I have considerable experience playing basically anything Hoyoverse puts out. I like a lot of their games, some more than others. When I was invited to get some hands-on time with their newest title, Honkai: Nexus Anima, I was excited to accept. Hoyoverse takes the Pokémon formula and adds its own twists and turns to it. Let’s get into it!
The World
Before we get into the actual game, I want to take a bit of this preview to discuss the world of Honkai: Nexus Anima. Years and Years ago, the world was ruled over by the Sovereigns, putting together aspects of the world into pairs. These aspects were designated as Love, Reality, Memory, Chaos, Beauty, and many more. The character you are playing is known as the Sunderer to those who remember the old world. You were a key asset in sundering the world apart, making all aspects individual. Each Novarch owns one of these aspects. Each plane is operated by a Novarch. A plane is a universe or world all having rules of its own.
Your character, The Sunderer, however, does not remember any of this in the game. The game starts with your character in a world of illusion and has been there for 200 years. Thanks to the Sundering, the pieces from the Old World fell as aspect energy and turned into creatures known as Nexus Anima. Each Anima is part of a specific aspect. When the game starts, you are sent to one of the aspect worlds of Reality, in a town called Iia.
Eidos
Something important to the world of Honkai: Nexus Anima is the Animasters; those who use Anima in everyday life. These are the characters in the world that you, as the Sunderer, will be interacting with. They are also a part of the gameplay during combat. If you follow any of the other Honkai games in the series, you might recognize some of these designs. Characters such as Blade or Kiana are in this game. Blade is actually one of the characters chasing after you.
Eidos are also a part of some of the gacha in this game. There is an Eidos banner and a Nexus Anima banner.
Gacha
I do want to pull in this part of the discussion since Gacha is going to be a large portion of getting characters and Nexus Anima in your team. Pulling a multi on both banners costs 1600 Aspect gems each. Aspect gems are the premium currency you get from doing story missions, exploring the world, doing event missions, doing side quests, and unlocking entries in the Anidex. The Eidos banner includes four-star Anima as well as all standard Eidos and premium limited Eidos. The Nexus Anima banner includes Anima, both four-star and five-star.
I have one major problem with this setup personally. That is the fact that both banners cost the same amount of currency. There is little reason to pull on the Nexus Anima banner since you get so much more out of the Eidos banner. The four-star thing you can pull on the Eidos banner can be Eidos or Anima. The Anima banner only lets you pull the Anima. You can also catch or evolve to get most of the Anima in the game, so it’s weird in my eyes to put this banner that expensive.
I honestly would lower the price of using the Nexus Anima banner. If you are at 1600 Aspect gems, there is basically no reason to summon on the Anima banner. Maybe if they added higher rates for four-star Anima or higher amounts of Rapport shards to enhance the Anima you already have bonded to, I would like it more.
Nexus Anima
In this next section, I will discuss the headliner of Honkai: Nexus Anima, the Anima. These creatures are separated by the aspects they represent. When I was thinking of a way to describe the design of these creatures, I was actually surprised that Pokémon or Dragon Quest were not the first ones I thought of. Mainly due to how often these creature-taming games are based on the aesthetics of those two properties. I actually think more of the experiments from the Lilo and Stitch TV series. They feel like they would at home in that world.
To put these fellas in your party, you have to bond with them. That requires you to fight them with your team, and once you defeat them, you use these balls of yarn called Skein. There are normal Skein, Rare Skein, and Gold Skein. Normal Skein has a low chance of bonding an Anima to you. Rare Skein has a higher chance of bonding an Anima to you, and Gold Skein is a guaranteed bond.
When you use a Skein, you will have a little heart-shaped icon behind it that will buzz twice with numbers from 0-100%. Each buzz will fill a portion of the heart. You have to get the heart fully filled at 100% to bond with the Anima successfully. If you fail, you have another shot if you still have Skein in your inventory and the Anima doesn’t flee. It felt like I had four to five chances before the Anima would flee. On your last chance, a yellow warning sign shows up below the Anima telling you it’s about to leave. I generally used the normal Skein until that warning sign showed up, then I would use the Rare Skein.
