Beebom Score
ANNO games have always been my favorite when it comes to city builders, and Pax Romana is their latest installment for the franchise. If you have read my ANNO 117 PAX Romana first impressions, then you would know that I fairly enjoyed my time in Ancient Rome. Although my impressions about the game have remained the same from last time, there was a lot I couldn’t discuss due to restrictions. So, here is my complete review of ANNO 117 PAX Romana, touching on the next part of the campaign and the end-game content.
Constructing Rome’s Legacy Has Never Felt This Triumphant
ANNO 117 PAX Romana makes building an empire infinitely simpler, while also doing it at a grander scale than its past versions. The new simplified overhead menu makes taking care of your citizens’ needs extremely easy. Long gone are the days of checking out individual issues, for why your workers refuse to work even though they are getting paid every day!
Like a boss getting their hands on the ideal HR system put forth by every management software company in their brochure, you can use the management menu to learn exactly what needs to be done.
No complicated details, simple numbers with demands, and what you have. Meet the demands, and your workers will be happy, and the empire will attract more citizens. This becomes extremely vital, especially in the late game, when you are managing multiple cities on different islands.
Next, building an empire is not just about management; it is also about aesthetics. ANNO 117 PAX Romana lets you build massive colosseums, amphitheaters, and much more, each minutely showing your citizens participating in it. The game lets you create a grander city as you continue heading into the endgame.
Many would argue that ANNO always allowed massive cities to be built, so why is it special in PAX Romana? Well, alongside the natural grandeur of a Roman empire, Pax Romana also allows you to build large armies. This makes you actually feel like building an empire, as it is just not about building cities and creating trade deals; you are actively creating an army to protect and invade sovereign nations.
RTS Action and City Building Work Together Better Than Ever
I have been asking for a real RTS mechanic in city-building games for ages. Manor Lords was the closest answer I found recently, but its terribly slow development speed made me look for better options. Thankfully, Ubisoft stepped up in this department and mixed RTS perfectly in ANNO 117 PAX Romana.
I starkly remember when Ben-ballion told me that I could finally build my army on my first playthrough. Like a little kid giddy about getting a new toy, I quickly built the barracks and queued the first batch of soldiers.
Which was a big mistake! Because the soldiers are not imaginarily created, they are taken from your active workforce. So, I had lost half my workers in seconds.
Thankfully, with more time in the game, I realized that soldiers could be disbanded when you need workers. This became essential in the late game, as you are constantly attacked by your adversaries.
What you can do is quickly create soldiers during an invasion, use them to fight the enemies because you don’t really need workers when your camp is under siege, and then disband them again to regain the workforce. This nifty feature is a lifesaver in ANNO 117 PAX Romana, and it’s also pretty cool that developers allowed us to do it.
Now, RTS is not just an afterthought in PAX Romana. You are part of the Roman Empire, so fighting should be the main target. Your adversaries don’t wait for you to build your army; they will constantly come scouting you, send armies to invade whenever possible, and defend themselves vehemently when needed. The strategic element of the RTS is also simple to understand but hard to master.
Moving your troops to engage with the correct enemies will give you a big advantage in battles. You can also use naval ships to aid you in fights, giving you an edge over your enemy troops. I loved this constant power struggle and the need to have an actual endgame where I can invade other empires. Large-scale battles will become normal at the end-game, so you’d better start working towards it from the very beginning.
The Heart of Your Empire Beats Through Smart, Thriving Trade
Alongside active RTS engagement, you can also strike trade deals with your adversaries. These deals are very important in the end-game, as you cannot fight with everyone at the same time. Creating strategic allies, defense pacts, trade pacts, or non-aggression deals will make or break your empire. This becomes even more evident in the campaign, as after a time, you get to govern both your cities in Albion and Latium, allowing you to create inter-province trade routes.
Trades are not just about making a quick buck; it is also about meeting the requirements of your citizens. For example, I ran out of food in one of my playthroughs, and Ben-ballion informed me about it. So, in true emperor style, I simply left it unattended.
This led to half my citizens realizing that maybe I am not a generous or smart leader, and it’s better to seek their home elsewhere. This obviously led to a massive workforce shortage. But the problem was that I couldn’t produce more food, because I also lacked the workforce to do it. So, that’s when I had the genius plan of buying food from my adversaries.
