Anthem Reviews
Even if it has some good ideas, plays very well and is dashing technically speaking, Anthem is a huge disappointment. Because of its repetitivity and lack of real of real attractiveness in terms of story and characters, it feels more like a technological showcase without a soul.
Review in French | Read full review
Anthem has a few good ideas, but it struggles under the weight of its own gameplay mechanics and some truly baffling design decisions.
The core of Anthem – being its fearsome gunplay and angelic flight mechanics – are stellar, yet they’re held back by the mission structure that dictates them.
In a matter of weeks Anthem has marveled with its engaging action and technical incompetence. As a power fantasy, the game achieves many co-op thrills but the highs are often spread too thin over questionable design choices. BioWare's pedigree feels suppressed by a game that needed much more time in the oven.
What frustrates me the most about Anthem is that the things that work in the game's favour are really well implemented. It feels like a complete waste to have these awesome traversal and combat mechanics utilised in such an uninspired game
We hoped beyond hope that Anthem would show the world just how sci-fi online action role-playing games were done. What we got, however, was far from that and without some serious improvement, Anthem could take Mass Effect: Andromeda's crown as BioWare's worst ever release.
Anthem is a painfully average RPG from a developer that is capable of so much more.
Comparison aside, Anthem can be a fairly chilled game to play with friends, despite explosions big enough to fill screens, and this is 100% the way to play the game. The constant challenges to defend areas or collects things are made less of a chore with a competent ally. Also, having a friend to cooperatively combo with helps push all of the over the top fun to the surface. The niggles are still there and present but it is much easier to forgive when not solo. With all the glorious map there to fly around, the vast ways to cause explosions and cooperative play, Anthem is well worth playing, especially once the roadmapped content starts to come online.
Anthem is a game that despite poor optimisation, agonising load times, bizarre design decisions and an unbalanced loot system, can actually be a lot of fun to play. The open-world, story, characters and combat are all solid, the rest, not so much. Anthem has potential to be a good game, it just isn’t right now. It could be one day though.
Anthem is not “for me”, yet Anthem is trying desperately to be “for everyone.” It is a slow, sometimes terribly frustrating game with nonetheless incredible flying mechanics and adequate shooting. It is the future of videogames, built to be played forever and yet somehow forgettable—the sustenance meal of the online shooter-looter genre, inexplicably buoyed by a company known for legendarily good writing forced to hide its own characters behind mission talk-overs and loot notifications.
Anthem is a constant emotional see-saw. There is a lot of fun from flying, shooting and admiring this beautiful world, and almost as much frustration due to a surprising amount of bad ideas and issues. Some won't be bothered by them and keep flying, and others will go somewhere else. Anthem is a game to both love and to hate at the same time.
Review in Polish | Read full review
Anthem feels less like an evolution for BioWare and more like a deviation into conformity.
Bungie fixed Destiny. Massive fixed The Division. Bioware have all the pieces of the puzzle, but right now Anthem isn’t living up to its potential. It’s bad, but not so bad it can’t be fixed.
For all its flaws, it has to be said that Anthem is a lot of fun. Some 60 hours in, between both PC and PS4 where I’m onto the endgame in both, I still enjoy the moment to moment gameplay.
Anthem is a game based on a fantastic idea.
BioWare really dropped the ball with Anthem. It has a fairly average story, is rife with terrible design and problems, laden with as many bugs as a Bethesda game and the endgame is incredibly unenticing
Anthem is an excellent Iron Man simulator bogged down with poor mission design set in a fascinating world with a lack-luster story. Coupled with a critical lack of end-game content, this is by far the weakest offering from BioWare. Enjoyment of this game will fully rest on how much you enjoy the combat.
Bugs, crashes, bad optimization, repetitive objectives, horrible load times and lots more, unfortunately, overshadow the game's great flight and combat system.