Anno 117: Pax Romana Review - An Empire Wasn't Built in a Day

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Strategy games have this particular ability of making you lose hours of your day by watching a civilization grow. A promising sign that one of these games is good is that, after the friendly NPC reminds you that you’ve been managing a city for two hours, you decide to ignore it and continue building. Anno 117: Pax Romana gives you that “just five more minutes” feeling almost effortlessly. Plus, its gorgeous setting in the Roman Empire elevates this strategy sim, making it excellent for hardcore fans, but even better for newcomers.

Roman Tales

As I mentioned during my preview, the best part of Anno 117: Pax Romana is its campaign mode. This time, instead of only one, you get to pick between the tales of two siblings, Marcia and Marcus. I tried both, but the truth is that it was the former who charmed me more, as her story around an empire built mostly by men felt much more elaborate, and had a lot of mystery as I went from one act to the other.

While I won’t spoil much of the narrative, Marcia’s tale is all about landing in one horrible situation after another and making the best out of it. During the first few chapters, she starts running errands for an emperor, and little by little gets involved in a mystery that involves an enemy faction, injustice, and other things that are definitely worth finding out on your own.

Yet what really hooked me about the campaign was how well it weaved all the gameplay elements to gradually introduce you to every intricate system in the game, without feeling like a glorified tutorial.

For instance, during the first chapters, you’ll be building your city peacefully. You’ll learn about all your citizens’ needs, how to keep your city safe, clearing up rubble from ruins to get more building space, and so on. What makes this feel more dynamic is the fact that there’s always a narrative objective behind it, yet that doesn’t mean you only need to do what the game tells you to do. While you’re getting those expensive tiles for an NPC, you can start working on your temple, host a festival, or begin amassing an army for any inevitable fight. The campaign mode flawlessly balances that bit of hand-holding we need to get into the game while also offering you a lot of freedom to chart your own course.

However, this doesn’t mean it isn’t challenging. The campaign mode turned out to be extremely difficult, especially during the second act. At one point, Marcia had to leave for the second region in the game, Albion. This place is full of swamp areas, meaning that building requires a more strategic approach, as it is more expensive and requires more materials. Plus, you can’t place every building in the marshlands.

Here is where I started to see just how badly managed my city was. At first, it was all happy reed-picking and house-building. However, once a certain story event occurred, I ended up taking out a loan that eventually sent me into debt. And if that wasn’t enough, an enemy army attacked me, razing some of my buildings. Oh, but that wasn’t the end of my woes, as I now had to set out on a new island to do some ore mining in the hopes of preventing a war from erupting.

While it was certainly difficult and there were times I wanted to restart my campaign, the truth is that I never felt it was too punishing to the point that I couldn’t get back on my feet. The game gives you several options ot put your civilization back on the map, and that’s something I appreciate. You can either trade, destroy buildings, set up shop on another land with different materials, and then sell those for some profit.

But I do have some complaints, and that’s just speaking strictly about campaign mode. Voices. Why on earth do my Roman and Celtic citizens have an Australian accent? I know it’s petty to say, and it might not be a deal-breaker, but this is quite an immersive game with one of the best historical settings ever. I would have loved to see some Assassin’s Creed-level voice acting here, as the choice of English and Australian accents felt pretty strange for the game’s setting. Again, not a game-breaking thing, but it is undoubtedly an immersion-breaking bummer.

With the accent debacle aside, the campaign mode is quite solid, and besides offering two stories you can go through, it has several branching paths that I’m curious to revisit later. Several scenarios could’ve played out differently had I picked a different option, not only narratively but also gameplay-wise. While Anno games have always been replayable, I feel this one is already one of the best in terms of replayability, at least at launch.

Deep But Approachable

But now, let’s dive into the actual management part and what makes Anno 117: Pax Romana highly approachable without sacrificing the depth of customization freedom the series is known for.

In terms of city management and building, it works quite similarly to Anno 1800. You begin with your trading post, create a woodcutter, a sawmill, a warehouse to gather materials, and then some houses to attract population. Those starting steps are always relatively easy, but the challenge kicks in in a matter of minutes.

Once you start gathering some citizens for your fledgling town, which will eventually become a city, you’ll have to keep an eye out for their needs. Tier 1 population is easy to manage. All they need is some entertainment, public services, and fashion. Once you meet those needs, you can upgrade them to Tier 2, and here’s where things get tricky.

For starters, once you upgrade a whole neighborhood with Tier 2 people, you’ll have to move a few things around. The fashion items that worked for your first population might not work as well for the recently upgraded ones. Furthermore, they also have more categories you need to fulfill, such as household items.

On top of that, space management is another key aspect, as you need to plan your building projects in advance. If you design a spot for houses only, you might not have space to put down a market or a fanum, meaning that those people might not have access to entertainment or public services. Then, another thing comes into play: production buildings. You’ll eventually need to set up a mining operation. When that happens, you need to make sure that those buildings are far away from your neighbors to reduce the fire hazards. And if that’s impossible, you’ll then need to place a few city watch buildings in case the worst happens.

But if those aren’t enough strategic layers, certain things that your citizens need might not be available on your island. Each piece of land has certain fertility for specific materials, so if your island can’t give you a specific reagent, it is time to put some timber on a boat and sail toward brighter shores.

This planning and executing loop is the best thing about Anno 117: Pax Romana, and it only gets better if you decide to dive deeper into its decoration aspects by placing a few ornaments here and there. In my case, I’m more of an “if it functions, that’s fine” type of player. However, those creative builders might be able to raise the largest cities in the game with some of the in-depth building tools. Speaking of which, some feel snappier than in some previous entries in the series. I still feel the diagonal building feature is a bit wonky, especially in the marshland area, but again, since I went for basic road-building and house-placement, I didn’t face many issues.

One last thing that has been a bit of a hit-or-miss with the community is the UI, and I can see why. In terms of usefulness, I think it was great. Finding things is pretty easy, and the tooltips are hidden perfectly. Also, if you want to see what a specific building does, you don’t need to go through several submenus just to find the information. Still, the actual aesthetic feels bland and doesn’t fit the Roman style the game is going for. Again, something minor, but hardcore fans will surely notice it. Oh, and the mini-map —it baffles me why it has a square map inside a round UI. It’s a complete waste of space.

Also, in terms of performance, it isn’t the greatest. I played this on a 5070 and only hit 60 FPS when placing my first buildings. Once I started adding a few more things, my frame rate dropped, if only for a few frames. It isn’t extremely choppy or unplayable, but the game could use a bit more optimization. Yet, credit where it’s due, as this Roman setting is one of the most gorgeous I’ve seen in the series, so I don’t mind a few lost frames just to see how beautiful my city looks in this landscape.

Your Next Strategy-Builder Addiction

Despite minor flaws and a few performance issues, Anno 117: Pax Romana is a superb strategy-building experience. It has many familiar things that cater to veteran fans of the series, but it also adds several new features that make it an approachable game for those who are venturing into the genre for the first time.

In addition, its campaign mode, despite questionable voice acting, offers a lot of replayability and some game-altering decisions worth exploring later. Overall, if you’re looking for your next addiction after Anno 1800, this new entry will keep you hooked for hours, and knowing the track record of the franchise, I’m excited to see just how far this new game goes.

Review copy provided by the publisher.