Often when we talk about games published by Ubisoft, it would be in the context of one of their best-selling series – discussions about the latest Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry dominate the news, or speculation on the latest game stamped with Tom Clancy’s name spreads wildly through forums – but there are a few games published by Ubisoft that rarely get the love they deserve.
I could easily copy that opening paragraph into any review from Ubisoft’s history, from 2014’s Child of Light, all the way to the strange toys-to-life experiment Starlink: Battle for Atlas, but today is all about Anno 117: Pax Romana, the latest in the Anno city-building simulation series that takes players back to the Roman Empire (the normal one, not the Holy one!) The franchise has explored history in many different facets before, beginning with Anno 1602: Creation of a New World back in 1998, before growing exponentially to cover the centuries up to and including the year 2205, where players are tasked with colonising the moon; these all received varying degrees of praise, but no entry in the series had explored as far back as Anno 117.
Using the mechanics and overall improvements of Anno 1800 as its foundation, you begin with a small population and minimal resources to help you onto your feet – placing buildings such as residences and resource production facilities is your first priority, but it’s not as simple as placing a sawmill near some trees – everything is built around resource workflows, meaning you need to build loggers, a sawmill and a warehouse along a path to reduce travel between them. Rest assured you won’t need mountains of spreadsheets to understand how everything works, as every resource comes complete with a diagram and quick access to the production elements you need and the order they should be.
Early game production isn’t a major issue, as slow manufacturing just leaves you waiting longer for the resources you need, but it’s important to look deeper into your production pipeline and refine it for the later game, as scarcity can start to become an issue when tensions rise between other factions in the area or even when your needs outpace your ability to create new resources.
The first 10-12 hours of the game are something of an extended tutorial for how the wider game works, including how to create trade routes, optimise your settlement and set up your military resources – the latter of which being more important than you may first think! Despite being a simulation-first game, you will also need to take part in skirmishes both on land and at sea, taking the form of a small-scale RTS in which you protect your trade routes, defend your settlement and mitigate as much damage to vital resources as possible.
There comes a point in the game where you realise the placement of your building matters, as any attacking forces need to be routed in a way that prevents your population from suffering, so early buildings and production lines will almost certainly need moving once you realise where your weaknesses are. Generally you won’t fight on the land much – particularly if you are proficient in naval combat – but there’s a certain weight to how you optimise your layout to protect your hard work.
All this talk of workflow optimisation may make the game sound like a business seminar on the surface, but a well-designed UI combined with stunning graphics combines with a fairly satisfying gameplay loop to keep the player engaged from start to finish, whenever you might decide that finish should be – once you complete the core story, you are unleashed into the world with a new settlement and a set of new ambitions, which is where the game truly opens up – but don’t worry, we won’t spoil the surprise here!
There’s not too extensive of a story in Anno 117, which isn’t too negative a point given how lacklustre it can be at times – depending on who you choose as your protagonist, you are sent into one of two worlds of political intrigue which fails to fully engage the player in the events, mainly just directing them to occasionally do something plot-relevant before giving you access to the next round of resources – it can feel more like a routine roadblock than a story with meaningful consequences.
This isn’t to say the story is devoid of any substance, as the subplot for the female protagonist can be intriguing and almost comedic at times, but when the most engaging story thread revolves around a character that plays little part in the political throes of the main plot, it doesn’t bode well for the overall experience. It’s at the endgame that you are finally given freedom to develop and grow as you see fit, choosing whether to rule as a Roman or to embrace the traditions of the new world.
Empirical ruler or not, there is still a delicate balance between the three core aspects of the game – you need resources to thrive, a happy population, and a military might that allows you to defend yourself. Without keeping these three pillars even, you risk spiralling into chaos, whether that be through starvation, strife or civil war. Sometimes this can be hard to maintain, with the various production chains being difficult to manage at times – a single resource falling out of the chain can be catastrophic – and not in the fun, challenging way.
Fans of Anno 1800 or earlier entries in the series will easily find enjoyment in this latest (and technically earliest!) entry, with improvements throughout that make Anno 117 a vast improvement on its predecessors – from UI changes that make the production chains much easier for newcomers to the massively upgraded graphics that keep the world looking and feeling alive, it’s difficult to find much fault in the game.
As the Romans would say, In Vino Veritas. I don’t think that has anything much to do with the game, but a little bit of Latin never hurt anybody.
