Anthem Review: Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Speedrunning Tips

Bioware's Anthem promised a unique, powerful experience while boldly mashing up multiple genres.  

Understandably, the expectations on the premise of a looter shooter with intense, rich Bioware storytelling shot through the roof. Couple it with advancements in both genres from other studios while Anthem plodded toward release and the bar was set incredibly high. 

Like any bold move, Anthem has its rewards and hiccups. Offering unique gameplay, the game's systems and some odd design choices clash often, as does the general combination of genres. 

Anthem is a conflicting, if not embattled release because when it all works together nothing can match it, but the state of said release will spur a longstanding debate about games as a service and more.

A game worth experiencing, Anthem's core at least offers hope the surrounding pieces can grow alongside it in time. 

Graphics and Gameplay

Visually speaking, Anthem is immersive and, at times, stunning. The sprawling, vast jungles of Bastion are drop-dead gorgeous. 

Waterfalls, expansive patches of jungle, bodies of water, ruins and caves all glisten with polish and an onslaught of colors. Characters throughout are equally as impressive. They move through the world expressively and without some of the usual game issues (lip syncing), offering distinct personalities a player can't wait to know on a deeper level as the story unfolds. 

Then there are the javelins. There's nothing quite like launching off in one of the Iron Man-esque suits, with a combination of design, visuals and superb sound design forming a cohesive, enjoyable experience. And that's not just the first time—every takeoff is a blast. 

Fort Tarsis is the only place the game's presentation really takes a hit, in large part because it feels hollow. The story fleshes it out as a player progresses, but it's an oddly quiet space, where NPCs the player walks by are deep in unheard conversation and no music plays. 

But overall, the combination of the visuals and gameplay are where Anthem shines. 

Players will appreciate the unique feel of the four javelins. Dropping into the plodding, nuke-dropping Colossus is brilliantly different from the up-close-and-personal melee approach of the Interceptor.

This isn't to suggest they are well balanced for the endgame, though. There, the glass cannon wizardry of the Storm class gets exploited and one-shot often, and the Interceptor's intimate violence doesn't seem to work well. 

Within the confines of each javelin, whipping through the air, managing ability cooldowns and experimenting with different weaponry is a fun time. Combos are a massive part of the experience. A primer and detonator ability can brutalize the opposition, and pairing different abilities with or without the help of other players provides thrills.

Unfortunately, clarification for the whole system is hard to find (a tutorial of it is available in the Fort, which when clicked upon loads an external browser with a YouTube video).

It would seem like something the game should include in the tutorial in a mission, where the player is stripped of powers and has to relearn them one by one.

This exact tutorial is actually in the game, but it doesn't cover the combo possibilities. Overall, the ability to create immense depth for team building and individual builds to tackle endgame content is present, but it can be difficult for gamers to fully grasp without the ideal tutorial system.

While gameplay is fun, interactions with the world itself dampen the experience greatly. Anthem sports some of the worst enemy A.I. seen in years.

The insect-like Scars seem unaware of the player's presence at times, even while taking damage or when their comrades fizzle to the ground in a heap. They don't often move to take cover or flank, and sometimes they run right past the player. 

Maybe this wouldn't be so profound or glaring, but there isn't much in the way of variety, either. In a game like Destiny, several different races of enemy types have their own quirks.

The A.I. isn't perfect, but players learn to understand to work around Cabal shields, shoot a Vex in the middle, not the head, and that the Hive Ogre is about to rain down damage, to name only a few examples. In Anthem, most enemies seem like cannon fodder. 

Damage information compounds the problem, especially at higher difficulties. Sound design and visual feedback as to where a player is taking damage from are lacking. At the highest difficulties, getting one-shot out of nowhere isn't uncommon. The majority of enemies don't have tells before an attack, either, which removes an element of timing-based skill to trump them, and that leaves things feeling random. 

Anthem's mission structure is jarringly narrow, if not confusing. The Destiny 1 recipe is here ad nauseam, offering only a handful of mission types: defend this point while enemies spawn, kill all enemies in an area, collect things around an objective and then repeat one of those first two points.

The repetitiveness doesn't change based on the severity of the narrative around it, as one would expect a world-ending Shaper relic that must be shut down to handle a little differently than a basic fetch quest for an NPC, but they feel the same. 

The deeper problem is how it all functions. In a game about amazing flying feats, all too often Anthem's objectives restrict the flying. Picking up certain items or landing in certain areas removes flying entirely, which feels weird.

During these forced groundings, the game forces the Iron Man-types to play the game like a cover-based shooter, if the points they're forced to defend even offer cover. 

Traversal can also feel like it goes directly against the game's main selling point. An overheating mechanic to the flying probably sounded like a nice skill-based feature on paper, but in the game itself, it becomes an annoyance quickly.

Landing and going at it on foot because a viable body of water wasn't around to cool off the javelin ruins the immersion and fun factor quickly. It also makes one wonder how Anthem could ever pull off a different environment that doesn't feature lush fauna and bodies of water, which might also explain the lack of variety in environments throughout the game's sprawling playspace. 

