Anima Flux — Review. Is a co-op sci-fi metroidvania enough…

Is a co-op sci-fi metroidvania enough to break from the mold?

The developers at Avantaj Prim got me curious when they announced Anima Flux at the end of 2022 and the fact that it will be a co-op metroidvania. I think “curious” is the right word to use here, since an interesting idea without the proper execution to be back it up is worthless. “Can they pull it off and stand out?” has been the question on my lips. Constantin, the consumer, wanted them to succeed, because they’re developers from a neighboring country. But Constantin, the reviewer, doesn’t care about that. He’s only here to answer a couple of questions:

· Is the game a good entertainment product? Why?

· Is the game a bad entertainment product? Why?

· What could’ve been done differently or improved?

Let’s get started.

It could’ve easily been an animated series

Anima Flux spares no time with pleasantries and throws you into a dystopian hell let loose. The whole world has gone to crap as a result of a mutant outbreak. As desperate times call for desperate solutions, what better way to solve this crisis than to flee into space and establish a theocratic dictatorship to rule the survivors? I’m sure nothing wrong will happen. Right? Right?!

Except something wrong DID happen and the mutants are back for round two. Here’s where the ruling regime comes with their next best idea: creating an army of genetically enhanced soldiers called “NOX” to fight the mutants. They usually work in teams of two. When one or both dies, they can be brought back to life using a device called an “Anima Machine”. And here’s where the player characters come in.

Eileen is the typical soldier who puts duty above all else. She doesn’t question authority — that’s not her job. Her job is to execute the orders from her higher-ups without asking “Why?”.

On the other side of the dynamic duo, we have Roy. He’s a former popular gladiator known as “The Loner” who somehow got coopted into NOX. Unlike Eileen, he’s more… umm, free-spirited. Yes, that’s the word. He doesn’t believe in absolute orders. And he thinks bending the rules just a liiittle to achieve results is better than not achieving results at all. He tries to be hilarious. And he even mocks Eileen at times for being a machine that only executes orders. In other words, he adds some much-needed personality to the team.

Having a dual protagonist is an excellent opportunity for character building. It should add more dynamic character building, because now you follow two characters and see how their relationship evolves. With that being said, we don’t really witness growth, moments of realization, or situations where one character is able to put themselves into the other’s shoes and understand their point of view.

This would feel like a natural next step when two people find themselves in the jaws of danger constantly and have to fight murderous mutants, right? Well, their personalities don’t bleed through much into each other. Eileen keeps being the goody two-shoes soldier. Roy keeps playing his bad boy role. We do get some proper character development right at the end of the game. But not enough to make up for it during the playthrough.

Their relationships with the other characters don’t evolve much either. The rest of the NPCs mainly act as quest givers and merchants. Meet them. Complete their quest. Buy out their inventory. Move along.

Characters lack enough personality to care for them. There is a sub-plot about helping refugees who are either abandoned or hunted by the regime because they’re labelled as dangerous. But it’s not developed enough and it ends up as a fetch quest of finding refugees and sending them to a safe camp.

The attempts at humor fall flat on their butt. For example, one of the NPCs named their dog “Dog” and there’s a whole sequence of dialogue where they try to make it funny. And we also have certain jokes and characters that are rather inappropriate. Check the creepy individual below who’s trying to constantly hit on Eileen. Trust me, I chose a civil line of dialogue. I could’ve picked something way worse.

The world of the game itself is rather contained, which makes sense if you’ve read about how this is a small spaceship city. My problem with it is how claustrophobic the room design is. How small some of the sections are. And the sole purpose of some rooms is just to enter and exit them without something meaningful to do. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of transition areas, corridors, and the rest. But I’m talking about small area after small area with nothing to do.

Most of the lore and background is explained through log journals scattered throughout the game. You’ll need to buy a decoder before you can unlock and read them. But once you do, they’ll provide some much-needed context on what happened before the events of the game, who the key actors pulling the strings are, as well as who Eileen and Roy are beyond what you can grasp from the moment-to-moment gameplay.

However, the real highlight in terms of storytelling is the cutscenes and how well-executed they are. You will witness what seems to be events from a not-so-distant past each time you defeat a bio-mutant boss. They’ll make both you and the protagonists ask: “What is the meaning of this?”. They’ll add more mystery, more intrigue, and I dare say they are the engine that keeps you curious. They make you want to defeat the next boss to get more context and unravel the entire plot of the game.

