A new Honkai game is almost upon us.
HoYoverse’s lineup of gacha games is expanding with the addition of a brand-new entry in the Honkai franchise: Honkai Nexus Anima. This fifth game in the Honkai series serves as a standalone follow-up to 2023’s Honkai Star Rail and 2016’s Honkai Impact 3rd, bringing together familiar characters from both games in a fresh universe.
Since its announcement, Honkai Nexus Anima has turned heads due to its colourful Pokémon-like creatures called Anima, as well as its auto-battler-like combat system. The game might be best described as a combination of Pokémon and Teamfight Tactics (TFT), with a splash of HoYo’s trademark eye-catching character design thrown in for good measure.
However, your enjoyment of the game might not hinge upon your tolerance of the always-polarising auto-battler genre. While the combat system had me initially wary of this game, a few hours spent in its ongoing closed beta might have just turned into a believer. This has the makings of yet another hit for HoYoverse, though I expect it won’t be to everyone’s tastes.
Honkai Nexus Anima
Release date: TBD
Platforms: PC, Android, iOS
Developer: HoYoverse
What is Honkai Nexus Anima about?
Honkai Nexus Anima brings players into an all-new HoYoverse adventure, albeit one that stars a few familiar faces from the Honkai game anthology. This game centres around the Nexus–a Force-like phenomenon that connects all things in this world, and can lead to the creation of adorable sentient creatures called Anima.
Anima are Pokémon-like beings that come in all shapes and sizes, and are scattered across the game world, living peacefully among humans for the most part. The player will be able to run into these creatures in the wild wherever they go, and interacting with them will lead into an optional battle. Battling wild Anima will allow the player to bond with them, and adopt them into their party.
People who control Anima in battle are referred to as Animasters, each of whom comes with a signature companion Anima. Both the Animasters and Anima serve as the game’s primary gacha banners. Just as you’re pulling for both a character and their weapon in Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, you will be pulling for Animasters and their Anima in this game.
Some of these Animasters are all-new, including Nanafey–the game’s blue-haired mascot character, who plays a sizable role in the game’s early hours. Blade makes an appearance, returning from Honkai: Star Rail, while Kiana is also present, returning from Honkai Impact 3rd. These Animasters come with their own Anima as well, and not all of them are friendly to the player on the outset.
The player can either choose a male or female character to play as. They will be an amnesiac (an unfortunate crutch of the gacha genre) who also has a list of RPG-like character stats–ranging from Intelligence to Strength. The player’s chosen build will decide which dialogue options they can access during story quests, though for the most part, I found the inclusion of these options largely negligible. Most dialogue choices seemed to take me down the same path in the end, which is a recurring complaint I have with many games in this genre.
How does Honkai Nexus Anima’s auto-battler combat work?
Honkai Nexus Anima’s early hours take the player to a large town called lia, and its surrounding environs. Lia is a modern urban town filled with Anima, and populated with a variety of locations ranging from shops, parks, and schools. Questlines will have you run around and engage with characters scattered around the map, typically with a battle or two thrown into the mix for good measure.
The game’s battles might be jarring for newcomers, given how distinct it is from the rest of the game in format. When battling Anima (or Animasters), players will enter an autochess game mode, wherein they’ll have to place down their chosen Anima on a board with careful positioning. They’ll also have to pay attention to the synergy of their chosen team and Eidoses.
Eidoses are essentially Animasters whom the player can recruit to help out in their battles, providing an ultimate ability of sorts for use in combat, along with a few buffs. As the autochess (or auto battler, pick your poison) mode rolls out, you’ll have to manage your Eidos ability cooldowns. That’s pretty much all you can do, however, as the Anima will do the rest by themselves automatically.
Anima will come in different Aspects (like Love and War) and Traits (like Mastermind and Striker). In these early hours, I found that simply levelling all my Anima got me through most battles pretty easily. However, it stands to reason that once players hit the late-game, they will have to pay careful attention to their Eidos and Anima synergies, as well as their team composition, positioning, and rarity–much like any other HoYo game.
I’m still torn on the execution of this mode, sadly. Only being able to engage with the Eidos during combat makes their cooldowns a little annoying to manage–it’s an idle game that won’t let you stay idle, in other words. When you’re not watching the admittedly fun Eidos animations–like Breadhead throwing toast at an enemy–the actual battles just aren’t that exciting to watch. There is a slight sense of tension in not having direct control over the outcome of each Anima fight, but I would quickly lose interest in a battle because I was just watching a couple monsters throw punches at each other from far away.
There’s definitely more work to be done where combat is concerned, but I can see autochess lovers falling in love with this title pretty easily. If you already enjoy the genre, I don’t see what there is to dislike about the game–the characters and world design are just a few more cherries on top of the Pokémon-flavoured sundae, though the story’s premise already seems a little convoluted. I can already see players demanding an auto-play function for the battles, so they won’t have to deal with the Eidos abilities at all. Hey, Clash of Clans managed it.
How does Honkai Nexus Anima’s gacha system work?
Honkai Nexus Anima is a live-service gacha game, which means that players will get a new selection of ‘banners’ from which they can pull with every patch cycle. These banners typically include a playable character and their weapon, with a variety of rarity tiers thrown into the mix. You’ll need a certain amount of in-game currency to make these pulls, and you’ll probably have to make tens of pulls to get the banner item you’re chasing.
In Honkai Nexus Anima, 10 pulls will cost you a total of 1,600 Aspect Gems–the typical amount for HoYo games in this range. You can pull on Anima and Eidos banners, with the Eidos banner giving you combat abilities, and the Anima banner giving you combat units.
Anima can come in three rarity tiers, and pulling duplicates will allow you to enhance your Rapport with the Anima. Eidos banners will also give you Anima at times, much like a HoYo character banner might also give you weapons, making the Eidos a little more exclusive. You can also upgrade Eidos character abilities by pulling duplicates. The ongoing Evolution Test doesn’t include any information on banner pull or pity rates, sadly. A five-star Eidos was at least guaranteed within the first 50 pulls on that banner.
Takeaways
There’s a lot more to get into with regards to Honkai Nexus Anima–from the surprisingly adorable designs of its Anima, to the game’s strong performance on mobile devices (I played on Android, and thus far have not seen any major performance drops). However, it’s worth noting that we’re still in early days here. Much can change by the time the game reaches the hands of players, though I will say that I was surprised to see how polished it already appears to be.
Sure, some things are missing here and there. Gacha pull animations were not included in this test, and some areas were walled off, as they hadn’t been added to this version of the game yet. Still, this is a good enough first look for me to know that HoYo has another unique gacha title on its hands here–and that’s saying something, given that the developer is already running multiple titles concurrently.
By far the most impressive aspect of this game is the wide breadth of Anima it already has available–from the adorable Inkifoal to the pudding-like Puddlipup, there was enough here to get my ‘Collect ‘em all’ neurons firing. While the autochess combat left me wanting, I’m certainly willing to jump in again at launch to see how things have shaped up.
Honkai Nexus Anima does not have a release date yet.
