Anthem Reviews
Despite some new ideas and a core gameplay loop that does its best to carry the experience, Anthem is ultimately a bit of a disappointment from BioWare
If BioWare can salvage the great gameplay ideas the game is built on and streamline some of the obtuse checklists, maybe Anthem will become the engrossing, living world I wanted it to be. But maybe I’m searching for something that was never there.
Anthem is a game that tries to be an answer to Destiny’s popularity and even seeks to answer some of the issues people have with that game. At the same time, it ends up feeling derivative, and any fatigue you have with Destiny is likely to carry over
Anthem may never get the chance to live up to its potential due to a series of unfortunate game design decisions and issues. The first IP from BioWare in over ten years displays moments of grandeur with fun and unique gameplay that unfortunately is undermined by the game's current condition.
Anthem is like playing in a mud puddle. It's a mess, but it's fun. It features fun third-person shooter combat with likable characters. Unfortunately, the rest of the experience is marred by technical bugs, bad design decisions, and poor pacing. You'll have a good time when all the gears are turning, but the downtime may cause death by a thousand papercuts.
BioWare's first foray into the looter-shooter genre absolutely nails high-flying action, but drops the ball in all other aspects. A disappointment at launch, Anthem nevertheless contains plenty of untapped potential that will hopefully survive being buried under a tidal wave of negativity. BioWare sorely needs to turn things around for this game, but whether or not they will succeed remains to be seen.
Anthem is a game that didn't use a lot of its great potential. On one hand, some of the gameplay mechanics like flying is very well implemented and it also has very beautiful visuals, but on the other hand, the singleplayer and multiplayer aspects of the game contradict each other. Both are well implemented separately, but when they are put together, they just don't work well. The story also didn't come up to the expectations we have from BioWare. At all, Anthem in its current state is just simply a normal good game and nothing more.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Anthem is not a bad game as a whole, but rather an interesting project with wasted potential. It has really great gameplay mechanics and an awesome setting that, sadly, got negatively affected by bad choices and poorly implemented ideas like a forgetable story with horrible narrative, repetitive mission structures, painful loading screens and a multiplayer approach with null sense of cooperation.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
I want to want to spend more time with it, because there are bits of it I really enjoy. But it needs more than the world map to change a bit, or have seasons, or better social interaction. It needs changes to how it actually works, which is a lot to ask. But the biggest fight I’ve had with Anthem so far is against Anthem.
Right now, Anthem is not good. And given what's come out of BioWare in the past and the kinds of lasting, impactful experiences that the gaming world knows BioWare is capable of delivering, that's truly sad.
It’s a shame then that everything surrounding this core feels so disjointed. A story that lacks momentum outside of a few moments, mission design that reveals all its nuance in a matter of minutes, and a cumbersome progression system interrupted by walls
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.
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.
Anthem may look like a slick blend of action and exploration all wrapped up in some shiny armour, but beneath its surface lies a game that is riddled with bugs, shallow world-building and a paint by numbers approach to its design.
Bioware's latest sci-fi epic fails to stick the landing in an already crowded loot shooter genre.
Anthem has the potential to be something greater than it is, but BioWare needs to focus on a clear path to get it there. It may be riddled with bugs that break the game, but there are core elements that can’t just be fixed with a simple update down the line.
Anthem has moments that shine out and feel amazing, but you have to push through too much drudgery to reach those moments.
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.
I’d be remiss not to mention that I personally really enjoy looter shooters, way back to Borderlands in 2009, and I actually adore Destiny (fight me). There was a part of me that really hoped this would be Bioware’s comeback, but that just wasn’t meant to be. Anthem doesn’t just not reach the bar set by others, it doesn’t even attempt to reach for it.
It would be easy to write off the bewildering state that Anthem is in as the result of video game design by committee.
