Rome is well-trod ground for games, but most of them are more like the HBO series Rome, focused on violence and chaos. You’ve got your Total Wars and your games about gladiators and your games about the myths and violence of Rome…but maybe what really gets your pulse racing is…aqueducts…city planning…architecture, yeah? Something for the true sophisticates.
Anno 117: Pax Romana
Developer: Ubisoft Mainz
Price: $59.99
Platform: PC (reviewed), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
MonsterVine was supplied with PC code for review
The long-running Anno series is a city builder-trade sim for those of us who fancy a little more economics and a little more city planning and a little less frowning at legions getting stomped into paste by war elephants, and…FINALLY…ANNO…HAS COME…TO ROME.
…okay, technically, you’re not really dealing with the city of Rome itself, at least in the campaign. But! You are serving the Empire, building a far-flung trade colony from a single trading post into a thriving Roman colony with the aforementioned aqueducts, a teeming city with trade networks, with everyone’s needs met, and with a burgeoning population, all of whom are oh my god do you people ever stop complaining?!
Anno 117: Pax Romana is a thinker’s city builder: the systems are all there. All goods have a supply chain. It takes wood to build very basic housing, but if you want to upgrade to a better class of pleb, they’re going to want actual clothing, which means you need to build farms and then someone who can make the clothing, and then if you want even better citizens, they’re probably going to want places to spend money and hang out but of course, maybe the classy folks don’t want to live next to the Ancient Roman Charcoal Factory just because it’s constantly belching smoke and may set things on fire and also it is much better if the Ancient Roman Charcoal Factory is positioned next to things that actually need charcoal but that means you may need to move your housing district somewhere else but that means you need to…hang on, my guy is telling me there’s a quest I should do with my sailing ship to set up a trade route and also I need to work on the economic impact of my viaducts and, I’ve got my wife to murder and Carthage to frame for it. I’m swamped!
Anno 117: Pax Romana Is the Most Peaceful Empire You’ll Ever Build
That isn’t to say combat is totally nonexistent, because troops and naval stuff is there. Still, Anno 117 is more about trade networks and economics and managing your colony than planning your conquest of Gaul or fending off the Germans. Despite my paragraph above, it’s a remarkably chill city builder. The pressure in the campaign certainly exists, but it’s more self-inflicted. You certainly don’t want to run out of money if you want to keep playing, but it also lacks a lot of the drudgery and spreadsheet management of the more hardcore city builders. It’s also pretty intuitive: the production chains are all there, but the menus make it easy to follow which buildings need which items to produce things, and generally, the game tells you what you need to know without digging 20 menus deep.
The campaign mode tells a very Roman story of political intrigue and maneuvering, but I suspect Endless Mode is where most people will spend their time, since it is simply managing your city…well, endlessly, the Eternal City and whatnot. And then there’s co-op and competitive mode if you have friends.
The Final Word
If most Rome games are chasing the violence and melodrama, this is the Rome of documentaries. You can almost hear a soothing British narrator murmuring about the most assuredly excellent layout of your residential district or the placement of your market as you go about your business. Pax Romana, the era of relative peace and wealth, is right in the title, after all.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
