Despite 'Mixed' Steam reviews and a touch of AI slop, strategy city builder Anno 117: Pax Romana has the best launch in series history
The latest game in the long-running Anno strategy city builder series has had a great launch week—depending on where you're standing, at least. Anno 117: Pax Romana, which released on November 12, has been met with "Mixed" reviews on Steam and has been the target of complaints about the use of AI to create in-game assets.
But, according to Ubisoft, that hasn't stopped the city builder from breaking a few records.
Anno 117: Pax Romana is "the fastest-selling title in the franchise’s 25-year history," Ubisoft said in an email to PC Gamer. Ubisoft also said that with an average of 85 on Metacritic (PC Gamer's Anno 117: Pax Romana review scores it an 80) and a 94% "Recommended" on OpenCritic (with an average score of 84), Anno 117 has become "the highest-rated Anno in the franchise's history."
Steam reviewers haven't been as generous. Amid scattered complaints of bugginess, a shortened campaign, and connection issues with its co-op mode, one user summed it up with the most damning sort of praise a game can get: "Anno is fine."
Most of the negative reviews are focused on how unhappy players are that AI assets have been used in the game. This is the first Ubisoft game to post an "AI generated content disclosure" on Steam, which states: "AI tools were used to help create some in game assets. In all such cases, the final product reflects our team’s craft and creative vision." That vision apparently includes background images where people's heads are missing and hands are deformed—that old AI oopsie classic. Some of the AI-assisted artwork is being replaced, per Kotaku, though I'm not sure that's going to smooth the troubled waters.
Or maybe the waters aren't really that troubled after all? Ubisoft also says Anno 117 has "reached unprecedented player numbers, making it the fastest growing title in the series," though it doesn't specify exactly how many total players that is. SteamDB shows a peak concurrent player count of over 50,000, though—roughly twice the peak of Anno 1800, which launched in 2019.
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