Distributor provided a review copy.
The worst thing I can say about Anno 117: Pax Romana is that it's very familiar. Conversely, that is also the best thing I can say about it, too. Ubisoft's flagship simulator doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it doesn't need to, either. If you're looking for a classic and finely tuned city builder that has settled into a familiar groove, you can't go wrong with this one.
For new players, Anno delivers a solid and thoughtfully built experience that takes from the masters of the genre. There's a little Age of Empires, a lot of Settlers, some Pharaoh, and even a hint of Civilization thrown in for good measure. None of these elements feels disparate or tacked on for no reason. Anno is more than the sum of its parts, and more of a next generation product than just mere iteration despite its familiarities.
You begin on an island with a single depot to call your own. From there, instead of controlling singular civilians or troops, you manage the big picture. Building houses brings new people to your colony, while creating the infastructure for woodworking, cultivating crops, and smelting iron all automatically trigger a workforce into existence.
At first, that kind of macro-level view of things will feel odd. Fans of the genre will spend a moment looking for the individual to control, and it takes a moment to get used to the idea that we're working on a bigger scale. But once you do, Anno thrives on its grander ideals. It's a thrill to just focus on the needs of the many and spend your time imagining what a utopia could look like.
Which isn't to say that Anno is disconected from the ground level experience. Instead, at any point you can zoom in close to your cities and witness the daily lives of your populous crafted with intricate accuracy. Unlike many competitors, Anno feels vibrant and alive at all times, especially as your colonies spread to cover multiple islands and wide expanses.
The mechanics do feel overwhelming at times, especially as the UI itself is very busy and, at times, convoluted. Some structures are right there on the build menu as single items, others are hidden away behind sub-menus only indicated by a logo. Then there are the structures behind leveled tiers, and others which require entire systems in place before the desired building can be constructed.
For the first few hours, Anno is a lot. It gets easier as time goes by, but even the campaign, which serves both a tutorial and a surprisingly engaging challenge, takes its time to really get into the groove of things.
Once you factor in deities, factions, politics, city-specific catastrophies, warring nations and tribes, and just general busywork that goes with running an empire, Anno can become too frantic for its own good. Especially when your cities fall into a doom spiral, which proves incredibly frustrating.
For example, let's say a city has a plague or a war with a local tribe that cuts down on the population. This causes food disruptions, which in turn causes more people to stop working, which causes more disruptions until Rome burns and the game ends. It's very hard to stop once it gets going and I found, at times, that it was hard to pinpoint the exact moment when the downfall began. Suddenly, my perfect utopia was no more, and while there is a poetic honesty about it, I still found it more frustrating than anything else.
Luckily, the sandbox mode is a joy all around. You can set modifiers for pretty much everything, making the experience as difficult or easy as you please. The result is a near-endless city-building experience where you can tinker, experiment, and just play God to your hearts content. It is the most immersive and singularly enjoyable experience I've had in this genre all year.
At these times, Anno reminds me why I fell in love with citybuilders in the first place. Yes, the campaigns are fun, and there is a joy of its own to surviving difficult campaigns and overwhelming odds. But deep down, the best part of this genre is to build and to see your cities thrive. It harkens back to childhood and playing with legos and drawing imaginary worlds. For an autistic gamer, the tinkering and the big picture are the main draw, and on that front Anno delivers a spectacle unlike any other.
I've spent about a week with Anno 117: Pax Romana so far, totaling around 42 hours in the different game modes, but mostly the sandbox. I know that once I'm done with the review, I will spend hundreds of hours more with it. This is a game you measure in months and years, not hours.
It is a joyous experience that leans into its familiarity to deliver a perfectly tuned grand spectacle that's worth mentioning in the same breath as other classics in the genre.
