I have just completed my second preview period for Anno 117: Pax Romana, and lo and behold, I am still not a pro. I am learning that the Anno series will humble those who deem themselves strategy or city-building aficionados. Ahead of the game’s November release, I have pumped another 10-15 hours into Anno 117: Pax Romana, and even though I still wouldn’t deem myself an expert, I can’t wait to dive into a hundred more hours.
First things first, I played this game both on my ROG Xbox Ally X in docked mode and on my PC with an NVIDIA GeForce 4080 GPU. I am still in awe of how truly stunning Anno 117: Pax Romana is. Even though the Xbox Ally X is not as powerful, the game is still beautiful, but jumping to PC for sandbox mode had me regularly zooming in to watch my little folks work away. It doesn’t run quite as smoothly on the handheld, but it was more than functional. If you can see Anno 117: Pax Romana at 4K, though, I highly recommend it.
I touched on some of the basics in my first preview of Anno 117: Pax Romana, so I will let you check that out if you want to know more. There you will find details about managing resources, meeting the needs of your people, and plenty of my first mistakes. During this preview round, I was able to experience a bit more of the campaign and was also free to jump into sandbox mode, which has been a blast.
“I am still in awe of how truly stunning Anno 117: Pax Romana is.”
In the campaign, you are building your world, but adhering to a specific story, obviously. You can choose to play as Marcia Tertia, the daughter of Decimus, a quiet girl who is supposed to marry, or you can play as Marcus Naukratius, the Son of Decimus, put to work for being rebellious. I opted to go the route of Marcia, because girl power!
I’ll be honest, I was a little surprised as I played through the story in Anno 117: Pax Romana. I was expecting a bit of politics, but there are moments that go into pure soap opera drama! I won’t spoil any story details, but it did feel a little over-the-top, and I am not even that deep into the story. There is a lot of mystery surrounding Marcia’s story, and I am very interested in learning more.
I feel like the story is only half-baked into the gameplay in Anno 117: Pax Romana, however. In Marcia’s case, there is a quest equivalent to someone saying “how about now?” over and over and over again. Once you play it, you will understand what I mean. This is very early in the story still, so hopefully tasks will feel a bit more meaningful later on. Only time will tell, and Anno 117: Pax Romana will certainly have a lot of my time.
Sandbox mode is where I found myself wanting to spend most of my time in Anno 117: Pax Romana—and that’s not usually the case for me. Even without a specific story, the game still follows a clear order of progression. You need to gather wood to build houses, which lets you attract the first type of villagers: the Liberti. From there, you must meet their needs to grow a bustling town, progressing steadily from the lowest tier of villagers upward.
Homes get upgraded to attract new kinds of people, the Plebeians. These people have new needs and so on and so forth. I thought playing the campaign would be the best way to learn the game, but in my experience, sandbox pushed my skills further much faster than the campaign in Anno 117: Pax Romana. In the same amount of time in the campaign, I learned about half of the things I did in sandbox mode.
So, what did I learn? Something tells me I have only scratched the surface. Though I dabbled during my first round with Anno 117: Pax Romana, this time I was able to really jump in and play the game freely. In that time, I managed to build a town with hundreds of people living and working, build ships, explore new islands, start new towns on those islands and then magically lose everyone on my first island because I forgot to pause. Lesson learned. We still have not recovered.
Something I am looking forward to learning more about in Anno 117: Pax Romana is the different ways to build, survive, and meet your people’s needs. Right now, I have been focused on gathering the necessary resources myself, whether that is from my main island or by inhabiting new islands that have the materials I need. I want to focus more on trade routes and try to master using those to meet needs as well.
For instance, in my sandbox game, I needed lavender to make soap for my Plebeians. Unfortunately, lavender wasn’t available on my starting island—the same went for the resin I needed later on. So, I set out and claimed a new island that had both resources. In the future, I plan to balance trade routes with other players more effectively and see how well that can sustain my population, instead of relying on internal trade routes just to get by. After all, I did just lose all my people because their needs weren’t met—or so I think.
“I am learning that the Anno series will humble those who deem themselves strategy or city-building aficionados.”
I say that because Anno 117: Pax Romana tends to leave you in the dark. I play with tutorial mode on, and every time I play, I learn something new—even about mechanics I’ve used dozens of times. But when it comes to moments of real confusion, like figuring out why my citizens left, the tutorial offers no clear explanation or tips.
I found this issue painfully true when it came to ship battles and the military. I was pulled into a sea fight with no idea how to engage. My ship would fire occasionally, but I couldn’t tell if it was automatic or triggered by something I did. I lost the battle, lost my ship and failed a quest—one that ended up putting me at war with another faction. Not ideal. I haven’t had to defend my city yet, but I’ve built an army just in case. The problem is, I still don’t know what to do if anyone comes knocking. Trial and error, I suppose.
Like I said before, Anno 117: Pax Romana is going to be the ultimate balancing act. Balancing types of citizens, balancing resources, balancing trade, balancing enemies and allies. My goals when the game finally releases are to learn more about combat, spend some more time with decorations (I’ve been so bland!), and master the art of the trade route.
Ubisoft’s Anno 117: Pax Romana releases on November 13, 2025, on PS5, Xbox Series X and PC.
