Mismatched Expectations
HIGH Stylish and easy to understand mechanics.
LOW Unbalanced characters and reliance on chance.
WTF The âExtraâ missions.
Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.
I always seem to forget that match-three games exist. Theyâre rarely ever in my normal rotation, but I always enjoy them every time I try a new one. Anthem#9 caught my eye by pairing a match-three formula with turn-based roguelike gameplay and incredible style. Iâm a sucker for a great looking trailer, so I was excited to dive in â and while it started incredibly strong, things went wrong pretty quickly.
Anthem#9 is a secret organization that deploys agents to protect the world from âdangerous individuals with advanced technologies or extreme ideologies.â These enemies are defeated by using colored gems to attack and blessing cards for boosts. Winning fights grants gold to use in shops for upgrades and additional bonuses. If youâve played a roguelike recently, this will all be pretty familiar.
Each mission has a map that goes node to node (think Slay the Spire, or any number of other roguelikes) and these nodes represent things like combat, shops, random events, and so on, and of course thereâs a boss encounter at the end of a map. Like the upgrades, everything here is fairly standard roguelike boilerplate until the combat itself.
How does it work? Players have two decks of three cards each, and choose one to start with before each combat. Theyâre also given a random selection of red, green and blue gems to trigger the cards within a time limit. The strategy comes in combining attack patterns to create combo cascades that trigger more than one attack at a time. Players can string together as many attacks as they have gems before passing the turn to the enemy.
After the enemy attacks, players switch to their second deck and get a fresh set of gems to continue the process. The small amount of attacks players can choose from and the time limit for gem setup keeps the action moving and the dopamine flowing. Itâs all very satisfying. However, this is merely the tip of the iceberg for how deep Anthem#9 goes.
Each of the three characters players can select has their own set of unique skills and abilities that interact with their attacks. Rubit is about poison damage and using resources to change gem colors â she can get exactly what she needs when she needs it, while Beni can use gems for temporary boosts like bonus damage or self healing. Each one also has their own set of missions and bosses to face. Thankfully, the missions are set up to introduce each characterâs mechanics slowly, so players will have plenty of time to get used to each one.
While this all sounds great so far â and it does seem great at first â I rolled through the first set of missions with little problem, saw credits, and then was⌠a bit confused.
When I pulled up the character I had just rolled credits with, I saw noticed missions unlock and went to try those next, only to get wiped immediately due to some bad luck with gem luck and a boss that felt like a perfect counter to my characterâs entire kit.
I went back to the base missions and the in-game tutorial pages again, thinking I missed something. Then I realized â the first set of missions are standardized. If I play mission 1 with Rubit, itâs the exact same set of enemies and events every time. This means the first missions are essentially a tutorial for the main game, where the developers then cranked the difficulty up in a big way â this approach gave me a false sense of security before throwing me to the wolves.
Iâm sure these first missions are meant to give players the space to learn the mechanics in a somewhat safe way, but besides feeling like they were misleading about Anthem#9âs true difficulty, theyâre also not great at teaching the mechanics. For example, one character has an âAimâ mechanic. The tutorial mission starts players off by saying that Aim affects cards, but it doesnât call out how to get âAimâ or how it affects things.
Also, thereâs so much emphasis on an unbalanced, flashy style that it ends up being a negative for me, even though itâs an attractive aesthetic. Most of Anthem#9 features big images of the enemy and the agent players, with both dominating the screen. On the other hand, the map showing what options lay ahead feels tiny, and is tough to properly interpret at a glance.
I also have to point out that Anthem#9 loves white flashes. I donât have epilepsy, but I could feel myself getting nauseous thanks to small white flashes that trigger with every single attack. In addition, when the player lands a killing blow or the final blow of a large combo, the screen completely flashes bright white. Itâs just too much.
Anthem#9 looks fantastic in trailers and the gem matching mechanics are satisfying â piecing together a giant combination of attacks feels great. On the other hand, the UI needs work, the difficulty spike going from the basic (AKA tutorial) missions to the extra missions is supremely out of whack, and all the white flashes made me sick and will likely trigger seizures in photosensitive people. I want to like Anthem#9 more than I do, but it really doesnât like me back.
For me: Anthem#9 gets 6.5 satisfying gem combinations out of 10.
Disclosures: This game is developed by Koeda and published by Shueisha Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 6 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents:Â This game is not rated by the ESRB. There are pictures of blades, guns, bullets, and fists on screen, but the violence is more abstracted (no blood, no physical combat, etc). No blood, no suggestive attire, and no foul language to my knowledge (all voices are in Japanese, which I donât speak well enough to confirm).
Colorblind Modes:Â There are no colorblind modes.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, and the text is not resizable. Audio is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.
Controls: Controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. I used mostly keyboard and mouse â the mouse will select or cancel choices. â1â will activate the characters unique skill, â2â or â3â will change the order of the enemy attacks, âShiftâ pauses the turn timer, âEâ brings up the players skill decks outside of combat or ends the turn in combat, âHâ brings up the options menu, and âBâ looks at blessing cards, âRâ will redraw rewards, âEscâ skips rewards.
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