(grand music)
(explosions)
- (James) I've played far too many games like Anthem,
an online RPG that only makes good on its promise
of meaningful multiplayer gameplay and progression
after you've labored through it's long-winded and repetitive
story quests.
Anthem's end game is surprisingly fun
since it's already excellent combat is reinvigorated
by interesting loot and challenging gameplay later on.
Unfortunately, there simply isn't enough
of this kind of content to make it worth the wait,
and what's here, is inconsistent in terms of polish,
clarity, and balance.
Anthem, as it stands now, is an adventure best saved
for a later date.
Anthem takes place on the wild frontier of Bastion,
a sprawling and colorful sci-fi expanse
littered with aggressive wildlife.
Encroaching enemy factions and mysterious shaper relics
that end up being little more than glorified enemy spawners.
You play as a Freelancer, an altruistic mercenary
who pilots a mech called a "javelin" and subsists
on the dangerous contracts divvied out by the denizens
of Fort Tarsis.
This cast of Bohemian future folk are generally charming
and well-acted, at times stealing the spotlight
to deliver a heartfelt monologue.
- (Character) That was probably hard to say
to my face, but I needed it.
- (Narrator) I found myself emotionally invested in a few
of the characters, like the prideful old warrior, Halec.
But that said, my desire to engage with the cast waned
after it became clear that the optional conversations
were tonally out of sync with the events
of the main storyline.
Some characters forgot that they were supposed
to be made at me, while others were still bitter
even though I had smoothed things over
in the previous expedition.
Most of Anthem's dialogue delivered outside of Fort Tarsis
seems to exist only to justify the story pass
maddening use of dull quest activities,
like depositing shiny orbs into a pool of ferrofluid,
or standing on a capture point for the hundredth time.
(robotic speaking)
Too many of the more varied and interesting elements,
like game-changing masterwork weapons and worthwhile
stronghold incentives, are held back for far too long.
The narrative portions of the approximately 15-hour plot
are delivered in lengthy, barely interactive chunks
every time you're forced to return to Fort Tarsis
between missions.
You'll exit you're javelin, mute your voice chat
and meander around the eerily silent walled city
at a snail's pace.
Only during two major plot developments
does consequence finally affect anything
beyond the gates of Fort Tarsis,
pairing unique mission gameplay with story elements
in a meaningful way.
But these glimpses at the BioWare of old
dissipate back into your regularly scheduled tedium
as quickly as they arise.
Anthem's combat is initially strong, engaging, and unique.
Thanks in part to responsive flight controls that feel good
on both controller and mouse and keyboard.
You can take off and fly and will staying aloft longer
if you make use of waterfalls, skim across rivers,
or take a nosedive to cool your jets.
Its deft aerial maneuvering transitions seamlessly
into punchy third-person shooting, accented by a suite
of mostly fun to use abilities.
And the fantasy behind each of the four javelin archetypes
is conveyed well with the help of phenomenal animation work.
Piloting a shield-wielding colossus
into a lowly enemy scout, for example,
felt like sandwiching a balloon between and charging
V-8 Mustang and a brick wall.
There are a lot of spectacular moments,
particularly when fighting larger foes, and at times
I found myself in awe of my ability
to effortlessly execute exactly what I had in mind.
Of course, then end up feeling vanished
in the frequent presence of bugs and imbalances,
like invisible sources of damage, imprecise telegraphs,
lengthy stunt effects and missing combo triggers
or legendary bonuses.
The combat also plays its whole hand within the span
of the first few hours and the proceeds to temporarily
lose its appeal as you simply grind to increase the numbers
on your already acquired gear variance and weapons.
You won't see much in the way of new and interesting loot
or enemies until you approach the endgame.
And that's a very long drought.
Rarity means nothing early on, as the extra stats
are far too random and insignificant to be useful
and use annoyingly vague terminology.
Weapon and ability balance is a total crapshoot.
The intercepter's cluster mine, for example,
is inexplicably ineffective most of the time.
At these moments you're left with a choice:
attempt to finish the expedition with an apparently
useless ability or abandon it and suffer through
an agonizingly long load screen to change equipment.
The inability to change load outs on the fly
is thoroughly felt here and makes experimentation
more of a dangerous deterrent rather than a fun process
of trial and error.
The mechanical quality of Anthem's enemies is actually
quite good.
Most of which require a unique strategy to beat efficiently,
and all them send enough projectiles your way to keep
you constantly moving.
But their variety in terms of quantity
leaves a lot to be desired.
You'll see the vast majority of unique enemies
only hours in.
The stronghold bosses and one or two dominion baddies
saved for later.
The open world free-play mode is fun
if a little light on variety, but the three strongholds
are my favorite content in Anthem
due to their teamwork-inducing difficulty
and mechanically respectable boss fights.
Unfortunately, they too have their fair share of issues.
The boss of the Tyrant Mine can be bested
in under a minute on hard difficulty,
while the final encounter, in another
spoiler-ridden stronghold, took my party upwards
of 30 minutes to defeat on normal with no wipes.
I'm all for marathon boss encounters, but here the rewards
didn't match the task, and while I love large bombastic
telegraphs, like the Ash Titan's flame wave,
the hit detection on such abilities
is frustratingly imprecise.
Whether the result of an unusually bad latency
or some other factor, the "how did that hit me" effect
only gets more punishing as you venture
into the grandmaster difficulties,
and considering that's where the majority
of the interesting rewards are, it especially aggravating.
Finally, there are are an absolute enormity of major bugs
that still need to be squashed, including the numerous
crashes and disconnects that I experienced
during my 40 hours in Anthem.
I've encountered far more than BioWare addressed
in the first patch, notably, a bug where the game audio
cuts out entirely until you relaunch,
and the inability to rejoin a stronghold in progress
after disconnecting because your spot is immediately filled.
Anthem comes closer to succeeding as a co-op action RPG
than it does a story-focused game, but only does so after
a trying grind through its repetitive main quests,
and even at that, its standout elements
like the flashy combat and mechanically rich bosses,
still have a long way to go in terms of polish, variety,
and balance.
I hope that with time BioWare can capitalize
on its strengths and turn Anthem into something worth
investing all these hours into.
But all the indications are there's a lot of work to be done
to reach that point.
If you enjoyed the review, shoot me a follow on Twitter
@ThuggnDuggn, and for more on Anthem,
check out Six Changes We Want To See,
everything you need to know about its microtransactions,
and 10 minutes of grandmaster in-game gameplay,
and for everything else, keep it right here on IGN.