In a previous review of another game, I mentioned how that title felt more like a movie and how it could’ve had a better reception if the creators had chosen that medium instead. I could say something similar about Anima Flux: an animated series or an animated movie felt like a much better way to deliver its story.

I’m saying this because the artists really flexed their muscles with the cutscenes. They have action. They have emotion. They have impact. If they actually decide to create an animated series, I’ll be the first to watch it.

It took me about 7h30 to go through the entire game and complete everything. And that’s with me taking breaks to make notes and capture material for this review. According to HowLongToBeat.Com, the only user who completed everything took about 6 hours. I would say that is close enough to what you can expect in terms of play time. There are no secret endings, no NG+ cycles, and nothing is too hidden so you can’t find it in one playthrough.

All in all, Anima Flux delivers a short and contained story. There is nothing to write home about any of the characters, including the protagonists. The game world is small, with only 6 biomes to explore. The lore is mainly delivered through digital documents. And the best storytelling instrument used by the creators is the cutscenes after each boss fight.

Hope you’re ready for a rough and tumble start

Anima Flux is trying its best to play hard-to-get in the beginning. I’d say some of that fades away as you push through. But you might not even get far if you find it as frustrating as I did in the first hours and be like: “You know what? I can use my time better”. I’ve certainly felt like that and even decided to cancel my second stream of it because I wasn’t enjoying the experience.

A few design choices make it a real hassle to play through the game. First of all, it’s all about the money. The game loves to ask you for currency for most things. Need a new ability to progress further? Spend money. Need to unlock a door between two sections to make traversal easier? Spend money. Need more healing charges before a boss fight? Spend money. Does it make sense from a worldbuilding perspective where resources are scarce? Yes. Does it feel great for the player? Not necessarily. Especially in the early game, the last concern that I want to have is farming.

Another culprit for stunted progression is the rudimentary save & fast travel system. You would normally expect spots where you can rest and/or travel freely between discovered regions. Instead, you have to use a fast travel point that gets you back to a lab in the base, where you can only save and… nothing else. You can’t leave that room to go to the other parts of the headquarters. It simply bricks travelling and makes you take many convoluted paths just to get where you want to be. Later down the line, there will be ways to travel between regions. Yet the damage is already done by then.

But let’s say you’re fine with having to pay for pretty much everything and having to walk pretty much everywhere because the pseudo-saving & fast travel system forces you to. Then you get hit by another annoyance: the wild spread of merchants that give you useful abilities. They usually offer one new ability each and one or two upgrades for it. The catch is that you’ll have to travel a lot on foot just to get your weapons upgraded, have your currency float towards your characters, buy new grenade types that allow you to destroy environmental obstacles, etc.

And look. It’s not a bad thing to have merchants in a variety of locations in a genre that encourages exploration. I’m trying to say that all of them having their offering limited to just one ability and the upgrades associated with it doesn’t justify how much you have to walk to get them. If it were me, I would at least make some of them travel to a location or two after discovering them to save time for the player.

One last thing that might drive you away from the game in the first hours is actually the first boss. Eileen and Roy don’t have much of a toolkit to start with. Eileen has a bow and the ability to jump. Roy has a great sword and… the ability to jump. Plus a Rage Mode that you can enter once you fill your meter for each of them. All this sounds good on paper. But the nature of this boss fight doesn’t encourage much interaction from your side, if you’re playing solo. Weird hitboxes that make you get hit after jumping over attacks and a behavior that makes it chase the player character constantly make it hard to actually get a few hits in before being murdered.

What’s the solution to fight it then? Keep jumping around and dodging while the AI companion deals the damage. Of course, you can stop for a chip shot every now and then. But that increases the risk of you getting smacked. It’s not engaging. It’s not entertaining. And it almost made me drop the game altogether, thinking that’s how future fights will go.

Luckily, the game gives you enough tools later down the line to go toe to toe with giant monstrosities. You get additional attacks, shields, upgraded weapons, as well as the classic double jumps and dashing. And the boss fights have better designs that encourage you to use these mechanics. Will that allow you to just stand there and pummel the boss? Not necessarily. But they will make it feel like a more interactive experience in some cases. In other cases… yeah, you’ll just smack the boss regardless of what it throws at you. I recommend getting your weapon upgrades maxed out asap if you like that scenario.

