora of expansions. Nevertheless, you’re in it for the distinctly Roman flavor and how its nuances impact all these tried-and-true systems. For now, that’s enough, but just like how Rome wasn’t built in a day, Anno 117 has plenty of room to reach its full potential.
This game was reviewed on PC.
