HoYoverse’s latest, Honkai: Nexus Anima, continues their adventure into new genres. Where Petit Planet goes full cozy game, Honkai: Nexus Anima journeys into the worlds of auto-battlers and creature catching. It mostly works, with a wild story that I’m incredibly curious to see more of. The auto-battling is fun, though there are some big questions about the creature-catching and gacha mechanics.
Honkai: Nexus Anima starts out with a false sense of security. After choosing your male or female main character, you wake up in a cheery, bright town with a friend. Wandering around the area, you take part in festivities and merriment until things start to quickly go awry. The world isn’t what it seems; what opens as safety quickly turns to danger, the reality you’re introduced to is nothing more than a facade.
There is a lot thrown at you in the opening hours, overwhelmingly so. A person with toast as a head saves you, sending you to another world to escape the evil after you…or at least, who you were. There are a lot of terms and concepts thrown around that it can be difficult to follow. Your character was some sort of world-ender once, but how it all once played out remains to be seen.
It’s all eventually sidelined as you slip into a new reality. This new place you start to call home is full of Anima, colourful creatures that you can catch and battle with. A tournament is afoot, and your character needs to work their way in. The narrative slows down here, thankfully, to let you start to settle into the world, the new creatures becoming your allies, and the mechanics. Just because it slows down doesn’t make it any less interesting, with the first arc that follows being one trapped in a haunted school.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much choice and agency Honkai: Nexus Anima gives the player here. The initial story beat actually ends in failure, time-travelling now becoming a central mechanic as you journey back to try and do things differently. You run around from room to room, fighting enemies and playing mini-games to try and get enough points to get to the middle of whatever is going on. You can get just enough points to continue, but that ends in a bad result. Going deeper unlocks new pathways and story possibilities.
The narrative, despite being a bit difficult to parse at first, is one of the most intriguing parts of Honkai: Nexus Anima. I’m really curious to see how HoYoverse weaves seemingly disparate elements together, especially with the added layers of player choice and time travel. It’s a lot of competing spinning plates that need to be balanced, and if Honkai: Nexus Anima can manage to do that, it could be one of HoYoverse’s most interesting narratives yet.
“I was pleasantly surprised by how much choice and agency Honkai: Nexus Anima gives the player here.”
The gameplay side is where I grow more concerned. Honkai: Nexus Anima embraces creature catching, as bright and well-designed critters exist all around you in the new city you call home. Interacting with them starts a battle, shying away from the turn-based battles the genre is known for, instead opting for auto-battling. You pick your squad, set them, and they attack and fight on their own.
Balancing your team with different roles, including front-line attackers and back-line supporters, is important, while also managing their types to get team boosts. There’s quite a bit of depth under the hood that the player controls despite the fact that the battles play out without too much player input. You do have special character moves that can be used to deal damage or buff your squad, so the player is still very much involved in the flow and can be critical to success.
The battles start out simple enough, with a couple of Anima on each side of the field, but you start to see the complexity roll out as the battles get bigger and more bombastic. I’m not much for auto battlers, but I’m surprised by how much I was enjoying the flow of battle in Honkai: Nexus Anima. You need to be on top of your levelling and material hunting, with some fights demanding proper team composition and properly levelled Anima. Where my concerns arise is in the Anima themselves.
The creatures you battle with are mostly well designed, with some interesting creations. One of my favourites looks like an egg with boxing gloves, while the cuteness of the unicorn can’t be denied. My issue is you get so many, so quickly, and the battles happen so far away from the Anima that it’s hard to really fall in love with them. Other creature battlers have you much closer to the action, along with giving you less to play with, meaning you have time to appreciate and bond with your crew.
Honkai: Nexus Anima gives you tons of Anima to work with, whereas my crew was less about the Anima I liked and more about their team potential. The team composition feels more mechanical than other creature catchers, looking for higher-starred creatures rather than using the ones you like. It’s part of the gacha-ness of it all, where you catch some and pull others from the ether.
With other gacha games, you’re usually pulling for one or two specific units, but here you can get multiple, different creatures in one pull. It’s too much to really commit and get close to, especially if you end up ignoring lower-tier Anima for higher-tier options. I’d actually rather a slower ramp for Anima collection, letting players know and understand their creatures and team composition. It could be a situation that more time and experimentation could alleviate these concerns, but those questions can only be answered with a full release.
The evolution mechanics are another aspect that I’m interested to see more of. Not all the Anima in the beta have evolutions; only a handful do. Each one has specific requirements to evolve. Cublade, for example, needs to hit level 20, defeat three Nexus Battle experts, and use five strength aspects to gain victory in three battles.
“Honkai: Nexus Anima is constantly gorgeous.”
I like the idea that you need to work a bit for the evolution instead of it being strictly linked to level, as long as the tasks themselves are tuned properly. My only question so far is whether every, or most, of the Anima will be able to evolve. Only a handful had evolution challenges, so I’m curious to see how that will be filled out.
The gacha mechanics don’t stop there, as you also pull for Eidoses, the human companions that you use during battle. Each one has three different abilities that can be used, but only one can be slotted in for a fight. Breadhead, the aforementioned toast person, for example, has restore health for Anima of a specific type, deal damage to a single target, or enhance Mimoo, a specific Anima. Each Eidos is linked to Anima, granting the Anima an extra boost if both the Eidos and Anima are selected for battle.
This opens up tons of build possibilities, especially with each Eidos offering multiple possible use cases. It ends up feeling similar to many other gacha games, where you might pull for a unit and their weapon separately, with the weapons here replaced by creatures. It’s more freeing to be able to use Anima without necessarily needing their human companion, but they do better when both are linked.
Presentation-wise, Honkai: Nexus Anima is constantly gorgeous. The human characters look fantastic, with new characters all being memorable and interesting. The Anima are the stars of the show here, with each new Anima adorable in their own right. They’re expressive and full of personality. The cut scenes are loud and bombastic in the best way, and the world design is dense and colourful. It’s visual, maximalist splendour that works for the genre.
Overall, I’m really impressed with what HoYoverse is doing with Honkai: Nexus Anima. There’s a lot of potential here for a fresh take on the creature-catching genre, even if it’s overwhelming in its opening hours. The story is interesting, gameplay is fun, and the overall look and presentation are constantly impressive. If the gacha mechanics and Anima tuning can be evened out, there’s no doubt here that HoYoverse have another hit on their hands.
Honkai: Nexus Anima will release for Android, iOS and PC at a later date.