Similar to other creature taming games, having shiny monsters. Or rarer and different colored versions of normal creatures, Honkai: Nexus Anima has Chromatic Anima. Chromatic Anima are different colored versions of the Anima. If you manage to find one, you unlock that color set for the one you already have bonded with.
Combat
Let’s go over the combat in Honkai: Nexus Anima. This is what is known as an auto battler. You have a limited amount of Anima you are able to have in a team based on your character’s level. When you build a team, you want to look at your synergies. Having Anima from the same Aspect gives you passive buffs to the Anima that are a part of that Aspect. When you are choosing which Anima to send out in combat, you will see a list of Aspects on the left side of the screen with numbers that show up and provide buffs based on the number of Anima in that Aspect on your team.
Once you have your team selected, the next thing you will need to figure out is their positions. Luckily, next to the Aspect, there is a type. This type will be like Protector or Mastermind. With Frontline or Backline next to that. Frontline Anima will be in the front, and Backline will be in the back and generally are ranged. If you click and hold on to the Anima, it will show you an arrow pointing to the other side of the battlefield. That indicates where they will be targeting and which enemy Anima they will likely go after.
Once you have your Anima chosen, then you get to choose three Eidos from your collection to bring on the team. Eidos will count as your abilities on a cooldown. They each have a passive that can boost a specific Anima if you have them on your team. They also have an active ability that you can use during combat. This is where you get a lot of the engagement once combat has started. You may not be able to control the Anima, but you can activate the Eidos once off cooldown to apply their ability. It can include damaging an opponent’s Anima, buffing or healing your Anima, or even freezing a large section of the board that makes it so the enemy can’t move for a period of time.
My Thoughts
Honkai: Nexus Anima is a solid idea and has a lot more effort into the integration of the lore, story, and world into the creature tamer genre than I expected. I absolutely love the riff in the beginning of the game on Pokémon where they do the three choices and rival character that is also your friend, but dive way into a whole different story after a plot beat is finished.
I find the actual world itself to be intriguing. 81 Universes that they can play around with make a plethora of choices they can have with this story going forward. The animations are gorgeous, and I love seeing some of these characters once again. I really loved the designs for the Anima as well as their importance to the event that Sundered the universe apart. There is also a segment of the game that is all about choices, and the route in which you go about solving the main problem has different outcomes based on your method. It also has some significance to the main plot when you go back and try to 100% and get every outcome from that segment.
My only big gripe with this experience is the combat. I don’t have a problem with an autobattler game, but the idea of making it a creature tamer game with autobattling. Some of the best aspects of taming creatures are building up that creature little by little. You feel less bonded to the creature, or at least I did, with how this combat separates you from your Anima. The active parts of battling are using the Eidos. That requires getting closer to the Animasters.
This isn’t bad at all to have focus on the Animasters, but it does lessen the bond you can have with your Anima. Even the strongest Anima you will likely get, you will want to use because that Anima gets buffed based on an Eidos that you have. It makes it feel like it is the Eidos Anima you are using and not the one you bonded with. This might just be a small nitpick in the feeling of the game, but for me, I do think it is important that you do feel the link you build with your Anima.
Ultimately, I do think Honkai: Nexus Anima is a solid experience and more engaging than I was expecting. I initially had more doubts because of the autobattler combat, as it might turn people away, but the Eidos do still make it feel strategic and engaging. Hoyoverse has a real way of showing you that they can take a concept already done and evolve it out the wazoo.
There are a lot more layers to this game than I have covered here, but I also don’t want to take up more time describing things when it’s better to let players see some of those aspects themselves.
There’s still no release date for Honkai: Nexus Anima, but it is currently being developed for PC, Android, and iOS.
