Anima: Gate of Memories - Arcane Edition

« The team behind Anima is very clearly dedicated and it seemed to have really tried to make the best action RPG possible, but the reality is that it is just not experienced enough or the team just does not understand how to do it. The Nameless Chronicles was only a marginal improvement over Gate of Memories and both campaigns are not recommended at all. »

« Anima: Gate of Memories has the dubious design strategy of being a Nier-like game. The game's setting is based on a series of Spanish tabletop games (the "Anima: Arc of SInners" setting) that I would recommend to almost no one save for Catholic weeaboos. That said, I kinda love all that trash. I also like Nier. I also like this trash. The game's combat is based on using two gauges: a magic gauge and a ki gauge (stamina gauge). Both resources fill over time so the game's combat essentially encourages you to cycles between one and the other which gives the combat a bit more depth than you see in a lot of character action games. That game also has you switching between two characters without cost so you can even build one for magic and one for physical attacks. Both characters have extremely customize-able move lists so you can put together some interesting builds. If I have one major complaint, its that bosses enemies tend to feel either be trivial or a deadly slog. Every now and then the game hits its pocket of difficulty well and it is great but I need to figure that this game could have used some more fine tuning. The game's dungeon design is extremely varied and I think commendable. One dungeon feels almost like resident evil and another might feel almost like a small collect-a-thon platformer level. It makes the game a little inconsistent but I find it refreshing. The world building is really neat (especially the boss backstories that you can read through), but the writing can be uneven and kind of cheesy. I think this game is worth checking out and I hope it gets a sequel that smooths some of its rough edges. »