But enough about the big baddies. What about the enemy variety, right? Unfortunately, you can’t expect much in this department. Except for a new enemy type every now and then as you enter new regions, you will generally fight the same mutants from start to finish. The game also likes to throw you into mini-arenas, lock the doors, and wish you “Good luck, buddy!”. Which surprisingly provides a decent amount of fun. Even if we don’t have lots and lots of different types of mobs, their placement and how they come at you in waves challenge you to think before you act. But I will mention that some arenas can bug and lock one of the exits for the entirety of the game. Luckily, you have alternate routes to explore every corner of the map. But that doesn’t make it less of an issue that needs to be addressed.

Speaking of the map, the world of Anima Flux is not extraordinarily vast — as you would expect from a small space station city. Yet you do need to pay attention to your surroundings if you want to find all the secrets hidden by the developers. You can also just buy the final upgrade of the map module that uncovers secret areas when your character gets near them.

You know the discussion about map pins is coming. And no, they don’t have them. Which generally works because of how small the world of the game is. You have all the important NPCs mapped out by the game itself. And you can track all the ongoing quests in a dedicated menu tab. Yet I did wish sometimes to mark merchants that I need to revisit. Or areas that I couldn’t access and need to revisit. Would it be useful if they added them? Yes. Can you do just fine without them? Also yes.

I’ve played the game on an Xbox Series X controller and the controls felt very responsive. They were especially reliable during the boss fights, where you need to use certain mechanics to damage the boss or to go out of harm’s way. You also have access to a Manual that explains how each of your abilities works. Not that you need it, since you’ll be required to use a directional input and another button at most.

Last but not least, here are my final mentions about the gameplay side of things:

– Adjusting the settings of your controller makes your game freeze and you can only force close it if you want to jump back in.

– The dialogue speed is quite fast at times. Which is fine for a fast reader like myself. But it makes it hard to spell it out for streamers, considering there’s no voice acting.

– If you rely on controlling Eileen — the ranged character — you’ll find out that Roy — the melee character — doesn’t like to jump to hit flying enemies.

I once again urge you to make this an animated series

Yes. That’s how much I loved the quality of the cutscenes in this game. Even if they appeared sporadically, after defeating each major boss, they still managed to impress me. They told the story better than the NPCs. And they helped piece past, present, and future better than the digital logs that we can find. The audio team knows how to create upbeat, futuristic music for chase scenes and fights, but also how to make use of pauses and subtle details to build up suspense. On the side of the visual team, they just take what the audio folks offer them and multiply it tenfold by adding suspense, emotion, and much-needed impact to how they play out.

If you want to get an idea about this style of animation and music, think about how Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight movies would look in a 2D animated sci-fi series. You’ll say that I’m insane, comparing an indie game studio’s work with what an expensive movie franchise achieved. Yet the quality is definitely there. And I would absolutely love to see the animation and sound team trying to tell this story in a different medium.

Final Verdict

Anima Flux is certainly trying its best to make you put the game down in the first 1–2 hours of gameplay. Lots of cramped and empty rooms and corridors. A system for saving and fast travel that is more annoying than useful. Merchants with a small selection of abilities that are spread way too much. And a boss fight that doesn’t encourage you to play the game at all. Honestly, I would’ve put the game down there and then. I wouldn’t have given it a rating. That’s how disappointed I was about this beginning sequence.

But I decided to press on. And I witnessed a game with decent mechanics, smooth controls, and one heck of an animation and sound team. Boss fights finally became engaging, even if the moment-to-moment gameplay and enemies weren’t something to write home about. And by the end, the story captivated me more than I want to admit.

Is the dual protagonist metroidvania aspect enough to make it stand out? No. It was an interesting idea. But I feel like this was mostly designed as a single-player experience. And then we got another playable character added to the mix.

When all is said and done, it’s a metroidvania that goes a little above the average experience. Interesting enough to get. Short enough to complete and get some enjoyment after the initial rough start. It gets a 5.5/10 from me.

You can get it on all major platforms for $20. You can frequently see it on sale for $16. But the enjoyment you get is closer to $10 or below. If you’re dead set on trying it out, I’d suggest waiting for a sale that drops the price around that mark.

That’s it from my side. Thanks for reading. And see you soon with another review.