Anno 117: Pax Romana Reviews
Anno 117: Pax Romana delivers a deep, rewarding city-building experience that effortlessly pulls you in and keeps you hooked for hours.
Anno 117: Pax Romana takes the series to the Roman era for the first time, delivering a fresh yet familiar experience. The campaign tells a surprisingly personal story with political tensions and cultural contrasts. The new province structure, expanded land battles, and greater role for religion and culture add depth to the gameplay. Visually, the game is clearly stronger than its predecessor, and wandering through your city is a joy. The sandbox mode remains the heart of Anno, once again providing endless building fun. Despite some technical flaws, it's a strong and atmospheric addition to the series.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
If you love building sims or want something with more strategy than the usual management games, Anno 117 is worth your time. For me, it was a great introduction to the series and a smooth step into a more complex style of city building. It challenged me, taught me and kept me coming back. I am glad I gave it a chance.
Anno 117: Pax Romana offers an almost perfect balance between accessibility and customization, delivering a strategy game that is easy to play, with fantastic visuals and content for hundreds of hours, with the potential to become even better through future updates and expansions.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
“Anno 117” takes the best aspects about “Anno 1800” and polishes it to an unprecedented degree. Alongside a more in-depth second region and the addition of a research tree, deities, simple yet satisfying land battles and —of course— new productions chains, it’s a new gold standard for the franchise. I can see myself playing for years to come.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Anno 117: Pax Romana is a fantastic way to build up an empire on consoles. With deep, interesting gameplay and an engrossing layer of Roman lore, it's hard to not find a steady time sink in this RTS treasure.
Anno 117: Pax Romana—at the time of its release—seems more like a missed opportunity than a promising future for the series.
Review in Greek | Read full review
The new entry in Ubisoft’s excellent city building franchise has you getting your sandals dirty and your toga all sweaty in one of the most approachable genre games to date with Anno 117: Pax Romana.
Anno 117: Pax Romana is a complex and demanding strategy game—great news if you thrive on intricate logistics, but less appealing if you’re after a laid‑back city‑building experience in a historical setting.
Review in Unknown | Read full review
Smartly designed, impeccably produced, and tremendously enjoyable, Anno 117 is one of the best games in its genre this year.
If Ubisoft wants to shape its own future as confidently as it asks players to shape Rome, it needs more than another carefully assembled sequel. It needs a new empire entirely, built on fresh ideas and fearless creativity, not another gentle rework of what once worked well enough.
Conclusion: Anno 117: Pax Romana is fun and definitely just as much of a time sink as its predecessors. The division into Latium and Albion offers a great deal of variety and a visually stunning world that combines structure and efficiency on the one hand with almost "cozy game" city-builder vibes on the other, albeit with some limitations. Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio: Me delectat.
Review in German | Read full review
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.
For Anno fans, it's a must-have. For new players, this is a great chance to dive into the series - the fascinating ancient Rome setting and the deep mechanics make it totally worth pushing through the initial learning curve. Anno 117: Pax Romana will be consuming my time for weeks, months, maybe even years to come.
Anno 117: Pax Romana takes a confident step forward, delivering the evolution fans have been hoping for. It brings us back to the height of Roman civilization with stunning detail. And although it doesn’t introduce a major revolution to the classic formula the series is known for, it rewards you with fresh ideas and plenty of enjoyment, making it one of the most notable strategy games worth experiencing today.
Review in Arabic | Read full review
Anno 117: Pax Romana doesn’t seek to rewrite history, but it reminds us why this series remains one of the cornerstones of the city-building genre. With its innovative design, striking visuals, and unmistakable Roman charm, it’s a confident step forward. One that may not reinvent the empire, yet still captivates anyone eager to build and expand its glory. It’s not a perfect empire, but it’s one that feels truly worth building.
Review in Czech | Read full review
The latest installment in the Anno series refines a working concept, even if it doesn't offer any major breakthroughs.
Review in Finnish | Read full review
Anno 117: Pax Romana stands out as a confident and compelling evolution of the franchise, successfully transporting the series into the Roman era without losing the economic depth and city-building sophistication that define Anno. Ubisoft Mainz has delivered an experience that is both familiar to long-time fans and inviting to newcomers. The PS5 version demonstrates how well a traditionally PC-focused title can adapt to console without compromising on its complexity or control.
A triumph of design and discipline, Anno 117: Pax Romana elevates the city-builder to an art form, where an empire of balance, built on trade, faith and foresight, rises above all.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Pax Romana. Every hour of craftsmanship shows in its design, every detail polished to perfection, creating a monument to the genre, crowned with a golden eagle and a banner to match. Flaws remain, of course, with minor bugs serving as reminders that no edifice is perfect. Yet the game still stands tall, and unlike the empire, your own Rome can rise much faster. Some may even expect it in a day.