ANNO 117 PAX Romana allows you to set up automatic item transactions at the trade hub, so that my adversaries can visit and trade items for money without requiring any input. This allowed me to restock my food, which made my workforce return, albeit at a hefty cost of my coin reserves. Similarly, you can also trade items that you don’t generate on your island, making you reach the next upgrade without the need to colonize another island.
But as with everything in the Roman Empire, trade is not always safe. I learned it the hard way when Voada decided to sink half my ships, when I had planned to AFK farm materials. Your ships are assets, and brigands, pirates, or your adversaries would want to get their hands on them. So, you need to protect your ships with other naval battleships or board them up with troops.
A Campaign Filled With Highs, Lows, and Everything in Between
Most of my qualms with ANNO 117 PAX Romana in my early impressions were with the campaign. Like I told earlier, ANNO 117 PAX Romana has a “Man-is-bad” problem. Almost every male character in the first half of the story is either a nincompoop or a disgustingly vile human being.
Although this has remained almost the same for most of the campaign, I did find a couple of male characters in Albion who were actually well written.
For example, Procurator Corvinus is actually a decent human being who not only behaves well but also appears stoic and respectful. Unlike the other male characters, he is actually courageous and stands for what he believes. Now, if only we had more characters like these in the game, it wouldn’t have appeared as such one-sided storytelling.
But, if we can ignore this issue in the story, the campaign does one thing pretty well, and that is teaching the player about the Roman world and in-game mechanics. From trade routes, large-scale battles, to building a prosperous city, the campaign will grab you through the entirety of it.
Although that may sound underwhelming to players new to ANNO, getting to know the game’s inner mechanics this well from the campaign was a clear benefit for me.
Another good thing about the campaign is that it features many story-changing decisions. This is not very evident in the first part of the campaign, but as you enter Albion, these choices start to really matter in the grand scheme of things. However, don’t expect a major story change like Baldur’s Gate 3; compare it more with other best city builder games and past ANNOs.
A Visual Triumph Backed by Rock-Solid Performance
ANNO 117 PAX Romana ran outstandingly on my RTX 5060 Ti at max graphics settings. The game consistently ran at 100+ FPS, even during large-scale end-game battles. One thing to note is that my GPU was being used by 96% or above for most of the time, while the CPU was only used around 10-15%. In terms of graphics, PAX Romana is a gorgeous game.
I loved simply zooming in and watching my citizens work. You may call it a god complex, but we city-building lovers do enjoy it nonetheless. Both Albion and Latium are beautiful areas in their own right, although I did Latium’s scenery slightly more.
My PC Specs CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900x
CPU Cooler: CORSAIR H150 RGB
Motherboard: GIGABYTE B650M Gaming X AX
GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB
RAM: 32GB (32GB x 1) ADATA XPG DDR5 5600FSB LANCER
SSD: 1TB AORUS Gen 4 5000E NVMe storage
Monitor: 1080p @180hz
Network: 100 Mbps
Now, although I didn’t come across any game-breaking glitch, sometimes the cinematic scenes in the Campaign can have trouble loading textures. I only experienced this a couple of times out of more than 20 hours of gameplay, so it wasn’t anything major.
Verdict: A Grand Experience That Shines Bright Despite Rough Edges
ANNO 117 PAX Romana is undoubtedly the best ANNO game I have played yet. Although it misses out on some of the core features I loved in 1800, like blueprint and getting to roam as a player, everything new added to the game makes it a massively better experience. I have spent hours at a time fiddling around my city, fixing minor things to get the perfect performance boost out of everything, and I would do it again after this review goes live.
The mix of RTS, diplomacy, and city builder has turned ANNO 117 PAX Romana into the perfect game for building an empire. Although I still have my qualms over the campaign’s storyline, in the end, no one actually cares about the campaign in an ANNO game. Compared to my tens of hours spent in the free mode, the mere 6 hours in the campaign barely affected my overall experience. ANNO 117 PAX Romana is a game I would wholeheartedly recommend to any RTS or city-building fans. Also, for newcomers to the genre, this is the best version of the game for you to get into, as it streamlines everything for you from the very beginning.
