Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Bioware
Platform: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Genre: Online Action-Shooter

Bioware is one of my favorite developers(or it was when Muzyka and Zeschuk were running the show before their eventual departure). Their games are readily available across the wide spectrum of our culture from the older Balder Gate series, Mass Effect to Dragon Age. However, after Mass Effect Andromeda, things haven't been looking up for the studio so with the seed of doubt in time grew, community became dissonant with their new game; a looter-shooter called Anthem.

Anthem has received mixed receptions not only because of EA's presence insinuating that they'll choke the end user with ridiculous microtransactions but the game has been plagued with bugs, technical problems and server issues after the demo was released earlier.

I've managed to get a hold of it from EA Origin Access Premier and my critique surrounding this game is a bit mixed but there is possibility of the game blossoming with lot of potential. I've had a lot to enjoy from this game, maybe not as much as I would like to but it needs to addressed as to why I think Anthem should get a second chance.

Story

Anthem is set in the fictional world of Bastion. Where humanity lives on the edge, surrounded by dangerous wildlife, strange weather patterns and powerful entities. Their main goal is to find out what the Anthem is. A mysterious device created by shapers(game's terminology for god) that sends telepathic signals and in order to translate them, Cyphers exist. You start off after a cataclysmic event called heart of rage destroyed the city of Freemark, a once great city settled above the heart of the Anthem before it was invaded by the Dominion, the game's antagonists. 2 years later, your task as Freelancer is set to restore balance.

Right from the start, this has good Bioware level of storytelling and writing. There's a lot to uncover from its lore and not in the typical Destiny's grimoire fashion; You read all of this from in-game. Charming characters, written well enough to even throw witty banters couple of times and for you to care about their dilemmas. The world of Bastion is vast, entrancing and splendid to learn of.

But where previous Bioware games have given player choice of how story plays, in here it's pretty linear. Your choices only have affects in dialogue when it comes to conversing with other NPCs. You can only select two option of dialogue and this is pretty summed everywhere. Again, the writing is great but this feels just tacked on in certain moments and others it does get you extra rewards. So there's two ways it goes.

There are times, the pacing for plot lacks consistency. Even though considering this is a looter shooter and some people would want to bypass the story for the action. But it doesn't seem like Bioware is letting you go easily as it puts you in multiple hurdles in order for you to grasp it.

As it stands, the game's story isn't fully realized until they bring more future content set by their roadmap. So there's a waiting period before Act 1 get's released.

Gameplay

Now the whole framework of Anthem is based on Mass Effect Andromeda, which did have its issues but its gameplay was mostly enjoyable. It's like playing that with 4 player co-op except on amphetamines. While also borrowing influences from Warframe, Destiny and Monster Hunter World. But it's also easier said to be a Destiny clone because of the loot grind.

At the start, you choose from 4 types of Javelins: Ranger, Intercepter, Colossus and Storm. Each with their own unique abilities and combat style. Best part about that is you can retrofit any different sorts of abilities by changing the components of each suit in the Forge. More rarer items give you better stats. The thing that differentiates Destiny from this is how the configuration of your setup is build. As you level up, you unlock more of these Javelins at your disposal till level 26, however each of them comes with parts of their own best way to unlock full gear is to play that Javelin in repeated seasons.

To get on a mission, you get on board your Javelin and pick your expedition. If that sounds familiar, yes it's the exact markup of MHW. You either choose Freeplay, Stronghold or Mission type. Problem with these are that they're not interlinked together while you're on the assignment. It gets more difficult if you play with a group once you join mid-match, you kind of start to realize you missed story bits and have no choice but to try playing it alone since you can't stay separate from your teammates. Once the expedition is over, you're given a short summary of what you've earned.

Anthem does two things right: Its versatility and continuous combat sessions. You have two abilities that contributes damage to enemies while the other one could be used to boost stats, targeting bonus or defense. Your ultimate is where the real fun is at; as it destroys waves of enemies all the while resetting your health and shield especially during sticky situations. Tackling enemies isn't easy head on as you dodge their attacks and take cover to regenerate your shield before picking out isolated enemies one by one. Each kills drop health packs and ammo, allowing you to continue momentum without any stopgap. Using various of your abilities mixed together including with your teammates can result in combo damages that brings serious hurt to your foes.

Your teammates don't necessarily die, they go down and can be revived during battles. However, if you were to go down, you have to wait till they revive you in restricted respawn areas but say if you weren't enjoying the match much and you just wanted out. Well you can't because you can't get the option to quit or open the main menu. You're basically stuck until someone revives you or clears the wave of enemies or your teammates die.

Your flight mechanics are easier to grasp. You engage thrust while pressing forward button to move faster and navigate through areas mid-air. You can hover and strafe mid-air though you can't change your altitude. Dodging is easy to do but different Javelins can do dodges more than once as well as jumping.

You fight against various factions, monsters and bosses. Each of them changes the flow based on how they attack in groups. Like with Scars, you have to destroy turrets, take out the leader in their group doing most of the damage while the grunts are just fodder. Dominions however are human enemies of which have foot soldiers and Javelins attacking you. Then there are Titans, ones whom are very tough to kill. 2nd to bosses from Stronghold expeditions. The game is no stranger to bullet spongy foes, as you ramp up difficulty, they becoming harder to kill especially in Grandmaster difficulty levels(of which enemy stats are obscenely high). Requiring good coordination to win battles.

In order to craft items for your gear, you'll have to find items in both during expeditions. Though you'll find most during Freeplay as you engage with various combatants roaming in Bastion and during world events highlighted in an icon while traversing.

