It’s a big deal whenever HoYoverse launches a new game. While it’s true that a new gacha game pops up almost every day, those same gacha games are almost all lifting references or mechanics wholesale from HoYoverse titles. Genshin Impact put the company on the map and shaped what modern gacha games are, and they’ve followed up that hit with Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, each one making waves and shaking up the industry just a little bit more. It’s safe to assume that HoYoverse wants that same kind of impact from their next major title, and Honkai: Nexus Anima is certainly shaping up to be a swing in a wild new direction. Unfortunately, it’s a big swing that doesn’t fully connect at this time.
Honkai: Nexus Anima is a pretty unique mix of genres and gameplay hooks. While it’s built around creature collecting and will naturally draw comparisons to Pokémon, you aren’t then taking these monsters into turn-based 1v1 battles. Instead, you use them to dive into Teamfight Tactics-style auto battles between big teams of Anima – the creature name in this world.
I’ve always been curious about these sort of idle-battler games, but never met one that hooked me. Using that formula within the context of an anime gacha game, plus mixing in tons of cute collectable creatures, totally does it for me. At first, the depth of combat doesn’t feel particularly vast. There certainly isn’t a high skill ceiling to this style of battle, even as you start mixing in numerous abilities from your Eidos companions. It’s still satisfying to play, but there is a lack of mechanical difficulty at this stage which would need to ramp up to make for a truly satisfying and absorbing endgame.
Outside of battles, Honkai: Nexus Anima will be pretty familiar to you if you’ve dabbled in HoYoverse games. The tutorial section has you exploring some small interactive maps as your chosen protagonist, feeling pretty similar to the small zones of Zenless Zone Zero or Honkai: Star Rail. When you get into the meat of the game, though, you’re tossed into a pretty rich and wide map that combines the scale of a Genshin Impact region with modern buildings and whimsical fantasy meadows.
The game is beautiful, the map is beautiful, the characters you meet are beautiful…but I don’t quite know how to describe them. There isn’t a very clear genre or style to attach Honkai: Nexus Anima to – the other games in the Honkai line were always melting pots of influence that lean heavily toward sci-fi, and Genshin Impact feels similar with a further lean towards Japanese high-fantasy. Honkai: Nexus Anime is bright and bubbly, but impossible to place in the same way.
The story, meanwhile, is not bright or bubbly, but it’s certainly equally incomprehensible. HoYoverse games have an habit of repeating the same two-hit combo in their stories of giving you an amnesiac protagonist, and tossing you into a multidimensional, intergalactic story full of multiple tiers of entities and shadowy realms and world-ending threats and confusing proper nouns. Honkai: Nexus Anima lays it on as thick as usual, with all the gravitas of a grim sci-fi epic. This is a cutesy creature collector, though. The music is whimsical, and the menus are bubbly, but there’s a disconnect between the vibe the game seems to be cultivating and the vibe the story itself is doing. The dense multi-dimensional gacha stories are an acquired taste to start with, but it’s especially egregious here, and I didn’t feel an investment in or understanding of the world I’m exploring because of it.
And that’s a shame, because it really is so much fun to explore this world. Each Anima you bond with can be summoned outside of battles to wander around with you and bust out their unique abilities. One type can smash through walls, while another can become a hilarious improvised trampoline for you to bounce off. I was pretty addicted to the gameplay loop I found myself in, where I’d spend time exploring the world to find new Anima, then I’d dive into battles to see which ones fit together best in a team. And then, once I found a team I liked, I could set out to keep training and uncapping my favourite Anima to make them as strong as possible.
It’s so much fun to play Honkai: Nexus Anima and it’s take on the creature collecting genre, but from the closed beta test, that gets lost in the bland world and incomprehensible story. Being invested in the characters and the story is my biggest reason for picking up a gacha game, and without that, I already have one foot out the door with Honkai: Nexus Anima. I’m hopeful that, as we head towards the full release, HoYoverse can massage these problems and reel me back in.
