Masters of Anima è un buon action strategico che riprende l'idea del controllo di piccoli eserciti di servitori, sia per il combattimento che per la risoluzione di enigmi di diverso tipo (come già si era visto in Overlord o nel Nintendiano Pikmin).
La trama è la classica "il cattivo ha rapito la damigella", con contorno di stregoni e Golem. Il comparto grafico e quello sonoro fanno il loro dovere senza esagerare, il level design è chiaro ma non troppo lineare, mentre la giocabilità è focalizzata sulla gestione delle forze senza farsi prendere dal panico, quindi necessita di una certa pratica per essere compresa a 360 gradi, sia se si decide di usare il mouse+tastiera, che il vostro joypad preferito (forse un po' legnoso e dalla portata limitata rispetto al mouse).
Nonostante inizialmente Masters of Anima possa sembrare piuttosto semplice, nella decina di livelli di cui si compone si dovrà forzatamente imparare ad essere scaltri e a gestire i soldati in maniera dinamica, soprattutto se si vorrà puntare alla "S" in ogni scontro, o trovare tutti i segreti. La chiave è osservare le azioni del nemico, muoversi nelle zone meno calde ma al contempo sapere quando attaccare, potenziare le milizie grazie alla magia o ripiegare.

MoA è un action-strategy assolutamente consigliato a chi non vuole vincere facile ma è disposto a sbattersi per imparare, magari ripetendo più volte il medesimo livello... tanto i punti esperienza si guadagnano a prescindere e con essi i la possibilità di migliorare le truppe e il protagonista. Oltretutto sono presenti 3 livelli di difficoltà diversi che potranno essere cambiati anche a gioco inoltrato o nel caso vogliate partire coi piedi di piombo (primo RTS?). ;-)

VOTO: 7,5/10

Masters of Anima is an excellent RPG/RTS hybid. A lot of companies have tried to pull of what Anima does very well and to be honest it's done it excellently, to the point where I can find no faults with the gameplay. The story is excellent and the whole game is voiced, something that AAA titles are missing with all their cash floating around during development.

I highly recommend this game if you like RTS gameplay and RPG gameplay. The battles are glorious and the unit selection is quite good as well. I'm playing on Normal atm and it always feels like I'm kept on my toes.

Edit: Just finished the game, found most secrets. Getting more Anima orbs as a mechanic as well as additional health really assisted but the end of the game was doable definitely without getting any of those. Mighta been a bit harder with less anima orbs though. 10/10 RTS/RPG from me and I wish there were more games like this out there, cause this was FANTASTIC. Will definitely be going back through level select to find the other secrets.

If you're not into exploration, you're probably not going to enjoy this game. The levels are large , checkpoints are far & inbetween, and playtime is long, depending on how thorough you want to be looking for the collectable upgrades.

The game has no quick-save option, mini-map, or controllable camera. It's a minor annoyance, but I've played adventure games that lack the same features like this, and that didn't stop me from enjoying the game.

As far as the bad stuff goes, that's about the worst of it. However, in addition to what's mentioned above, units will sometimes get stuck on objects within the environment, and their pathfinding is a bit dodgy from time to time. Furthermore, the range on your staff is detrimentally short and should definitely be extended to make issuing orders less of a chore.

Beside the issues previously stated, the game is great and very fun. As clunky as the combat is, the battles are challenging and enjoyable. A lot of the exploration is mixed with environmental puzzle solving; some of which are pretty creative. The story is cheesy, but everything else the game has going for it more than makes up for its shortcomings.

I definitely recommend picking this one up on sale rather than full price.

What is Masters of Anima ?

Ever heard of games like Overlord or Pikmin ? Masters of anima is like those games, here you play as a mage that can control up to 4 different types of units which you can create an army from, the game has a nice artstyle, its voice acted and theres an interesting story playing in the background, for a cheap indie game its polished with good production values, the gameplay overall if you watched the preview videos are self explanatory, for most part its well-done and the game manages to stay interesting in the first half to grab your attention and entertain you with different and well-balanced enemy encounters, collectibles to find and puzzles to solve.

Thats until the second half, what I didnt address in the first paragraph was how crappy the controls were, especially on controller which is what I was using, its not that better on keyboard either because its how the game was designed in how you command the units that serve you in combat, another problem are the puzzles, they become annoying to deal with, having to stay behind walls so you dont die to some environmental hazard or stay in a specific place to clean an obstacle with a magical aura is just boring, the enemy encounters became much more unbalanced, they overstay their welcome and most of them are full of bullet sponge enemies which was fine to deal with initially but the controls were already an annoyance and then as you find new and harder enemies and you try to position the units strategically through the map the problems of the controls become more noticeable and it becomes an obstacle of its own, its a huge shame because I was having a good time with this game but the more I played the “fun” I was having faded away, I lost interest and just dropped the game with no desire to continue, the quality just fell pretty hard and because of that I can’t recommend it, the game doesn't deserve a recommendation at all.

A competent, Enjoyable and well built adventure game ... but its bland story and setting detract from an otherwise enjoyable experience.


Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qEYLf-NnEY

Text:
Let start with the good, because a lot of this game is good - its game design, while linear provides a steady progression with decent challenge as you go through the various levels, mobs, "puzzles" and obstacles, increasing in difficulty as you go forward.