As fun as all this sounds, Anthem has pacing issues at times and some of the quests turn out to be pandering alongside the aforementioned issue. Grinding isn't difficult and am relieved to say earning gold is easy especially when you're playing with people in your friends list thanks to the Alliance System. But the momentum I had during the first hours dwindled slowly and I was really craving to get into something to really get my blood pumping because I like the combat mechanics. The endgame does deliver, but mostly in Strongholds and the missions you've finished don't offer much incentive to replay. But hey, it has tombs for you to explore.

Anthem isn't complete as well, there are just some content that feels missing. Bioware has made it clear however that this game is a live service and will receive more based on the roadmap that was revealed much earlier.

Online

So let me preface by saying this: Anthem doesn't have a competitive multiplayer.....yet. From what I've read during interviews, they're confused about how they'll approach it. As if they didn't realize how difficult it could be to implement the mode. I mean a majority of looter shooters including the ones I've mentioned in this piece do have PvP modes. So that leaves me in an awkward position considering I use PvP at times to break away when the rest of the game becomes too much to handle at times.

Speaking of leaving something to be desired, the server issues in this game are atrocious. I've been sent to the main menu mid-sessions. One Stronghold mission I've nearly completed, I lost all progress and XP thanks to connectivity errors. Though if you do come to the main menu within a short time period afterwards, you're given an option to return to your session or cancel it so that someone else replace you via matchmaking.

There's also the progression. Normally I would think that if a game released has little cosmetics to unlock then its just a newborn baby coming into its own and will time grow. However, this is 2019. The certain genre this title fits into is saturated and Anthem didn't provide much of a reason either to continuously grind since you don't have much to fancy for looks. You do earn a lot of gold thanks to challenges, scavenging items and faction loyalty but it still stands to be objective about whether or not you should continuously grind for the gold since during missions or stronghold you seldom earn them. It's because of how they're structured makes it feel little hollow.

Exciting enough as you go further(sarcastically speaking), cosmetic changes are decent even though am little disappointed that you can't change coloring of certain sections of your suit yet. That's the main problem; I just wish it had more to provide or maybe I don't understand how changing the color set works. (Edit: I made a mistake, turns out you can but the interface made it difficult to spot the option somehow)

If you want to buy those sweet Javelin suit designs, well you either grind hard or fork up like 8 dollars to get each of them. But even then, it just feels amiss because the items featured aren't much appealing at all.

Production Value

After the blooming reveal of Anthem within Microsoft's E3 conference, people were wholly ecstatic what it'll really look like and am hear to say yeah, it somewhat looks similar to what the presentation has shown. Except for the hub that is Fort Tarsis which feels muted at times.

When it comes to visual fidelity, Anthem antes up hard. Vegetation, texture modeling and animations are top notch. Effects rendering and post-processing makes the game beautifully engrossing with richer lighting, shadows thanks to proper use of ambient-occlusion. Character models look sublime, although the eyes kind of creep me out, maybe they look as bad as mannequins? There's enough options in the menu for the PC version to tweak as much as you want.

But since I've played this on PC, I've had difficulties getting it to higher settings because this game is demanding. Very. Even though, it looks decent in medium settings. That doesn't mean the game regarding the technical area is proficient. Did I forget to mention that there are insane amount of loading that goes on everytime you load the game or launch an expedition? Yeah, well they last from 20 seconds to over a minute. It's also no stranger to texture pop-ins and weird object collisions. While it is optimized after the demo, it has a long way to go before it is fully fine-tuned.

The sound design is what you'd expect from a Triple-A game. The audio pops with wide variety of sounds. Everytime you thrust feels like a jet engine just shooting small burst near your ear canal. Distorted noise that sounds surreal like deep ocean noise in high pitch and some that makes you jump because it sounds like your computer just glitched out for a second. It's highly immersive even upto the teat with Destiny's standards.

The game's soundtrack is no slouch either. It'll take your breath away.

But with this much positive assessments, one big issue with this is that the map isn't that big overall. Sure, more quality in smaller areas is better than something that's big but lifeless at times. The mynute detail can leave you gasping. But for a game like this, it wouldn't be too much to ask if it was a big larger?

Summation

Anthem is quite something to behold. It's been Bioware's passion project for the past 5 years even before Destiny came out and even before Dragon Age Inquisition. So that leaves me to believe they had something different in mind when it was in development.

However, as much as I managed to sum this up as being good. It still feels little off knowing this reminds me of Destiny 1. Even in doubt, I still believe it is brimming with potential enough to be a successful game when more content starts releasing. But the best way I see it is I don't have to worry about expansion packs because there won't be any season pass for this game as it'll update itself for free while being funded by cosmetic purchases with fiat currency(dollar bills). Bioware has a 10-year plan to expand further into future DLCs. Though for some like Javelins, your only option might be to fork up cash.

Anthem as much as it has a bevy of issues, still stands to be heard from after its release. I really am looking forward to where the future is with this title and hopefully, for the love of god, gets a PvP mode soon. I don't care how, I just want one to battle one Javelin against another.

Also I have decided since this game is a live service title, I see no point leaving a score so I've decided to just leave it at that. And let you decide whether this game is for you or not.

Unscored

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If you liked this review, let me know and please leave a vote. Doing this was pretty time consuming as there was a lot to uncover about Anthem. I can see why it has received some backlash much earlier, but maybe some praise should be in order for positive reinforcement.