The Anthem VIP Demo had a rough start, but it was expected. Once I managed to get in, I discovered that it is far from what I imagined it would be. BioWare throws you right into the action with a few story missions and one Stronghold available. From my first few hours I can simply say that Anthem is more than a shooter, certainly more than a looter’s game. Not all was cool and shiny, but the positives outweighed the negatives!
The start was rough and annoying. As expected a lot of players wanted to jump in and try the game for the first time on Friday 25th. The developers thought if they do a scaled launch – allowing players in chunks and increasing server capacity, it would help prevent crashes and other issues of that kind. It did, to some extend. There was downtime, there were infinite loading screens. At one point the whole Origin was affected and not just the Anthem service.
The Demo throws you right into the action at level ten. You start with the Ranger Javelin and take on a few story-driven missions with Matthias. These can be done solo, but if you choose one of the higher difficulties, you might want to play in a team.
At level 12 you can pick a second Javelin – the choice is free between all three other exosuits – Colossus, Storm and Interceptor. This was specific to the demo. In the real game you will get to expand your roster sooner than level 10.
After the missions the demo ends with an option for you to keep leveling up to fifteen, gain access to a second exosuit (Colossus) and try out Freeplay, Crafting and one of the end-game features – a Stronghold.
THE UI IS BAD
The User Interface is not good for PC players. It’s clear that it’s made with consoles in mind. The HUD during gameplay is fine. Not exactly minimalist style, but works as intended and doesn’t get in the way. The way subtitles are presented is freaking annoying for me. Especially their animations.
The menu structure is intuitive and easy to guess what is where. Navigating through the pile of sub-menus and pages is not comfortable at all. The game demands you to click on things you shouldn’t. I can see the contents of a menu page or tab on my screen, yet I have to click on the previous menu to actually jump into its sub-menu. I know it may sound confusing to some of you. If you haven’t tried it for yourself, it’s hard to explain.
I wish we could do more customizations to the HUD. Currently in the demo all that was available was to turn on or off some of the elements and scale a few of them down or up.
GUN GAMEPLAY IS GREAT
You follow my content for a while? Then you should know I don’t play a lot of shooters. Anthem’s Demo gave me a good impression of how they handled the most important part of the gameplay – the shooting. Guns feel and behave differently, based on their stats and model types. They also look fantastic, but that’s a given for a game that looks like a masterpiece in general.
Navigating around, turning and shooting various enemies on the ground, up in the skies and all over the place was not hard. Once you get used to the rather weird flight controls, they actually become quite easy and simple. The one thing I would advice you to check right at the beginning is your mouse sensitivity (if you use a mouse :P) for turning around and flying. I set mine to ~11%, because that’s how it felt comfortable. Even Ben Irving suggested that in one of the Developer live streams recently.
TEAMPLAY FEELS MESSY AT FIRST, BUT THEN…
Anthem is advertised left and right as a team-based multiplayer game. It’s best experienced in a group. Some of its content (specifically the main story missions) will be available for completion solo, but it’s a lot more fun with a team of friends or random folks.
Every time you set foot outside of the human settlement Fort Tarsis (aka your home base), you put on the exosuit of your choice and head on an expedition. Before you exit, you are asked to pick your mission and difficulty. By default the game sets your last picked mission as your current one. There are six difficulties with only the first three (Easy, Normal and Hard) available in the demo. The Grandmaster 1 through 3 unlock at level 30 and therefore were not available to us in the demo.
Hands down my best experience was the first run through the Stronghold – Tyrant Mine. Tons of things to kill, a few relics to silence and so much loot! Oh, the loot! I don’t think I am ready yet to share thoughts on the loot system.
If you choose to venture into the wilds alone, be careful. Everything wants to kill you there. I tried a bit of Freeplay at level 10 alone and was close to getting defeated quite a few times. Roaming in Freeplay around Bastion is great for casual monster-hunting and collecting of crafting materials. More on that next.
CRAFTING IS A MYSTERY
It’s hard to tell how well crafting is implemented into the game, because of the limitations of the demo. Crafting does seem like a valuable asset. It’s not too complicated, not too boringly easy either. You learn schematics (primarily by completing achievements). Then you collect crafting materials from Freeplay or disassemble loot you do not need (hint: white items – common tier loot).
In the demo things were simplified with pricing of items and I cannot also tell how hard it would be to obtain a specific rare or unique crafting material to create your new armor piece, weapon or component (or something else – you can craft pretty much anything and everything).
STORY IS PROMISING
This paragraph will contain spoilers from the Demo missions I got to play! There’s nothing too special or revealing, so don’t be afraid of major plot-lines being ruined for you.
The demo contains a few story missions with Matthias, who successfully multiplies himself (unintentionally) using a relic from the world of Bastion that used to be in possession of the Dominion right before it got in Matthias’s hands.
The story was short, but well spread and mixed with exploration, heavy action and lots of bullets fired.
All of the dialogues in Anthem happen in secure places – Fort Tarsis is the most common location where you will be able to take a moment to speak to your crew, friends and other settlers.
During these conversations I noticed that the voice-over was good, with decent amount of variety and a great mixture between serious stuff, jokes and casual fun times.
Outside in the open world it is pretty much a static narration from your crew with a few lines from your character, the Freelancer, spread here and there. You cannot have a dialogue with player-driven choices outside of the safe zones. Even there, the options are more about moral dilemmas, not so much about event and world-changing/altering choices.
