Anno 117: Pax Romana preview: A promising city-builder with a story to tell

The phrases ‘gripping storyline’ and ‘city builder’ don’t normally go together, but long before I laid down my first Roman road, it was the narrative of Anno 117: Pax Romana that had me hooked. And it’s all because developer Ubisoft Mainz has gone the extra mile with the game’s selectable protagonists.

In a lot of games, your gender doesn’t matter. But, choosing to play as female character Marcia, I became acutely aware that something was very wrong. It wasn’t just that I was building a city on the ruins of another, or that female governors were unheard of. The man I was ‘married’ to was perpetually sick, and I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being set up to be a patsy.

Despite this ever-growing sense of unease and intrigue, I threw myself into my role of not-governor. The latest in the long-running Anno series, Anno 117: Pax Romana’s first chapter gives you a sizeable starting balance. But actually turning a profit is where it gets tricky. The good news is that the game’s story eases you into the job. For example, there are only two foodstuffs you can initially choose from: sardines and porridge.

This early-game revelation had me grinning, as I imagined my populace having to choose between porridge, sardines, or porridge with sardines in it. It almost made me forget that I still hadn’t seen my alleged husband, and that I was within walking distance of the previous city. A city, by the way, which was annihilated by a volcano. What’s the Latin for ‘absolute mug’?

It’s a good idea to expand your citizens’ dining habits, because their success is your success. Rather than being a single collective, who pipe up to grumble about their stale sardorridge (porrdine?), each residence is its own unit with citizens who go about their daily business. Zoom in to street level, and you can see your citizens pottering around. Some take carts back and forth, hauling the resources each building needs to function.

Satisfy their needs and, providing you’ve got the resources to hand, you can upgrade them and their dwellings to Plebians, an altogether fancier class of citizen. That, in turn, unlocks new building options and helps expand your city, which is suitably satisfying. Hurrah! Everyone gets to level up for a better life!

That, at least, was my sentiment when Anno 117: Pax Romana explained that mechanic. But the catch is you need the Libertus, the lowest class, to do the lion’s share of the manual work. So I found myself in the uncomfortable position of intentionally keeping people down, so my city could function. Whatever good intentions you have going into the game are going to be tainted by that.

Speaking of the citizenry, I was particularly impressed by the fact that many of the building options are grouped by populace. Instead of wrestling with a crowded construction interface, you select Libertus, Plebian and so on. That reveals the buildings each can construct. On-screen arrows also indicate the effects that placing one will have on nearby buildings – increased fire risk and so on. Anno 117: Pax Romana is set up to ease you into its complexity.

With its compelling city-building and engaging narrative – including signs that I’m heading for a fall – Anno 117: Pax Romana has plenty of promise. I’m eager to see if it can deliver when it launches on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S this November 13th. In the meantime, you can download a demo on Steam.