Adding to this, very early in the game, a flying component of a mission asks the player to dodge deadly beams cascading through a massive corridor and pull off some dodges while progressing with skillful timing. It is superb, and it seemed like a hint Anthem would incorporate fun flying tasks and do interesting things with the abilities, yet nothing similar really pops up throughout the rest of the game's campaign. 

Call it a general theme. The plot's foundation focuses on the chaotic Shaper relics that can alter reality and other dramatic buzzwords characters tell the player, yet the mission structure and traversal never capitalizes on this free pass to do innovative things for the genre. 

The gunplay isn't engaging enough to prop up these basic no-more-flying hurdles thrown at the player, either. For most of the game, until Masterworks start dropping, the best weapons will be few in nature.

Not unlike Anthem itself after its first reveal, these two categories make an incredible first impression. But the mechanics surrounding the gameplay hurt it, and while the visuals are great, it quickly becomes apparent there isn't any variety in landscapes. 

Story, Fort Tarsis and More

The story available in Anthem at launch isn't going to blow anyone away, which is a shame given the profound lore and world-building job present otherwise. But to contrast this, it blows its looter shooter contemporaries out of the water with the effort.

In short, humanity on an unknown planet must deal with the Anthem of Creation. Shaper tools are still running long after the creators left, and it is the Freelancers, and humanity overall, tasked with stopping the destructive forces before they get out of hand. 

The player character, of course, is a rookie learning the ropes as he or she goes. It's a cookie-cutter affair in that they must stop the main bad guy—a painfully boring baddie dubbed The Monitor who never gets fleshed out. He covets a big item the player wants to get first and aligns themselves with certain factions to obtain. 

Luckily for Anthem, it has the usual Bioware polish in terms of memorable characters and background info. Cutscenes are info dumps at times as the game establishes the world, but they are enjoyable and provide good contextualization for the various factions and history present within the world. 

Some of the more human side characters might strike players as mundane conversation points, but it's nice to have the game paint in broad strokes, hitting on the everyday lives of people in the Fort. Some of these evolve alongside the Fort itself.

As a whole, Anthem has extremely good lore, and there is something to be said for carving out an entirely new universe in the land of gaming sequels today.

Anthem will leave players wanting to know more and gobbling up every bit of obtainable lore possible for some reading sessions, but that isn't an excuse for what feels like a teaser of a campaign upon the game's launch. Just as the story feels like it is getting good, it ends, with the idea being this is a games-as-a-service model. 

Fort Tarsis is one of Anthem's most jarring problems. Players have to return there often, slogging through the massive space and visiting areas that serve no purpose other than to chat with an NPC with a yellow mark above their head. Not only is it oddly quiet, but the actual movement is also slow and takes too long, though one glance down shows the player's legs running. 

The Fort problem is amplified dramatically while playing with friends. Romping through some bad guys out in the world is fun, but every player loads into their individual Fort and dialogue sequences with NPCs.

This rips the player out of immersion as they ask friends to be quiet so they can hear what NPCs have to say. Some players will finish the story elements in the Fort earlier than others and have nothing to do, for example. These stretches of single-player experience during a multiplayer game can last as long as half an hour. 

It doesn't feel like an oversight necessarily, but it does cause one to wonder why Anthem didn't at least innovate.

Since players can't load into each other's forts, why not have dialogue choices change a player's individual fort in meaningful ways? Because as it stands anyway, while the game doesn't feature a silent protagonist—which is a great thing—the dialogue choices don't appear all that different or to have a major impact. 

This isn't the only place where the meshing of genres or strange decisions harms the experience.  

Grandmaster difficulties are an entertaining uptick in difficulty—meaning enemies have more health. For players with a dedicated team, crafting roles and calling out strategies during a fight is a fun time. But for those without, the tougher difficulties on Strongholds (longer versions of Destiny strikes) can be an exercise in frustration.

Suddenly, the hyper-aggressive play while grinding out 30 levels doesn't work and enemies can one-shot the player often. While the gameplay, in theory, becomes more strategic, it really morphs into peekaboo with enemies while often grounded, which then highlights how little information the player receives when it comes to taking damage. 

There is a serious lack of numbers, which is odd for a looter shooter. Designing a build can feel like a chore because of the minimal information provided to the player. The swell of loot at a mission's end is nice, but gun stats are fixed and the descriptions on abilities and modifications are vague.

A summary of a javelin's total numerical power isn't available, nor is an explanation of the in-depth numbers a slight modification might have, as one sees in a game such as Diablo 3. There is deep, deep min-maxing potential here held back by these shortcomings. It's patchable, yes, but disappointing upon release. 

Other generally expected features of a looter shooter are absent. Mid-game drops occur but aren't accessible until the mission concludes. Players can't change loadouts on the fly, instead they need to go back to the Fort or Forge to swap things out.

