XBOX REVIEW | Anno 117: Pax Romana

Anno 117: Pax Romana marks the eighth chapter in Ubisoft’s long‑running city‑building saga, and for me, it’s a return to familiar ground. This genre was my playground growing up,  a mix of strategy, patience, and creativity,  so diving into Pax Romana felt like revisiting an old friend with a fresh coat of paint. What sets this entry apart is its bold leap back in time: while previous Anno games explored the Renaissance, the Industrial Age, or even the distant future, Pax Romana rewinds the clock nearly two thousand years to the height of the Roman Empire. That shift isn’t just cosmetic, it brings new mechanics like ground combat, diagonal road layouts, and the choice to play as Romans or Celts, each with distinct needs and technologies.

For the first time, there’s also a story‑driven campaign, adding a narrative layer to the familiar loop of careful planning, trade, and expansion. It’s a fresh direction that still preserves the series’ core rhythm, but with enough twists to make even long‑time fans stop and rethink their strategies. With marble forums rising and Celtic villages resisting, the stage is set, so let’s head into my review.

Things I liked!

• Gameplay | Playing Anno 117: Pax Romana is all about rhythm, the steady pulse of expansion, the careful balancing of resources, and the satisfaction of watching a settlement grow into something far larger than its humble beginnings. As you begin, you’re given a choice: dive into the story‑driven Campaign Mode or head straight into Free Play. I started with the campaign, partly because I wanted to follow the tutorial and learn as much as possible, but also because it adds narrative weight. Objectives and characters frame your decisions, guiding you through scenarios that ease you into the mechanics. Free Play, by contrast, strips away that structure and lets you build at your own pace, experimenting with layouts and strategies until your island feels truly yours. Early on, you’ll almost certainly be running at a loss per minute, and I did too.
  
  Finding the right balance of resources, trade, and workforce can be a struggle, but the moment you finally tip into profit is pure joy, a genuine payoff after the tension of scraping by. That push‑and‑pull defines the experience: citizens crave variety, culture, and security, and meeting those needs forces you to think several steps ahead. Trade networks become lifelines, military presence adds tension, and every decision ripples outward. It’s a game that rewards patience and foresight, but also keeps you on your toes with unexpected challenges, a strategy experience that feels alive, demanding, and deeply satisfying.

• Visuals | If there’s one area where Anno 117: Pax Romana immediately impresses, it’s the visuals. The series has always prided itself on detail, but here the Roman setting gives the art team a whole new canvas. Cities feel alive with bustling forums, tiled villas, and aqueducts stretching across the landscape, while the countryside contrasts with rugged Celtic villages and untamed forests. As you begin playing, your settlement starts small, just a handful of roads and modest buildings, but before long it spreads across the island, transforming into a sprawling city.
  
  Watching that growth unfold is genuinely a treat for the eyes, and the diagonal road system doesn’t just change gameplay; it makes settlements look more organic, less like rigid grids and more like living towns. Zooming in reveals tiny flourishes everywhere: citizens hauling goods, soldiers drilling, markets overflowing with produce. Lighting and weather effects add atmosphere, from sun‑drenched Mediterranean coasts to misty northern hills, and the soundtrack ties it all together, perfectly matching the visuals to sell the sense of place. It’s a world that feels both grand and intimate, rewarding you for slowing down and simply watching it breathe.
  
  
• Sound & Music | If the visuals set the stage, the sound brings Anno 117: Pax Romana to life. From the moment you place your first building, the audio design grounds you in the world,  the chatter of citizens, the clatter of tools, and the hum of markets all combine to make your city feel alive. As your settlement grows, so does its soundscape: quiet villages evolve into bustling hubs, with layered effects that reflect the scale of your expansion. Voice acting adds personality to the experience, and while for the most part I enjoyed it, there is some repetition that may grate on players over time.
  
  The real standout, though, is the orchestral music. It’s incredible, sweeping, dynamic, and constantly shifting to match what’s happening on screen. Calm, melodic tracks accompany the slower rhythms of city‑building, while dramatic cues rise during conflict or major milestones. It’s never intrusive, but always present, reinforcing the atmosphere whether you’re zoomed in on a single street or surveying the whole island. Together, the effects, voices, and score make the world feel cohesive, a place you don’t just see, but hear breathing around you.
  
  
• Replayability | Replayability in Anno 117: Pax Romana is one of its greatest strengths. Even after many hours, I found myself wanting to start fresh, experiment with new layouts, and try different approaches to trade and expansion. The campaign offers a structured path with narrative flavour, but Free Play opens the door to endless possibilities, letting you tweak settings and tailor the experience to suit how you want to play. Combined with the sheer variety of systems to master, this makes Anno 117 a game that keeps pulling you back in. It’s not just about building a city once, it’s about refining, experimenting, and seeing how far you can push your empire.
  
  
• Credits | Even the credits in Anno 117: Pax Romana deserve a mention. Rather than a simple scroll of names, they feature some of the game’s characters in a modern‑day Zoom‑style meeting call. All of them talk as the credits roll down the left‑hand side, and while it goes on for quite a while, I found it fun and unique. It’s a playful, unexpected touch that made me smile and felt like a brilliant way to close out the experience. Best of all, the credits can be viewed directly from the main menu, you don’t need to complete the game to see them. It shows the developers weren’t afraid to have fun with presentation, and it left me with a lasting impression.

