Anno 117 hands-on review: a rich, challenging Roman city builder that evolves the series without breaking it
After roughly 15 hours with a pre-release build, Anno 117 already feels like a confident, content-rich entry that leans into what the series does best while layering in smart new systems. It’s more evolution than revolution, but the changes make for a deeper, more strategic city-building experience that fans will immediately appreciate. We didn’t come close to seeing it all in our session—our Colosseum still isn’t finished and the sprawling research tree remains largely uncharted—yet there’s more than enough here to share strong first impressions.
You begin by choosing a starting region in sandbox mode: Latium, the Roman heartland, or Albion, the rugged territory corresponding to modern-day Great Britain. Albion is flagged as the tougher starting option, and that’s accurate, though it’s not punishing for newcomers. The region introduces a memorable twist: swamplands. Some goods, like eels, only come from these wetlands, but the swamps can also be drained later via research to reclaim valuable building space—especially crucial in Albion. As you advance there, you also choose a cultural development path—Germanic or Roman—which reshapes resident needs and nudges your city in distinct directions.
Core gameplay still revolves around the classic Anno loop: building production chains, supplying residents, and climbing civilization tiers. Not every resident need must be met to level up, which lets ambitious governors push expansion quickly. However, selectively satisfying nonessential needs yields tangible rewards such as higher taxes, so balancing speed with prosperity becomes a constant consideration.
Area effects bring welcome city-planning wrinkles. Place the right production buildings near housing and you can unlock additional income or prestige; misplace them and you can create new problems. A fishery-focused building might make nearby homes more profitable, while a marble mason can boost prestige but erode health. This nudges you toward blending industry and housing instead of banishing workshops to the outskirts, resulting in a richer, less uniform skyline. While the game stops short of true mixed-use buildings—imagine ancient insulae with shops below and apartments above—the increased density at higher tiers, where patricians trade sprawling domus for stately multistory residences, delivers a striking sense of urban growth.
Aqueducts are the showpiece mechanic that ties economy, health, and happiness together. Channeling water from the mountains down through your city can supercharge farms and mines, improve public health, and keep citizens content. The catch: if you don’t plan aqueduct routes early, you’ll likely face painful rebuilds. Rather than feeling tedious, this adds a satisfying puzzle layer to urban design, where long-term infrastructure thinking pays dividends.
For builders who obsess over aesthetics and efficiency, there’s another big quality-of-life improvement: roads can finally be laid at 45-degree angles, and farms support half-square tiles. You don’t gain raw buildable space from diagonal streets, but you do get more design freedom and attractive layouts that still function beautifully.
The research system is more prominent than ever. Divided into economy, civil society, and military, the tree unlocks upgrades, alliances, and powerful gameplay tools. Technologies are gated not only by knowledge production but also by milestones, such as constructing a certain number of mines or aqueducts or reaching population targets. This structure ensures progression feels earned and encourages varied play styles. Occasionally research can create short pauses while you line up prerequisites, but more often it smooths the pace and introduces new tools right when you’re ready to use them.
Religion adds another strategic pillar with both global and potent local effects. Choose your patron wisely: worshiping Ceres, for example, can massively boost agricultural yields. The local nature of many bonuses also reshapes city planning. Unlike Anno 1800’s late-game commuter solutions, workers in Anno 117 can’t simply travel between islands. You’ll need multiple self-sufficient settlements rather than a single megacity feeding specialized outposts. It’s a bold design choice that makes empire management more challenging—and more rewarding—across the map.
Specialists deepen customization and can be housed in your villa or officium. They’re not handed to you, either; you’ll acquire them through research, purchase, or festival recruitment. Slotted smartly, these characters can turbocharge production chains, smooth out bottlenecks, or strengthen your civic institutions.
On the military front, Anno 117 expands both land and sea warfare. Land battles make a proper return with unit variety that actually matters. Catapults excel at smashing fortifications, archers crumble if they hold the front line, and defending your villa with walls and towers can mean the difference between a brief uprising and a costly disaster. Naval combat benefits from modular ship design, letting you tailor vessels to batter ports, chase raiders, or escort key trade routes. In our campaign, we wiped out a weaker pirate faction and overthrew a rival praetor on land. A stronger pirate force eventually accepted a truce—but our imperial overseer didn’t love that decision. Choices carry diplomatic weight, affecting relationships with neighboring rulers and your standing with the emperor himself, and those politics can escalate into war.
All of these systems interlock in ways that make city-building feel both familiar and freshly demanding. The economy hums along recognizable production chains, while aqueducts, area effects, and religious boons reward players who think in layers—short-term needs, mid-term growth, long-term infrastructure. Research powers up your toolkit as you advance, specialists fine-tune your strategy, and the absence of inter-island commuting forces every settlement to stand on its own two feet. That in turn makes map expansion meaningful rather than routine.
Is Anno 117 a dramatic reinvention? No—and that’s largely to its credit. It preserves the satisfying rhythm of the series while adding enough depth to keep veterans engaged for hundreds of hours. The occasional lull to chase research prerequisites is a small price for how elegantly progression unfolds. Mid-game especially, religion and area synergies can prompt major urban redesigns that feel purposeful rather than punitive, pushing you to rethink district layouts, resource flows, and defenses.
Based on our extended first impressions, Anno 117 is a must-play for anyone who loves city-building, grand strategy, and the texture of a living ancient world. It’s challenging without being cruel, dense with meaningful choices, and rich in systems that reward careful planning and creative design. If you’ve been waiting for a Roman-era Anno that respects the classics while confidently forging ahead, this is the one to watch.Anno 117 is the kind of city builder that makes you stop and admire your work. Depending on your hardware, its visuals range from very pretty to downright stunning. Fog-draped swamps, bustling districts, and richly detailed architecture make every settlement feel alive. The game also rewards smart city planning with meaningful boosts and varied, visually distinct urban layouts that evolve as you play.
The flip side is a learning curve that can feel steep, even if you’ve spent time with other entries in the series. Expanding too quickly can throw your city off balance—fire risk, public happiness, and health can all tilt in the wrong direction, and larger cities face scaling penalties depending on difficulty. The good news is that the game lets you adjust the challenge level mid-campaign, and during testing we never hit a point of no return; careful management consistently turned things around.
The interface gets the job done but takes some acclimation. The statistics screen is helpful, yet it could be more proactive. A clearer indicator for how many production buildings you need at a given efficiency to meet demand, for example, would smooth out early- and mid-game planning. Even so, once you find your rhythm, the systems interlock in satisfying ways.
Whether Anno 117 will ultimately rival its celebrated predecessor will likely become clearer after post-launch content arrives. As it stands today, the core package already feels robust and easily justifies its $60 asking price for fans of deep, systems-driven city building.
If you’re exploring the genre, a few alternatives are worth a look:
– Captain of Industry offers even denser production chains with a modern industrial focus.
– Foundation emphasizes flexible building tools and organic village growth.
– Farthest Frontier injects survival elements, seasons, and food spoilage for a harsher frontier experience.
– Kingdoms Reborn blends an engaging research system with diverse civilizations and unique mechanics.
Performance was strong on a test rig with an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super, and 32 GB of RAM. On high settings, this GPU-heavy title held around 40 frames per second. Enabling DLSS in balanced mode added roughly 10 fps without noticeably compromising image quality. In several hours of play, no bugs surfaced, and stability remained solid throughout.
Bottom line: Anno 117 pairs gorgeous presentation with deep, strategic city management. It can be demanding at first, but the adjustable difficulty and rewarding progression make it a standout choice for players who enjoy thoughtful planning, intricate production chains, and the satisfaction of watching a complex city flourish.
