Anthem Impressions

By this time people have already jumped into the world of Bioware’s newest RPG game Anthem, and we have already seen a ton of mixed reviews. I’m not here to give any sort of review of the game, but I did get to play the 10 hour EA Access trial before and after the ‘official’ release of the game. I want to give my impressions on the game and kind of talk about the issues I had, as well as the things I enjoyed.

The loading screens are crazy long.

This was my biggest gripe about the “demo” they released a few weeks back. The loading screens are obnoxiously long. I timed a few and the average time was around two minutes long. This would be forgivable if there weren’t so many of them. There are constant loading screens in the middle of missions as well that just blows my mind. Even after the day one patch, that was actually several days after the early launch of the game, there was no help there. It’s a pain.

The bugs are numerous.

There are games that have a ridiculous amount of bugs, but most of the time they’re small, almost borderline goofy. Like Bethesda games before Fallout 76. Anthem has these. Like clipping with characters. Your javelin glitching out before you get into it. It’s funny, it’s stupid. There only big bug I had was the infamous audio loss. I had just got done talking to a friend about listening to the story, and if it was alright for me to skip over most conversations. I was told to listen to it because the characters are actually interesting. So I decided I would, right when the audio bug came into play. No sound at all, it just disappeared. So I shrugged and continued to play the game for another hour without sound. The game didn’t get worse or better without the sound so I’m not sure how I should feel about that.

You almost can’t play alone.

There is a free roam aspect of the game. This is great. I really like the world of Anthem. The jungles and verticality is rad. Underwater caves are cool. I like it. Venturing out with the Storm javelin on your own sucks though. You’re essentially a squishy mage so you don’t last long by yourself. If you put Destiny in here and you play as the Warlock you can do your scouting and go at it alone and feel like a badass lone ranger. Anthem has a set up where you have to have a team together, and it sucks when it is almost required when it was told that it would be possible to go solo all the way through.

Why does no one talk in Fort Tarsis?

Fort Tarsis is the main hub for Anthem. Where you get your missions, talk to NPCs, and upgrade your Javelins. Where you jump into your Javelin you there’s the market place. There are numerous NPCs here standing around, but no one is talking. It’s so eerie. They just stand there. It looks like they might be talking to each other, but there’s no sound. It really pulls you out of the experience. The world is inhabited but feels like they’re all mannequins.

Gameplay can be fun, but weapons are boring.

I enjoy flying in my javelin and using my ultimate to annihilate enemies is awesome. The gunplay kind of sucks though honestly. I use my abilities way more than even fire a bullet and most of the time forget I even have guns. There doesn’t feel like there is much impact. It doesn’t feel good. I know people compare this game to Destiny, which is the closest thing to compare it to honestly, but it is nowhere near as good feeling taking out enemies.

The story can’t pull me in at all.

Starting out it seems like everything has already ramped up in an interesting story. You’re thrown in at the end of this story, and then nothing interesting happens for a really long time. The characters were not interesting enough to me for me to even listen to the characters talk. I skipped through most of the conversations I had and yet the missions reflected nothing interesting at all which made me feel like it was a good idea to not listen to these NPCs. It might get better down the line, but I don’t have time to invest to find that out at this point.

Finishing thoughts.

I already deleted Anthem from my console. I played about seven hours of my 10-hour trial through EA Access and I think that was enough for me. There just isn’t enough interesting stuff going on in terms of story or gameplay that is making me want to keep going. I know a lot of people would agree with me at this point but I also know people are having a great time playing it right now too. I never want a game to fail, so I really hope that Bioware can fix Anthem up and make it a viable IP. As of right now, it’s not worth my time, and The Division 2 is coming soon.

Have you been playing Anthem at all? What do you think of it so far? Let me know below in the comments!