Anima Gate of Memories is a third-person Hack & Slash title set in a world on the brink of a massive war. Starting off will see us in a ransacked town aflame while examining the wreckage to get a clue of what is going on. We play as the Bearer of Calamities, a name for those chosen to try and use the power of a demonic entity called Ergos Mundus for good. A fraction of Ergo’s soul has been sealed within a book, which is now his prison that is always carried by the Bearer. He is a continually snarky character, though he is just happy to be out and about, making him easy to control.
One of the most prominent features of Anima is that you can switch between The Bearer and Ergo Mundos himself. Each has their own health bars and a different set of abilities. On top of that, they can differ even more depending on how you choose to invest your skill points upon leveling up, as to either be more physical or magically inclined. While they each have their own health bars, they share mana and stamina that automatically refill over time, so you can’t just spam their ultimate moves then swap out.
You have a button to jump, another for your basic attack, the trigger to dodge/sprint, and four buttons for abilities of your choosing. These abilities range from magic all the way to more physical attacks such as launching an enemy into the air or a dashing strike to quickly close the distance on ranged foes. As you may imagine, four slots are not all that much, especially with how many abilities are available in this game. To solve this, they allow you to configure another separate set of four skills once you start a combo. That opens up a huge amount of combinations as you can now experiment with what skills flow well into one another and gives you a ton of options to handle any situation.
There are another set of four for when you are in the air, though only specific abilities can be equipped in this section. That is a ton of possibilities, and this is before you factor in that you can switch out a character to open up an immediate combo or keep one going, then use their own set of unique skills. A big part of why I got into the combat system so early on, is due to how poor the tutorial is. You start off with all of your powers intact in the opening stage, and despite that, they only tell you simple things like pressing X to attack, which will likely see a new player solely mashing it without being aware of how intricate fighting is in actuality.
A button masher this is not. Many enemies feature a varied move-set to keep you on your toes, and quite a few of them don’t even flinch when attacked. That means as you are attacking them, they can still retaliate. On top of that, enemies never fight alone and you have no invincibility frames, meaning you can be combo’d straight to death yourself. Even on the Easy difficulty, you can’t take all that much damage, it is essential to always be on the move and to upgrade your dodge foremost since a significant chunk of your stamina meter will be drained each time you use it in its original state. Dodging is your only real form of defense since there is no parrying or blocking.
That would all be fine if it weren’t for the sub-par camera. It does not work well, and will constantly cause you to take damage that you couldn’t have seen coming. Trying to be agile and dancing around an opponent is the worst offender. Your choices are either to control the camera yourself as you try to fight and keep track of the situation, or lock onto an enemy, which causes the camera to suddenly jerk around whenever you get behind them. That left me with adopting a fighting style in where you try to always face the enemy instead of trying to get behind it or flank it, as to get at an unguarded area. Easier said than done when a battle also features ranged foes, then it becomes a visual mess for those that invested mostly into a melee build and has to chase them down.
In the opening level, one thing will become apparent right away. The voice acting. It is not all that great, to say the least. Most of the character’s actors not only deliver a mediocre performance but do so in a way that sounds like they are bored out of their minds. The only one that has any life to him is the demon Ergos himself, who easily steals the show with his lively nature. Cutscenes are quite awkward as well, due to a lack of animation and plain odd postures at times that turn this entirely serious tale into an unintentional pseudo-comedy at moments.
Not helping matters on that front is how front-loaded the intro is on story. You will spend a ton of time listening to conversations, lore, and the political situation of a world we are not invested in yet. Its first impressions leave a rather poor image and expectation for what’s to come, all told. Which is why I was admittedly taken aback when it went from a completely linear, heavily story-driven affair into tossing you into a wide open world to explore. After that opening stage, you will find yourself in The Hub, a mystical place in where you can walk directly into the memories (levels) of its inhabitants or buy some gear while you are there. Being memories, you can expect to see a wide variety of environments, ranging from the Gothic style of the beginning to awe-inspiring valleys of nature.
