This section is the clear standout, in large part because it’s the only world specifically built for this second game. In particular, the third world you visit, brilliantly fleshes out the player character’s identity and purpose. Fortunately, I’m pleased to report that what starts as an incoherent jumble does eventually solidify into a truly intriguing tale that deftly avoids the common clichés. This game is extremely story-heavy, which is a good thing because, honestly, the combat and exploration is simply not strong enough to sell the game alone. The Bearer and her linked entity, Ergo, keep appearing for mysterious reasons. However, by the end I had come to enjoy the characters with all their performance quirks, mostly because I was engrossed enough with the story. It takes a while to get used to the performances being…not so natural. With that being said, the performances range from pretty good to fairly poor as one might expect from a low-budget game. I commend the game for being fully voice-acted. “That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard you say. This betrays the extremely limited budget, which leads us into the voice acting. Even worse, the environments have barely any ambient sounds except the big ones like fire or wind. However, the sound design in general is barely passable consisting of very simple slashes, pops, booms and whirls with very little 3D spatial awareness. The memories theme in particular is a perfect fit with its hauntingly beautiful tones. Moving on, the music is exceptionally good across the board, even worthy of separate listening. Combine the too-close camera and your character’s bizarrely huge dodge distance, and you’ll often ping-pong around during combat, camera flailing in all directions. Often the combat devolves into madness! Constant projectiles, camera freaking out!Ĭoming back to ranged attacks, there are far too many combat encounters involving claustrophobic rooms with enemies shooting projectiles or relentlessly lunging at you. A few basic environmental puzzles present themselves, paced out well enough to never be too tedious or tiresome. Intermittent basic platforming and overhead or side-angle camera perspectives add a bit of flavor to the journeying along with a dash of trap avoidance. The game zones themselves are fairly small, allowing quick but enjoyable exploration with a nice feeling of discovery when finding tucked away items. By the way, it should be noted that the game reuses about 75% of the first game’s art assets, even copying two of the three worlds and several boss battles. Occasionally very welcome shortcuts are unlocked, allowing easy access back to the hub before and after boss battles. Most of the game takes place in a main hub and the three “worlds” that connect to it. Movement is responsive, fluid, and reliable. So how does the game play? The fundamentals are pretty strong. Perhaps this game wins the “most-seemingly-overly-long-and-confusing-title-that-actually-makes-total-sense-in-context” award! Hence, Anima, the overall world, telling the Gate of Memories story, but focused on The Nameless and his Chronicles. The Nameless isn’t an easy guy to kill…it’s not even clear if he can be killed! It tells the exact same Gate of Memories story from the 2016 game but is reframed from the point of view of a guy called The Nameless, who was present (and a boss) in the first game. Now the The Nameless Chronicles comes out not as a sequel but more as a standalone mini-expansion. Then the finished product finally released in 2016 and was mostly unnoticed by the world.įast forward to June 2018. Then in 2012 a Kickstarter campaign (and 2014 Kickstarter-booster) by the same authors funded the development of the first Anima: Gate of Memories video game. Anima began in 2005 as the Anima Beyond Fantasy role-playing game books, a mix of anime and medieval fantasy. Speaking of development, let’s go on a brief journey describing this game’s storied history. Then mix it all together by a development team of only three main people!īrumbek Reviews Anima: Gate of Memories – The Nameless Chronicles: Low-Budget, Big Heart Third, take Dark Souls’ tough-as-nails boss battles and try, try again mentality. Second, take Nier’s unconventional characters and multi-layered story-world. First, take Devil may Cry’s fast and flashy combat, combos, and demon powers. Anima: Gate of Memories – The Nameless Chronicles is a budget-priced story-heavy third-person action game heavily inspired by Devil may Cry, Nier, and Dark Souls.
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