With Anno 117: Pax Romana slowly garnering attention ahead of its November 2025 release, the sentiment around most social platforms has been extremely positive and glowing for the game.
That is something quite uncommon recently for Ubisoft’s long list of IPs, like Star Wars, Assassin’s Creed, and many more.
Ubisoft’s other games have always had mixed reactions from the moment they are announced and released, but that’s not the case for Anno 117: Pax Romana and the franchise. But why is that?
Anno 1800’s Underrated Success That Turned the Series Around
Before anyone criticizes Anno 1800 for its aggregate average review on Steam, keep in mind that most of the negative ones hyperfocus on Ubisoft’s UPlay software and connectivity issues, rather than the game itself, including gameplay, optimization issues, or design.
In fact, it’s impressive that it maintained an average review score despite these issues, highlighting how amazing Anno 1800 really was.
Anno 1800 introduced numerous new features to the franchise, providing a more satisfying and rich city-building experience set in the 1800s.
The game introduced a blueprint mode feature for more complex designs, an influence system as a resource, improved trade routes and logistics, and several planned expansions to keep the game fresh for the next three years. These expansions included even more features, such as expeditions, city decorations, expanded governance, overpowered docks, and much more.
Anno 1800 felt extremely polished with one of the best soundtracks of any Anno game ever, offering a truly unique experience during longer sessions.
The game was amazing, and it even had the most expansions or DLCs out of all the other Anno games combined, consistently adding layers of increased depth, such as new continents and leaders.
Most of the fans looking into Anno 117: Pax Romana are city builder fans, and they are fresh from a wonderful experience playing Anno 1800.
Anno 117 Pax Romana’s Exciting New Features Revealed from Trailers and Dev Streams
Another reason why fans are optimistic about Anno 117 Pax Romana is that it has several exciting gameplay features that can drastically change the game. Personally, the biggest one is the land battles, which drastically change the gameplay of any Anno game.
Players will be able to engage in conflicts with other governors on land, but it makes sense to have this feature in their earliest period in the franchise. Anno 1800 already had annoyingly aggressive leaders like Alonso Graves, Vicente Silva, Anne Harlow, or Jean La Fortune. On land, it could be much more challenging, since Anno 1800 featured naval battles instead.
The rest of the new features focus on choosing your starting province, interacting with new cultures, emphasizing deities and religion, resource management, and diplomacy.
Aside from the features, it’ll keep its multiplayer support and offer PvP and co-op game modes. Co-op is also an underrated feature, and it’s one of the reasons why it had so much replayability for me, as you may play with a friend and build your empire together or just play in the same world as different governors.
There’s really nothing negative to talk about when it comes to the Anno franchise, so that could be another reason why Anno could be Ubisoft’s most beloved game at the moment.
Enzo Zalamea
Enzo is a staff writer at Prima Games. He began writing news, guides, and listicles related to games back in 2019. In 2024, he started writing at Prima Games covering the best new games and updates regardless of the genre. You can find him playing the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Path of Exile, Teamfight Tactics, and popular competitive shooters like Valorant, Apex Legends, and CS2. Enzo received his Bachelor’s degree in Marketing Management in De La Salle University and multiple SEO certifications from the University of California, Davis.