From the get-go, you can access three unique locations, each containing a boss at the end. Your goal then is to collect at least three of the five memory fragments located in their world to summon then defeat them. They are usually found via exploring or solving puzzles. In fact, exploring will take up as much of your time as fighting, if not more. You can expect a ton of platforming throughout. It feels kind of stiff since you can’t control your character in the air, though since you can double jump, it is not too big a deal. Once again, the camera will be your primary foe for situations where you need to avoid something, so luckily, those situations are few as they mostly focus on either combat or platforming.
If you get tired of a zone, find it too difficult, or simply want to buy more supplies, you can always head back to the Hub or try a different region to explore. You will eventually have to defeat all three bosses to unlock the second floor of the hub and face a new batch of the inhabitant’s memories. Despite only needing three fragments to summon a boss, you should try getting as many as you can from the get-go. This is thanks to the game suddenly and without warning gating off the ending level until you do so, making it a pain to have to artificially go back to the easier zones.
The ending, in general, is when the game takes a nosedive again, mostly due to unwarranted filler. Not only do you suddenly have to go back to get most of the fragments, but have to go through a stretch of annoying trials that include such fun as defeating all the enemies before your rapidly draining life depletes. Also, some common foes now have a move where they can reverse your controls for a time, which I find unforgivable for any game to draw some challenge from messing with your commands. One near end game boss can even flip your bloody screen upside down, so have fun. None of this is enough to ruin it entirely, though it does get to be slightly annoying.
Given that Anima Gate of Memories was made by only three people, it is mind-blowing how much they packed into it. From the various locales, enemies, and open-ended combat system and exploration, they did an exceptional job on most everything. They really tried to pull off quite a bit of things. Some like the stealth section didn’t pan out all that well, but others like how you upgrade your characters are really interesting. Every time you level up, you are given two skill points. Each skill is connected to another via a line in a spiderweb-like fashion. Unlocking skills where their lines connect will net you whatever passive benefit it offers, be it an increase of health, defense, or magic. It leads to engaging decisions in where you ponder on whether to unlock a skill you don’t need to chain nearby lines or upgrade an ability you actually use.
While exploring, those with a keen eye will often find new weapons or artifacts to try out. Both are purely stat based and offer no change to your fighting style or even appear in your hand. Nonetheless, the boosts in your stats are quite significant, and rarer ones may even have an added passive bonus, such as faster mana regeneration. That is yet another manner in which you can customize and tailor both of your characters to your liking.
Destroying random furniture or objects will slightly refill your life, very handy for when you don’t want to use an item or wait for your none selected character to slowly heal. Any reason to stay out of the item menu is a godsend. It will quickly become a disorganized mess as you gather more weapons, gear, and other items. A tab for each category would have gone a long way, instead of having a single, long mess of a list. Thankfully, you will only ever need to go into it when you need a potion that didn’t fit on the four d-pad shortcuts. That in itself is a problem as well since you need to hold the d-pad direction down for a couple of seconds, and since you need it, chances are that you are in combat so taking your finger off the movement stick is a deadly gamble. It’s a pick your poison type ordeal, risk dying, or go into the item menu.
Dying is not the end of the world. The game autosaves frequently, and I never found myself losing much, if any time due to an untimely death. It should be noted that if one character goes down, they both do. Visually, this title looks very stylish due to the cell-shaded artstyle and over the top particles. The vistas are usually quite lovely to look at as well, though a few do suffer from the massive overuse of bloom that will blind you. Surprisingly, despite the bad acting and opening level that shoves a ton of info into your face all at once, the story manages to be captivating, as do the characters. I found myself glued to the screen and would even love a sequel to show us what occurs after the events that take place. That is assuming you got the true ending, there are several to see.
After you finish the game, you will unlock a new game plus mode that allows you to carry over all your skills and everything else you have earned. You also get several costumes to dress both The Bearer and Ergos in. Also worth mentioning is the stellar soundtrack. Anima Gate of Memories reminds me of that bygone era in where there was an in-between that could be found among low budget Indie games and massive AAA blockbusters. It has various problems, no doubt, but it is at the same time very ambitious in what it tries to do and clearly had a lot of passion put into it by its three-man dev team. That’s all well and good, though it would mean little if it wasn’t fun to play. Luckily, despite the sub-par camera and poor introduction, I had a blast exploring the various unique zones, as well as experimenting with the in-depth combat system. Anima Gate of Memories is not a game you should simply glance over if you are a fan of Action titles.
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