Review — Anno 117: Pax Romana. Become the governor of your own Roman…

Become the governor of your own Roman province during the golden era of the Roman Empire in Anno 117: Pax Romana.

With the latest iteration of its populair civilization game, Ubisoft left the industrial era behind and went back in time, to one of the most popular historical time periods in Western civilization. As we make a time jump of almost 1600 years, we arrive in the Roman era when it was at its golden age of economic and cultural flourish as well as political stability, a period also known as Pax Romana. In Anno 117: Pax Romana, we get to build our own settlement in the Roman Empire, which was at its peak in 117 AD after Trajan’s reign. The expansive nature of the Roman Empire and the concept of governors ruling their own settlements while answering to Rome lends itself perfectly to the city-building and management gameplay of the Anno series.

It isn’t the first time we get to build our empire during the Roman Era of course, as older gamers will probably remember the Caesar franchise, and we shouldn’t forget the Total War: Rome games neither. And then there’s Citadelum, an indie game that was clearly inspired by the formula of the Anno franchise and let us play as a Roman leader before Ubisoft Mainz gave us their interpretation of the Roman Empire. Having played Citadelum for many hours, I was wondering what Anno 117: Pax Romana would bring to the mix.

Building Your Own Empire

The core of the Anno formula has of course remained the same. You start with nothing more than a trading post and some wood to build residences. These residences will give you workers, here called liberti. As you’ll need more housing, you’ll have to build residences. But for this, you need wood, so you’ll construct a woodcutter and a sawmill to process the wood. You’ll need a warehouse to store your goods, and you’ll have to make sure everything is connected by roads to your trading post. As your liberti settle down, you’ll have to take care of their needs by providing food, clothing and activities, which will be a tavern and a market in first instance. As you slowly expand your settlement and fulfill these needs, your citizens will be able to upgrade to plebeians, equites and finally patricians, each coming with their own needs.

To produce goods, you’ll need to set up productions chains. To make bread for example, you’ll need a wheat farm, a grain mill and a bakery, and in order for the bakery to work, you’ll need a charcoal burner. Each of these facilities have an upkeep and require workers, so you’ll be basically managing your finances and the amount of workers you’ll need in your settlement, who in turn will also pay taxes. And before you know it, you’ll be exploring uncharted lands (or sea), engage in diplomacy and trade with other governors or even wage war against those that become your adversaries. As we’re dealing with polytheistic cultures this time around, you’ll even have to select the gods you want to worship and build sanctuaries for them. Each god will give you different bonuses, so chose wisely depending on the path you take to expand your region. Watching your settlement expand and grow, is as addicting as ever and is bound to keep strategy and building fans busy for hours.

The Paths You Walk

To play the game, you currently have two options. You can drop into the campaign, where you can either play as Marcia Tertia or Markus Naukratius, but no matter who you chose, your task will be to restore the colony Juliana to its former glory after is has been devastated by a volcano eruption. As you build your province, you’ll also be treated to some intrigue in relation to the emperor and his family, but sadly the campaign doesn’t properly tie all loose ends and it feels like a whole part of the campaign is missing. In the end, the campaign ends up feeling as some sort of expanded tutorial for the endless mode, that also happens to feature some story elements. The endless mode on the other hand is, as you might expect, one use sandbox mode giving you free reign on how you develop your own province.

The game gives you two maps to play on, the sunny and picturesque Latium, and the foggy and rainy Albion, filled with dense forests and marshlands. Albion gives you the option to play with the Celts and the interplay between these two cultures adds an interesting dynamic and due to the different setting, you’ll of course have other things to worry about and to think about as you’re planning your city expansion. Both modes can also be played in co-op, so if you have partner or a friend that want’s to team up, you can conquer these lands together. Or if you like to go up against each other, that’s of course also possible in the endless mode. Personally, I was also a fan of the Hall of Fame. Here you can spend the fame you earn throughout all your games to unlock various things like new specialists, portraits, decorations and gods that you can use in all subsequent games. It’s a nice way to include some sort of meta progression into the game and with eight tiers divided among the two regions, there’s already quite a bit for you to unlock.

The Visual Glory of Rome

As you might expect, Anno 117: Pax Romana is also the best looking Anno game to date. The level of detail is truly amazing and your settlements really feel like bustling hubs of human activity. The environments were also given the necessary treatment, as you’ll see trees dance in the wind, water flowing in the rivers and deer grazing in the grass for example. These small details really add to the beauty of the settlement you’re building. The interface of the game feels very user friendly, offering a lot of guidance for the players. This makes this entry very suitable for newcomers to the franchise. Veterans on the other hand might feel like the experience is a bit too streamlined, but some of the new tools really add to the accessibility of the game. And they should be happy that they can cinally build diagonal roads!

I played the game on PC and here the whole experience was very smooth. My biggest complaint was probably the extremely long loading screen every time you enter a new game, but luckily you’ll only experience this when starting or loading a game. I also experience an occasional freeze, but other than that, the performance was very good and I managed to run the game on the Very High settings with a 1440p resolution on my gaming laptop (Intel i7 13th gen, RTX 4080 and 32 GB RAM). I tried running the game at Ultra High without upscaling, but then the FPS dropped below 30 FPS. So yes, the game does require a hefty PC if you want to enjoy the game in all its visual glory, but the resul certainly speaks for itself.

4/5.

Reviewed on PC.
Download code provided by the publisher and PR agency.