Whereas normally a game like this would encourage endless experimentation with different drops and loadouts, the need to leave the game world to swap things around acts as a deterrent. 

The load screens don't help. While load times have improved already since the game's early release on PC, the quantity of them hasn't. As a mission ends, for example, a load screen takes the player to an end-mission screen where rewards get doled out. Another load screen takes the player back to the Fort. In the game itself, a load screen rips the player out of the experience when entering an area such as a cave. 

Anthem pushes the idea it is better experienced with other people, which is a fair claim for the most part—but these had better be premade groups because matchmaking is a problem.

For story missions, the game offers several warnings if a player sets the slider to private for a solo experience. That's fine, but matchmaking for the story bits can lead to missing chunks of details.

At one point, the matchmaking tossed us into the end of a mission during its countdown timer because a player had gotten the loot and left, meaning it backfilled, gave us the same loot but caused us to miss on the entire mission and then went back to the end-mission screen. 

Anthem saw mistakes made in Destiny and doesn't want players stuck soloing content if players drop out, but the players tacked on to missions suffer instead. 

These problems extend to free play. A premade group will have a good time exploring together and taking down fun bosses. It's truly some of the game's best content, which would explain why a large chunk of the game's content map over the three months after release focuses on the open-world segments. 

But solo, things fall apart. It seems as little as four people can load into a free play instance, which is tiny given the size of the explorable map. There aren't waypoints or markers to denote public events, so players are often left soloing these events meant for teams.

Dying during one of these respawns the player away from it, and without a way to see where it was, nothing short of memorizing the massive play space could prevent the player from even getting back to it. There isn't a self-resurrection option in any part of Anthem's gameplay, and players can't spectate other players while downed, either. 

Customization is at least a boon for Anthem. There is a deep set of customization systems in place here to coat the javelins in unique paints and looks. There is deep min-maxing potential here, too, especially if the UI and item explanations get cleaned up.

That said, no armor sets in the loot pool leave every javelin looking the same in structure, with paint jobs mostly being the differential. And the looting isn't exactly thrilling—at launch, most of the guns are identical, with the only difference in rarity being power level. 

One thing that Anthem won't get enough praise for is how it handles microtransactions. Aesthetics are available from the in-game store in exchange for either Shards or Coins. The latter is obtainable through all normal gameplay activities and covers what is otherwise a real-money purchase via Shards.

It would be nice if the store featuring these purchasables didn't take up so much real estate in the pause menu, but so far, the presence of microtransactions is handled much better than many modern titles. 

In short, Anthem's ambition ends up making it feel like everything was designed separately and smacked together before release. It lends to a jarring, immersion-breaking experience at times where soloing or having a premade party is best. 

Speedrunning Tips

The power fantasy in Anthem and variety of builds and combinations, solo or otherwise, makes the game an easy speedrun candidate. 

From a viewer standpoint on a platform like Twitch, Anthem takes a hit because of the game's lack of competitive multiplayer. But to its credit, it will be a good time to see unique builds tear through the story and how cohesive teams can take down Strongholds in world-best times. After all, speedruns with cohesive teams on the hardest difficulties gained plenty of popularity in the demo, not even full release.  

It should go without saying at this point, but the speedruns will be quickest with a cohesive team. At this point in the game's lifecycle, the quickest way to tackle endgame content seems to be assigning one or two players with mostly primer abilities, the others serving as the primary detonators for massive combo potential. 

Solo is a bit more complicated. Thanks to the underwhelming weaponry until the endgame, the fastest way to speedrun will be sticking with DPS machines like auto pistols. The quick cooldown on actual abilities doesn't require players to think too much about how to deploy them in real time—spam them in primer, detonator order and make progress. 

As for class, the Ranger is likely the best bet for solo runs thanks to its jack-of-all-trades schtick. Solid gunplay, movement speed and damage output via combos will lessen the chances of deaths and resets.

Team builds will need better variety thanks to the damage output of the Storm class and protection they can afford to each other. 

Conclusion

Anthem's success is its core gameplay loop, which is satisfying, but not enough to gloss over the game's odds-with-itself issues. 

No other game feels like Anthem, which is a shame because most everything else feels like it was pulled from a best-of list of the looter-shooter genre.

Unfortunately, Anthem doesn't get the same leeway for mistakes as its predecessors, not after competitors have grown and changed the genres for five or six years. Anthem makes Destiny 1 base game mistakes that aren't easily fixed. 

It's a jarring release alongside something like Apex Legends, which takes everything wrong with the battle royal genre and not only corrects it, but innovates in a way competitors will mimic for years. Ditto for the lack of competitive multiplayer, which theoretically meant more time to polish the single-player experience, yet falls into the same pitfalls—and worsens some—of games released in 2014. 

Anthem is a fun time initially, and the endgame opens things up after a long slog. If given the time, Bioware can hopefully flesh out the experience, rework some of the self-inflicted and genre-combining wounds and salvage what is otherwise an intriguing new universe and core gameplay loop.