5 Ways Honkai: Nexus Anima Is Better Than Pokémon

A new Pokémon competitor is arriving with Honkai: Nexus Anima, an upcoming creature-collecting adventure game developed by HoYoverse, the creators of games like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero, and many others. This title will be set in the larger Honkai universe, though it will have a unique story and gameplay style not seen in other entries in the series. Honkai: Nexus Anima was announced last year and has been in production even before that, but now, we’re starting to see more official details about it arise as the company gears up for launch.

In fact, HoYoverse held special free playtests for Honkai: Nexus Anima during July, in a beta test called the Evolution Test. This allowed participating members to check out some of the gameplay features it will have once it arrives, and it permitted the developers to test server capacity, get feedback, and much more. Honkai: Nexus Anima is widely seen as a Pokémon lookalike due to the fact that it’s a creature-collecting game, but there are some core differences that make it stand out, some of which make it even better than Nintendo’s long-lasting IP.

Honkai: Nexus Anima Offers A New Take On Creature-Collector Battles

Instead of following the traditional turn-based combat system of the core Pokémon games, or perhaps even real-time action-based battles, like those in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Honkai: Nexus Anima takes on a completely different approach to battles with the creatures you collect, known as Anima. The main structure for monster combat in the upcoming HoYoverse game, called Nexus Battles, happens within a top-down auto-battler arena, where your goal will be to place your Anima across the board in a strategic manner.

Among the Anima that you pick, each one of them has a role they perform best at during combat, so it will be vital to build a varied team capable of executing different functions, so as to keep balance. Even so, there is space to tweak the team depending on your opponent, so you can go a bit more aggressive with high DPS units, or perhaps stay on the safe side, with more tanks than damage output. These roles are known as Traits.

In addition to the Traits, which each Anima has, Honkai: Nexus Anima also features a system called Aspects, which is the equivalent of the different types system in Pokémon. Aspects in this game are the closest thing you’ll get to an element, and they are represented by concepts like Love, Hate, Memory, and War. These Aspects have unique effects and, among themselves, have synergies that you can exploit, giving it even more strategic depth than you’d expect.

Honkai: Nexus Anima Has A Stunning Open-World

Another impressive feat that Honkai: Nexus Anima has achieved is making a rich open world that is worth exploring in a variety of ways. You’ll be free to explore the town of Iia on foot, riding an Anima through the streets, or perhaps even taking to the skies with gliding and flying Anima that assist you. Overall, it seems like HoYoverse is drawing from some of its best exploration elements seen in games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.

HoYoverse is also bringing other elements from these games to the open world in Honkai: Nexus Anima. The town of Iia is but one of many different destinations that will be explorable, and they are rich and bustling. You never really get a sense that the map is large for the sake of being large and, unfortunately, empty, as the world is heavily populated by NPCs and Anima, as well as highly decorated.

This map isn’t just for show, however, as it will be full of different activities and interactions you can partake in. Some Anima you encounter may be available for a Nexus Battle, while others can give you side quests and activities to give you more resources. There is a lot more to Honkai: Nexus Anima than simply battling, and exploration pushes all that forward.

Honkai: Nexus Anima Has A Lot More To Offer Than Battles

Even though Nexus Battles are the core mechanic leading the game, there is a lot more to do in Honkai: Nexus Anima than simply fighting other Anima. Quests play a huge role in the upcoming RPG, and they come in all different shapes and sizes. As you explore Iia, you can talk to different characters and perhaps help them, should they need the assistance, or even set off to uncover secrets that you find across town.

You can also take on different gameplay challenges, which are also extremely varied. There are, for instance, racing challenges using specific Anima, photography challenges, management challenges to expand certain businesses in Iia, room-wrecking challenges, balloon-popping challenges, and more. If you’re ever tired of the Nexus Battle system, know that there’s always a huge variety of gameplay options waiting for you in Honkai: Nexus Anima.

If you don’t want to get too competitive and ultimately want to relax playing the game, you can also do that. Among the activities found in Iia are smaller tasks, like the ones centered around helping NPCs. You can help a character recover their Anima, who is stuck in the ongoing burst of a faulty water hydrant, or find and recover a certain item an Anima has lost, for example. Honkai: Nexus Anima seems to be catering to different types of players and different types of moods altogether when it comes to gameplay.

Honkai: Nexus Anima Doesn’t Shy Away From The Honkai Franchise

As a Honkai: Star Rail player and a former Honkai Impact 3rd player, I found it most interesting how Honkai: Nexus Anima found a good balance between honoring the franchise while also making it a game of its own. If you’ve never played anything Honkai, you’ll fit in quite easily, as it requires no previous knowledge from the series, and it adapts concepts from that universe into its own purposes. For example, characters follow Paths in Honkai: Star Rail, and while these aren’t openly acknowledged in Nexus Anima, they are somewhat represented by existential concepts like the Aspects.

At the same time, characters from that universe that we already know and love make an appearance in the upcoming game, under the title of an Eidos. For example, one playable character is Otto, who is clearly Otto Apocalypse from Honkai Impact 3rd. The Stellaron Hunter, Blade, is also in Nexus Anima, bonded with the powerful Bladehound. There are also talks about Kafka in the upcoming game.

Honkai: Nexus Anima does a good job referencing the other titles in the series, but also keeping things unique – there are certainly more new and original characters for the upcoming title than those brought in from previous releases. Even so, the returning characters are fun treats for fans, and it’s a good way of paying homage more frequently.

Honkai: Nexus Anima Is F2P & Will Continue To Grow After Launch, For Free

Of course, one of the strongest suits is the fact that Honkai: Nexus Anima is a free-to-play game that will continue to grow with free patches. Like the majority of the titles under HoYoverse’s umbrella, the upcoming RPG will be downloadable and playable for free, though it will feature gacha mechanics centered around the Eidos characters and the Anima pets. Players will need to pull from banners to obtain more of them.

However, it can still be enjoyed without ever spending a dime, and there are ways of obtaining resources for pulls in the banners through regular gameplay. Much like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, it’s expected that Nexus Anima will have a regular update schedule that will bring new content for you to explore, both narrative and gameplay-focused. If the two other titles serve as a standard, you can also expect new regions and story arcs to arrive each year, so Iia may only be the start.

As such, you’ll likely spend hundreds of hours with this game in the years to come, without having to purchase DLCs, as they all come via regular and free updates. With each free patch, the game will be renewed in some way, giving you a reason to always come back. It will have a lot of longevity, in that sense, making Honkai: Nexus Anima very different from Pokémon games.

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Developer(s)

HoYoverse (Formerly miHoYo)

Publisher(s)

HoYoverse (Formerly miHoYo)