A review of Anno 117: Pax Romana

Anno 117: Pax Romana is a gorgeous and accessible city-building game with smooth console controls and deep strategy. Its campaign and endless modes offer hours of fun, strong details, and thoughtful planning, making it one of this year’s best strategy games.

Anno 117 is a beautiful city builder, and I am not just talking about the beautiful vistas that the game’s engine conjures when you access the game’s “postcard view” option.

There is a certain simplicity to the game’s mechanics and easy building style that makes you lose sense of the time you have put into it. In my first playthrough, as I was building the campaign’s city of Juliana, I soon discovered that my grasp of the mechanics wasn’t ideal, and I decided to quickly restart the level.

Looking back, what I considered a “quick” realisation was actually 53 minutes in! My second attempt lasted a lot longer and I only paused over 2 hours later when I could no longer put off my much-delayed breakfast.

All my time with games like Anno, designed in the mould of Age of Empires and Rise of Nations, I have believed that such games must be played on a PC with the simplicity that a mouse offers, as we carefully point, evaluate, and issue orders. Thus, when Ubisoft announced that Anno would be playable on a console on launch day, I simply had to try.

On the PS5, with the DualSense, the game worked with no hitches whatsoever as I seamlessly switched menus and built roads, farms, and fisheries with precision.

Anno offers players two distinct game modes: the main campaign and an endless mode where you can build and progress with no limits. The campaign mode can be played in a co-op style with friends, and the endless mode in both co-op and competitive formats.

I thoroughly enjoyed both modes, and I felt the level of detail that the game offers in terms of growth for your city ensures that the experience is unique and unlike other such games, where most problems are solved when the right resources are gathered.

Apart from the intricate social planning in its gameplay, Anno also improves on standard genre features like road building and structure placement.

The game charges no fee to relocate buildings and its UI also flags them when they are unable to function. This is by far the most fun I have had in a builder game since the remade Age of Mythology. The best game in the genre in a long time, Anno deserves your time and money.

Sneak Peek:

Title: Anno 117: Pax Romana

Developer: Ubisoft Mainz

Game Type: Strategy and simulation builder with co-op and competitive elements

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Microsoft Windows

Price: Rs4,199 on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox store

Verdict (all scores out of 10):

Innovative Gameplay: 8

Game Handling & Quality: 8.5

Value for Time: 9

Value for Money: 8

Overall 8.4

What Stands Out

* The game’s gentle learning curve and its simple tutorial seamlessly transition to the main game. This is a very well-designed experience.

* The attention to detail in building elements and their upgradation means this is not like other city builders, where you can stack resources. The game needs you to carefully plan and strategize.

Fails to impress

* Playing Anno on a console with a controller is an absolute joy. However, the menus on the extreme left are not as intuitively accessible as the game’s other menus.

* Nothing else, this is the best strategy and building game this year.