After a return to form in Anno 1800, 117 aims to seize an even bigger audience.
Anno 117: Pax Romana, due later this year, aims to build on that momentum and turn the franchise into a crossover hit.
How an Anno game works Anno games are part city builders, part supply chain simulations.
Anno 1800 may have been too heavy-handed here, but Anno 117 seems to overreact by going too far the other way.
Something for almost everybody The Anno games scratch an itch that no other games do, and based on a few hours with a preview build, Anno 117 seems like a promising entry in that unique tradition.
117 wants to reach a wider audience after making a comeback in Anno 1800.
Samuel Axon, May 19, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
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Study up.
In order for Ars to take part in the Anno 117: Pax Romana preview, Ubisoft arranged for travel from Chicago to Rome and lodging. Paid editorial content is not accepted by Ars.
No game compares to the Anno series, and after spending some time with the newest addition during a recent press junket, I can say that, if players approach it patiently, it could be a compelling introduction to the franchise for history buffs and strategy game fans who haven’t played it yet.
Longtime franchise fans, who weren’t as excited by the futuristic entries that came before it, found the previous entry in the series, 2019’s Anno 1800, to be somewhat of a return to form. Since it reportedly attracted 5 million players—a significant number for a strategy game geared toward PCs—1800 was also a turning point in the franchise’s popularity.
Building on that momentum, Anno 117: Pax Romana, which is scheduled for release later this year, seeks to make the franchise a crossover success. Although the Anno games have long been well-liked by a particular demographic—European strategy gamers, particularly in Germany, where the games are made—their captivating gameplay and excellent presentation could draw in even more players, given the correct decisions made by publisher Ubisoft.
Even though I’ve played the Anno series of strategy games over the years, it has always been on my list of things I hope to get into in the future. I had the opportunity to play a preview build of the game for roughly three hours at a press junket last month, which gave me an idea of how well it would follow 1800. During my time with it, I discovered that the game’s presentation is excellent and its foundation is promising. Nevertheless, in order to attract new players, the game’s onboarding process will need to be enhanced.
How Anno games are played.
The Anno games are a hybrid of supply chain simulations and city builders. Like many builders, you create roads, construct vital infrastructure, such as firefighting structures, and increase the size and prosperity of your population. All of that, however, works in tandem with systems for the development and harvesting of natural resources, their transformation into manufactured goods, and their subsequent development into wealth and advancement for your communities.
You must be very careful about where you put things. For instance, you need warehouses to hold the goods you’re producing or collecting, and those warehouses need to be positioned carefully so that the appropriate items can move from one building to another.
In the end, you establish towns on several islands and link them with naval forces and trade routes. Island-specific natural resources may result in specializations on your islands. In addition to that, there is a plot and other AI-controlled leaders strewn across the map that you must oppose or coordinate with.
The Anno games have a distinct personality, and even players who have played other city builders or economic simulations will find a lot to learn (though obviously, some prior experience won’t hurt). That being said, once you learn it, everything becomes soothing and silky. However, because conquest and tactical combat are not prioritized, players seeking those experiences won’t be satisfied.
what has changed in 117.
One could argue that Anno 117: Pax Romana’s setting is its primary selling point in comparison to its predecessors; it’s one of the most requested settings and eras by franchise fans and fits in well with the game’s mechanics.
During my gameplay, I must admit that I was engrossed in the game’s visual presentation. This depicts the Roman Empire in its most romanticized form, as the rosy subtitle “Pax Romana” suggests. The wheat fields are practically glowing golden-yellow, people are working and mingling while dressed in beautiful, vibrant clothing, and the music swells and calms with nostalgic vibes.
However, like many previous entries in the franchise, Anno 117 prefers an escapist fantasy. Of course, the real Roman Empire had something terrible to offer to balance out every positive image we have. The goal of this game is to create something you’re proud of while savoring the romanticized beauty ingrained in our shared cultural memories; it doesn’t address difficult historical or ethical truths. It’s less Frostpunk and more SimCity.
Overall, the game has excellent technical and artistic presentation. Together with some of the new mechanics and the sporadic story-based dialogue prompts, it draws you into the setting, which is further thematically reinforced by the materials and output you collect and create. Easily one of the best aspects is the visual experience.
Additionally, there are a few other selling points. The franchise’s typical light inclusion of naval conflict is accompanied by new mechanics, such as a religion system, a more extensive research tree, and the return of ground-based military forces. I was able to discuss the religion system and the research tree in this demo, but I was unable to interact with the army component.
Building a temple to one of the game’s deities is possible shortly after you establish the settlement on your island. Bonuses are given by each deity to help you narrow your focus. Ceres, the Roman fertility and agricultural goddess, was my choice for mine. I received substantial bonuses for my farms as a result. Among other things, my ships would have progressed more quickly if I had opted for Poseidon.
