I’d recommend playing through the main story first as this campaign has a lot of story spoilers. The Arcane Edition includes the Nameless campaign, where you can explore another part of the game’s story, with some maps exclusive to the campaign. To the game’s credit there don’t appear to be a lot of reasons to backtrack, but there’s more than a few items that will need to be double-checked via walkthrough as the levels aren’t designed in a way that you can bump into some of these items naturally. Collecting all of the boss memories and some items for achievements will require a fair amount of platforming. The levels are designed well, though the platforming leaves a lot to be desired due to the camera and due to how movement works and feels. In Arcane you can talk with some NPCs and have Bearer and Ergo converse with each other, which explore more about both characters’ backgrounds, though it would have been nice if these were worked into the story more organically. It is vaguely Persona 3-ish in that it’s a tower with an item shop, and function-specific NPCs that can be unlocked over time by rescuing them from dungeons. Speaking of PS2-era design, levels are accessed from a central hub called Arcane. Overall they’re not too tough aside from the latter ones, where you’ll need to really get the most out of the phases where you can deal damage. I found some of them a bit grindy, and some of them a bit lacking – there’s a lot more that could have been done with these fights but they’re pretty solid and remind me a lot of PS2-era boss design. The bosses generally have phases in which they use sets of attacks, with more new attacks appearing as you wear them down. The boss encounters are a great opportunity to let you show off your skill, though in later fights they’re more about dodging and timing (think Monster Hunter) as opposed to hack and slash style quick comboing. Balancing these between Ergo and Bearer adds to the customizability – I ended up building Ergo as a rush melee attacker while Bearer was relegated to spamming ranged attacks with high ki and mana regeneration to compensate. (Interestingly, the Nameless campaign subverts this as he is given different models for the weapons he equips.) These are where you get the brunt of your stats, and some extra effects like ki and mana regeneration. The characters are also able to equip weapons and accessories, though these don’t show on their character models. While Bearer and Ergo have different moves, health gauges and customizable controls, they share a mana and ki pool, so it can be useful to build either character to primarily use one or the other resource. These also add more stats to either character. Skills are unlocked by leveling up and by plotting unlocked points on the skill tree. It’s pretty satisfying once you get into a groove, but the game takes a while to get you to that point. The controls work pretty well to begin with, although I have some gripes with how the battle system and enemy design affect combat – you can get shot off a ledge with consecutive ranged attacks without any opportunity to recover, and you tend to spend a lot of time zooming towards the aforementioned marionettes and bosses as opposed to making combos. The combat and level design takes inspiration from DMC and Bayonetta, though the general level of flashiness isn’t as high. The system is unique in that it allows you to switch between the two playable characters to chain their attacks together, and the game encourages it in certain levels. What this game has over Extella is a combat system that has a lot of room for customization, with various ranged and melee attacks that can be chained together. This makes sense because of the setting, but a lot of the time while playing Anima, I wished I was playing Fate Extella instead, which isn’t a good thing as Extella is pretty mediocre at best. It doesn’t help that the enemy design and combat all reminded me of Fate Extella, particularly because you spend a good portion of the game zooming around whacking armed marionettes. All this because someone tried to summon something from a cursed book. In fact the whole thing could have taken place in the Fate franchise with players none the wiser, with the setting revolving the main characters beating up a series of extraordinary individuals, including a fairy king, a puppetmaster, a shadow demon, and the head of the church. Platforms: Switch, PC (Steam), PS4, Xbox One, This is clearly evidenced by Jeanne d’Arc lookalike protagonist, the deadpan edgy personality-less Bearer of Calamities, and her partner Ergo Mundus, snarky and fourth wall-breaking all-powerful evil sealed in a book, who reminds me of Angra Mainyu in more ways than one. Anima: Gate of Memories takes place in the world of the Anima tabletop RPG, which is inspired by western fantasy and modern Japanese anime tropes.
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