Mixed & disliked!

• Tutorial & Interface | When I began playing, I naturally turned to the tutorial to guide me through the basics. Even many hours later I’m still uncovering new mechanics, which speaks to the game’s depth, but unfortunately the tutorial doesn’t always keep pace. At times it skips key steps or fails to show exactly where a command is located, leaving you to fumble around until you figure it out yourself. Compounding this is the user interface, which can be quite overwhelming at first. There are menus within menus, icons that aren’t always intuitive, and systems that demand more explanation than the game provides. Once you learn where everything is, it becomes manageable, but the early hours can feel like information overload. Together, the tutorial gaps and the dense interface make onboarding steeper than it should be, and while persistence pays off, the introduction could definitely be smoother.

• Difficulty | The challenge in Anno 117: Pax Romana is part of its appeal, but it isn’t always evenly handled. Early on, the steep curve can feel punishing, you’re juggling losses, workforce shortages, and complex systems before you’ve had time to fully grasp them. I lost count of the times I made progress in one area only to advance and have something else unravel, forcing me to restart. Yet each restart brought me back to where I was much quicker, and I began to see that restarting is definitely part of the learning curve here. After spending time in the campaign, I wanted to try Free Play, which offers far more options to tweak and tailor the experience to suit how you want to play. Still, I’d recommend starting with the campaign first, it’s the best way to learn the ropes before diving into the freedom of the sandbox. Once you push past that initial wall, the difficulty settles into a more rewarding rhythm, and the satisfaction of finally stabilising your economy is immense. For some players, that uneven curve may be frustrating; for others, it’s part of the hard‑won joy of building a Roman empire.
  
  
• Controls | Playing Anno 117: Pax Romana with a controller is perfectly doable, but it takes some getting used to. The sheer number of menus and options means navigation can feel slower and less precise than on PC. At first, the button mapping isn’t always intuitive, I often found myself pausing to remember which trigger or bumper opened a particular menu. I particularly found it difficult when navigating the game’s menus, where one wrong button press, such as pressing down on the D‑pad, could suddenly exit the screen I was in without meaning to. That makes the early hours feel more overwhelming than they should. That said, once you’ve spent time with the controls, they begin to click. Moving around the map, placing buildings, and managing resources becomes smoother, and muscle memory takes over. Still, the learning curve is steeper on console, and I’d have liked a more streamlined layout or clearer prompts to ease new players in. It works, but it demands patience before it feels natural.
  
  
• Story | The campaign in Anno 117: Pax Romana introduces a narrative backdrop that frames your empire‑building with characters and objectives. Set against the clash of Roman and Celtic cultures, it adds context to your decisions and a sense of progression beyond simple expansion. Personally, I found the story more functional than gripping, it gave me direction and flavour, but never pulled me in the way a strong narrative can. It’s a guiding thread rather than a sweeping epic, supporting the strategy without stealing the spotlight.
  
  
• Performance | On the whole, performance in Anno 117: Pax Romana is very strong. Animations are smooth, loading times are impressively fast, and the game generally runs without issue. For the most part, it feels well‑optimised on Xbox and keeps the pace of play flowing nicely. However, I did encounter more than five occasions where the game crashed outright, forcing me back to the Xbox home screen and requiring a reload. Thankfully, I had autosave set to every five minutes, so I never lost too much progress, but it was still a frustration that broke the flow of play. It’s not a deal‑breaker, but I do hope this stability issue can be addressed in a future patch to make the otherwise strong performance feel truly seamless.
  
  
• Multiplayer | Multiplayer in Anno 117: Pax Romana promises to add another layer of depth, with the potential for collaborative empire‑building, shared trade routes, and unpredictable social dynamics. Unfortunately, for my review I was unable to properly test multiplayer due to various issues. A message on the main menu currently states that Ubisoft are working on these problems, which prevented me from accessing the mode. When it’s all working as intended, the game offers both 4‑player co‑op and up to 16‑player multiplayer, which sounds like a fantastic way to expand the experience. The idea of tackling the game’s challenges alongside friends, whether in smaller co‑op sessions or larger competitive groups, has huge appeal, and I can see how it would amplify both the complexity and the fun. For now, though, multiplayer remains something I couldn’t experience first‑hand, and I hope these issues are resolved in a future update so players can enjoy the full scope of what’s on offer.
  
  

How long did I play the review before publishing? 28 Hours
How long to beat the story? 10-15 Hours
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 5/50 OR 75/1000G
How long to achieve 1000G | 120 hours +
You’ll love this game if you like these | Anno 1800, Kingdoms and Castles

CONCLUSION

Score: 83/100

A demanding but rewarding empire builder that makes Rome worth rebuilding again and again.

Anno 117: Pax Romana shines with its rich Roman setting, strong replayability, and even playful credits. While the steep learning curve and controller quirks can test your patience, the core city‑building remains deeply rewarding for those willing to persist. It’s a strategy game that rewards time and dedication, leaving you with the satisfaction of building an empire worth remembering.