Aniimo's biggest potential seemed to lie in the actual world and exploration; while it may not stand out as extraordinary, the world is at least pretty and relaxing to explore, and the Aniimo are appealing enough to make for a cute adventure.
Creature-catching RPGs have always been near and dear to my heart, and I grew up catching plenty of Pokémon, wrangling monsters in Dragon Quest V, and later on, taming demons in Shin Megami Tensei. Aniimo caught my attention for its cutesy style and real-time battle mechanics, offering a colorful, vibrant world full of adorable Aniimo. At this year's Summer Game Fest Play Days, RPGamer was given an opportunity to try out the free-to-play action RPG by Pawprint Studios.
From the get-go, Aniimo is extraordinarily colorful, featuring an array of vivid hues and plenty of particle effects. The details are largely adequate, but nothing to really write home about, and while the creatures themselves are cute and appealing, none of the designs really stood out as especially compelling; player characters, in particular, seemed a bit too generic. While there's certainly a diverse range of Aniimo to encounter and collect, none of the individual Aniimo or the world elements stood out as particularly new or interesting for the genre. This was most evident in a section where the game asks the player to align with a cute little sun or moon-aligned Aniimo: a major story moment that seemingly had ramifications for later. Both of them were cute, but they didn't really stand out as distinct. The biggest issue in the demo was odd graphical cut-outs, where parts of the world loaded more slowly than others, with scattered pacing issues in the dialogue as well.
[caption id="attachment_194830" align="aligncenter" width="640"] It's relaxing to romp around Idyll with an Aniimo.[/caption]
The gameplay sees players taking on the role of a Pathfinder, whose job it is to catch the Aniimo and research them. Depending on their elemental affinity or individual tendencies, they have abilities that can be used to explore elements of the world. Catching Aniimo involves using the environment and positional advantages, and while it's lightly engaging, it felt a bit too easy to just move behind the Aniimo to significantly increase the chance of a catch. As players explore the world, they can command and fight with their Aniimo, but more importantly, they can "Twine" with them. This essentially fuses the player with them, allowing players to utilize Aniimo's true power and engage in action combat. The combat felt simple, effective, and responsive, but also not very deep, making pretty elementary use of basic elemental interactions and some light dodging.
Aniimo's biggest potential seemed to lie in the actual world and exploration; while it may not stand out as extraordinary, the world is at least pretty and relaxing to explore, and the Aniimo are appealing enough to make for a cute adventure. While the demo didn't show off any of the game's MMO features, Aniimo with friends seemed like it might be significantly more fun, as well. With a little more voice acting, polish, and some extra mechanics, though, Aniimo might stand out a little more in the creature-collecting RPG landscape.
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