Although this system wasn’t very deep or robust in the demo I played, it was a good way to support the game’s themes and aesthetic, in contrast to strategy games where religion plays a significant role in gameplay. Additionally, it provides a fun way for you to personalize what you’re creating.
The study tree curves around on various tangents and spreads out in several directions. It seemed to be less concerned with introducing completely new mechanics during my time with it and more focused on providing numerical bonuses to things like yields or ship speed. Although it’s a good addition in that it simply gives you more options and customization, it’s not a game-changer or a radically novel take on the game.
Not to mention that you can now break free from the strict grid by constructing diagonal roads and positioning buildings on them. Grids still seemed ideal in most situations, though, so this is a benefit for beauty builders (which is completely legitimate!), but it won’t usually influence efficiency-focused people.
During my time with the game, I was unable to test out one other significant feature. According to the developers, players will have the option of starting in an area with a British frontier theme or a network of islands with a Rome/Mediterranean theme. During this demo, I could only try the former.
It’s still a little challenging to get into.
If the Anno games are to become as popular as the developer intends, they must become much simpler to learn and play. Anno 1800 made progress in this area with its story-based tutorial, although it was also criticized for being a little too involved for seasoned fans and for some needless busywork.
Unfortunately, I thought the onboarding process was a step backward from 1800 during my time with Anno 117. The tutorial gave me instructions right away, but it omitted a crucial step without providing an explanation, leaving me perplexed for five minutes. As I advanced, the story’s content helped me accomplish my goals, but important systems remained unclear. I was able to figure it out because I had played 1800 a little earlier, but I still needed assistance from a local developer twice in order to advance. Beside me, a journalist who had never heard of the franchise before appeared completely confused.
Positively, the game gains a great deal from a well-designed user interface that is arranged in a sensible and understandable way. By using overlays on nearby buildings to show how placing a building in one location might be more advantageous than placing it in another, for instance, it excels at helping the player understand the impact of the decisions they are about to make. Since many (though not all) of the game’s most crucial ideas are readily apparent from the user interface alone, this somewhat compensates for the tutorial’s lackluster quality.
This stands in sharp contrast to Civilization VII, another recent high-profile, mainstream strategy game release that featured thorough onboarding tutorials but also a user interface that occasionally fell short of fully explaining to players the implications of their choices.
After receiving the right introduction, Anno 117’s mechanics are simple to understand, so I don’t think learning the game has to be very challenging. But in order to prevent new players from losing interest too soon, the tutorial experience needs to be improved. Anno 117 appears to overreact by going too far in the opposite direction, even though Anno 1800 may have been too harsh in this instance.
However, there is time to make these improvements, and it wouldn’t take much, as the launch is still months away. In any case, I have hope.
For practically everyone, there is something.
Nothing else satisfies the Anno games’ itch, and after spending a few hours with a preview build, Anno 117 appears to be a promising continuation of that special tradition.
While the game’s systems are sufficiently adaptable to enable aesthetics-focused beauty builders to get creative and expressive instead, numbers-obsessed efficiency mavens can go really deep with optimization to set up the best economic powerhouses possible—almost any combination of those two approaches is also feasible.
Visuals that are unquestionably above and beyond what is typically seen in strategy, simulation, or builder games add to the appeal, and the Ancient Roman setting allows the game’s technical artists plenty of room to create an immersive experience.
Compared to 1800, Anno 117 doesn’t seem to reinvent the experience, but given the contentious attempts that came before both of these titles, that might not be a bad thing. Once you start, it’s enjoyable. I noticed that the minutes passed quickly as I enjoyed the sights and saw all the appropriate numbers rise at a pleasing rate as a result of my decisions.
Since I’m not a member of the franchise’s current core audience, I can’t say with certainty how they’ll react because there are many finer details that they’ll be sensitive to that I’m not yet. With the typical strategy-game sequel disclaimer that post-launch content has made Anno 1800 far more robust than Anno 117 is likely to be at launch, I predict that lifetime fans will be satisfied with this one as long as it gets most of those things right. There is potential for new users here, but in order to truly break the dam as they intend, Ubisoft Mainz will need to continue improving the tutorial and onboarding process. That’s actually the main thing about this title that worries me.
Later in the year, the game will be released on Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. We’ll see how that goes. To find out if this is the first Anno game to turn into an obsession rather than a fad, I plan to play more of it when it comes out.
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The Senior Editor is Samuel Axon.
Ars Technica’s editorial director for tech and gaming coverage is Samuel Axon, a senior editor. AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality are among the topics he covers. He has been contributing to magazines like Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others for almost twenty years, covering gaming and technology. Prior to this, he oversaw editorial for the TV network CBS, operated a marketing and public relations firm in the gaming sector, and worked at the creative firm SPCSHP on Samsung Mobile’s social media marketing strategy. He is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied software development and interactive media, and he also works as an independent software and game developer for Windows, iOS, and other platforms.