Also unlocking and learning the usage of your different summons is interesting and the range of summons and their various uses, as well as buffs and skills allow you to customize your experience a fair bit yo your preferred gameplay style. This is all pretty decent overall, with smooth flow across levels and allows you to play - up to an extent - in your preferred way.

This also translates to smooth visuals, that while not amazing or stunning do feel unique enough in terms of enemies, animations and diversity on display.

Further, the sound and voice acting is pretty decent and it runs overall like a dream at 60+ fps at all times.

....that said, i'm bored to bits by the setting and story. This is my biggest gripe with the title overall.

This game gives me a feeling of overlord, or other games where you summon minions and command them - and while from a mechanics standpoints, that is VERY true - from the world and story it all feels bland and flat. You're running around with your automatons fighting other automatons controlled by the generic evil overlord while your protagonist is a bumbling baboon that wins the day.

Its devoid of energy, originality or depth... which is a Damn shame as the game is pretty damn good overal.

If you enjoy the review do follow my curator feed! Or check out the various other reviews on YouTube

Just a quick summary as I'm only nearly 2 hours in.

Pros:
- Really nice art style.
- The game runs great (130+ fps @ 1440p).
- Gameplay is fun.
- Rewards exploration.
- Voice acting is pretty good.
- Neat skill progression tree.
- Story is intriguing, although not mind blowing.

Cons (but to a lesser extent):
- Controls take some getting used to (though I am playing with a controller as recommended).
- Puzzles are a little too easy.

I definitly intend to stick around for the rest of it.

Also reminds me a lot of two games, if those two games were actually on STEROIDS, they would be Masters of Anima. Remember Locke's Quest? Or even better, Heroes of Mana for the DS? They are both games where you play as a summoner, in the first you conjure all manners of scrap golems to do your bidding, and the whole game revolves around that mechanic, in Heroes of Mana, well... it's the same concept except a little less interesting. In my opinion, Masters of Anima is the best actual game that gets it completely and utterly PERFECT.

You play as Otto, a shaper; individual with great power that can use his staff to conjure "Guardians", nether creatures bound to the staff and 'shaped' (rightly so) to do Otto's bidding. As another shaper, Zahr, conjures his own Golems to take over the world, he sundered Anna's soul (Otto's fiancée, and also one of the best shapers around), turning her into fragments of her former self. Otto is then sent on a quest to return Anna to her former self, as well as foil Zahr's plan... Otto's got quite the special gift, the gift of Shaping.

The gameplay, although looking like a piece of cake at first, becomes more and more difficult as you advance through the story! There are ten stages, each with a special mechanic related to them... I loved every single bit of every single level. In the desert, you're tasked to collect pearls for Hakim, the flying merchant... In the forest, you can straight up take control of another character, the Nymph Maya etc... It's all never-ending fun. Otto, while moving at a snail's pace outside of combat, can summon up to five kinds of golems; Guardians, which are the melee, very easy paper-cut units that die in one shot but are great cover for ranged golems, Archers (no need to explain), Keepers that can drain the enemy golem's of their Anima, Commandoes who encourage your other golems to do more damage and finally Summoners, which basically are the most broken and they can summon their own "moppets" that explode upon contact. In combat, the Micro kicks in and sometimes it gets too overwhelming trying to commandeer all your shaped troops into doing specific things! At first, you'll get a lot of B ranks in combat, but worry not, after you repeat certain levels for a certain amount of times, you'll figure it out and you'll be getting S ranks in no time. The trick here is to use your keybindings to micro units in combat. Also, depending on how well you did, Otto gains experience in each level and there is a skilltree to upgrade, skills to unlock for both Otto and his units. I swear, this game concept doesn't get any better than this.

The voice-acting is also quite nice, with some very over-the-top moments that will definitely make you at least giggle... Let's just say Otto is not the smarest guy in the bunch! He's like that wannabe hero from Orcs Must Die lol Also graphics are to die for, and the sounds Otto's units make while affected by Otto's battlecry are also so satisfying (especially the BOW CHAOS sound after you motivate like... 30 archers to do the exploding arrow attack all at once, PRICELESS)

I guess you already know what score this game should be... a 10/10 experience and as I'm reaching the end with all my levels on S rank in the highest difficult... I can't help but wonder... Will this ever have a sequel?? I'd buy it so fast, like... A nyan cat on crack

🔵 Decent action RTS game
🔵 Very good artstyle
🔵 Full controller support for being an RTS game
🔵 Flexible level up system. You can reset and allocate how many times you want
🔵 Story is decent with good VO

🔴 Newly summoned units don't automatically attack nearest enemy
🔴 Controls are super cluncky when trying to control multiple guardians
🔴 Puzzles are easy but there's too many of them which can be unfun

It's okay but suffers from the main part of the game being clunky.

Pros:
- Looks good
- The voice acting is good enough although it can get very repetative in places
- The music is good
- It's an interesting concept

Cons:
- Fairly short game
- Limited replay value
- The puzzles are very basic
- The combat is very clunky even with a controller

While the combat is so clunky I can't recommend this as it is a frustrating experience at times and given that it is at least 50% of the game it should be fun.

Really refreshing game design with good challenges. Art style and voice-overs are excellent, definitely a game done with love. Well done, Passtech Games. Thanks for this gem.