In the demo many of the characters and stores in the fort were locked. The limited experience prevented me from getting a better grasp of how much exactly are you in control when it comes to important decision-making. From BioWare’s streams and communications so far, however, I can make a conclusion the following conclusion – not a lot depends on your dialogue choices when it comes to Anthem’s world and main story. This is an open-ended game that the devs want to keep expanding and this severely limits their ability to offer you personal choices like in a normal RPG.
REPEATING STRONGHOLDS IS NOT AS BORING AS EXPECTED
The Tyrant Mine stronghold was both a great experience and a bit confusing. It felt very chaotic at first. On the second run, when I already knew where what is and how to do things, it was a lot of fun.
The communication between players is a bit of a miss. The group HUD was missing on my screen. They showed it for the first time in the most recent dev stream last week. The demo might have been prepared on an older build. Or it might have been a bug. I could not see the group UI and it was a bit messy trying to find my teammates some times.
The game has a system that keeps players together. If someone slacks too much, they are prompted to join the rest of the team or be teleported to them. On the other side, if someone arrives at the next check-point too early, the game might block their progress in order for the rest of the players to catch up.
Over all I had a blast through the Stronghold. I played the Matthias missions alone in Normal Difficulty and my first real group experience in the Anthem VIP Demo this weekend was with three random folks (me lvl 11, them – 11, 12 and 13).
FREEPLAY IS A BIT BORING
I haven’t done much of Freeplay yet in the Demo, but the odd two hours I spent roaming the wilds, there wasn’t much to do, really. The small-scaled instances don’t allow you to meet other Freelancers. The world events (including the ones I have seen in dev streams) are not very inspiring.
Freeplay is one of the best ways to get crafting materials, but once again the limitations of the demo prevented me from getting a better picture for myself of how it truly feels. The small portion of the map that was available, combined with the lack of lore objects and other things to discover and interact with, kind of stole the fun away from exploring.
I keep my hopes up that this isn’t the TRUE Freeplay of Anthem.
Also, a clarification, if I may. In a previous post (and a video) I shared a thought that Anthem’s world feels and looks a bit plastic. This feeling was gone. I might need more time with the game to determine what made me feel this way earlier and what changed my mind now, but there we go.
BUGS, OH THE BUGS!
So many and so frustrating. From the infinite loading screen, through the rubber-banding all the way to the random disconnects and disappearing enemies right in front of your eyes.
The Anthem VIP Demo is crawled with bugs. It is reportedly a build from a few weeks ago, but this many issues cannot be solved in a month time for release. There is a big disbalance between the Javelins and weapon types. Ice is incredibly strong in the demo.
I have compiled a giant article to help people solve as many of the issues as I could find – both experienced by myself and researched on the internet – Reddit, EA Help, YouTube and more.
The suggestions for the game to be delayed might actually have been wise. Now that we see what is considered to be a nearly finished product. BioWare insisted many times that this is a Demo, not a Beta test. Unfortunately, this also means that it would be too late for the devs to take whatever feedback we, the community, throw at them.
I am currently writing this section post-publish. Anthem kept rubber-banding for me in Freeplay for the past half hour or so until it finally kicked me to the infinite loading screen. So, I decided to sit down and expand the article with a few more rows mentioning the MANY bugs crawling the game from all corners.
Here’s a quote from EA’s Answers HQ forums, stating the current issues and fixes from Day 2 of the Anthem VIP Demo:
We are continuing to track current issues for the Anthem VIP Demo and the team is working very diligently to quickly resolve them.
Here’s the current list of the most reported and known issues affecting some players:
- Rubber-banding during free roam and/or missions.
- An infinite loading screen when launching the game or entering an expedition.
- Inability to access their Anthem VIP demo friends codes.
- *Inability to get past the Anthem title screen.*Note: One reason for getting this message is if you did not redeem your code on the correct EA account. If that happened, please follow the steps on this page.
Resolved or Improved:
- Some Xbox One players are unable to access the Anthem VIP demo. – Resolved
- Second javelin not unlocking when reaching level 12. – Most players should see their unlock token in the Forge now. Please let us know if you haven’t.
We will continue to update this thread with new information as it becomes available. Thank you for your patience.
Source ► EA Answers HQ
OUTCOME – DID I LIKE ANTHEM AND WHY
I am very pleased with the way Anthem plays and behaves. On my PC Hardware the game held strong over 60 FPS with only an occasional drop in the Market place in Fort Tarsis now and then. Outside it was stable.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how well the missions play out. The story in betweeen your expeditions is a ton of fun to watch. The static camera during most conversations did bother me at first, but not for long. Characters animations and voice over were good and natural. The first teaser for the game showed a much better and more detailed Fort Tarsis, at least in my opinion, so some downgrade might have been forced to keep console players happy with decent FPS. If it wasn’t for the crappy navigation through the menus, I would have been extremely positive about the demo and the game in general.
The content available in the Anthem Demo is too limited to be able to draw any major conclusions. Take the words you have just read with caution. They are written from an MMO and RPG fan. As I stated earlier, I don’t play many shooters and I’ve never even touched Destiny (which Anthem is compared to a lot).
If you are uncertain if the game will fit your needs and satisfy your desire to play something fresh and new, I would say GO FOR IT! Anthem is available for pre-order in two editions.
What about you? Have you tried Anthem yet? What did you think of it? Is this your next main game or perhaps something you might try for a bit? Or are you not even a little interested in it? Why? Let me know what you think in the comments below the article.
