I Installed it yesterday and Ive been in the middle of such discussions for 2 weeks meanwhile.

The good thing is that this game brings movement into the genre.

The bad thing is based on leak and bad decisions.

While here you have to be careful since everything leaked could also be wrong.

The VIP Demo was last week and it was plagued with bugs and server problems.

Main issue with that demo might be that is not based on the latest build of the game. Many bugs might already have been fixed in a newer iteration of the software.

The quality of the game also did differ from the E3 demo. It does not appear as vidid as the stuff shown at E3... I guess the development was scaled back a bit.

That doesnt make the game bad but certainly disappoints some expectations.

The overwhelming majority of players that tested it so far considered the gameplay good.

Question is if this game can provide content for multiple years.... a demo is not enough to tell about that.

Another question is if the economy of the game will be balanced or a greedy mess.

Bioware/EA promised that it would not contain lootboxes at all. We will see.

There will be customization options to buy for real money but also to earn in the game. There was a picture leaked at which such an custom armor costs ~20$. That would in my eyes be a disgusting price for it. The full game costs 60$ already... and they want 20$ for just one of many armors.

IF this pricing is true then EA proved once more to be a greedy publisher.

You can earn such armors in the game... yes... that is possible... you dont have to buy them.... the question is how difficult and lengthy this process will be.

But... as already mentioned.... its all based on inoffical leaks and early demo content.

The final product which will release in 3 weeks might have a totally different balance and pricing model.

Way too early to judge about that aspect.

In my eyes it is best to try the demo only to see if the gameplay is fun. And wait at least 1-2 after the official release before you buy the game to see the feedback about the balancing and pricing of the final product.

It looks good

is there a demo for ps4?

most likely... its official demo weekend for all platforms

Ahh thanks OP I might give

It a go what's it like in your opinion?

?

My first impressions:

Whatever graphics you have seen on youtube... or other vid platforms does not get close to the real experience.

The game looks incredible, feels incredible... and also works perfectly.

I so far have not experienced any major bugs or performance problems. The only bug I had was a subtitle not disappearing from my screen until returned to city.

The movement in the game world feels fast and is fast... very direct and dynamic. Flying might require a bit practice but is clearly managable.

Movement in the city clearly needs some tuning. It is way too slow and in my eyes does not even fit to the footsteps you hear.

The weapons at first feel very underperforming, especially against shielded enemies. It gets better with time when you get access to better weapons.

The default weapons dont feel that responsive which is result of the 3rd person view. But I guess that is only something you would notice when you play games like Destiny 2 where weapons in the first person view feel incredible (you feel every bullet).

Still, I generally would see that a negative part... it simply is a different kind of game with a different perspective on the environment.

You have special 3 abilities which you can config the way you want, one melee ability and one ultimate ability. All that stuff (at least during the time i played) are the true damage dealers. I constantly had to remind myself to look at the bottom right corner to check the cooldowns on these abilities.... since in Destiny that stuff is on the opposite site (which I actually like more).

One point of critic for me would be the navpoint system.

Putting aside that this game really takes you at the hand to guide you through the world (which can be seen as good and bad - you wont get lost but you also dont get pushed into the direction to figure out stuff yourself)... my main problem with the nav markers is the color. They have exactly the same color as other players which makes it hard to keep the overview.

I have not access to a different javelin class so I can not tell how they feel compared to my Ranger.

Very cool is the customization option where you can unlock new armor, color them, add new textures, new materials etc.

Its very detailed and allows you to create a very custom Javelin.

The city in the demo has placeholders for characters you can talk with and items which I think will unlock story content.

Very beautiful city design. Much cooler and much more detailed than the Tower in Destiny 2. I like it.

Unfortunatly it is no social hub. I am not sure why the developers did not use the opportunity to allow multiple players to be in the city at the same time.

One explaination might be that the story content (which is only very limited in the demo) would prevent such a social hub in that area.

I can only hope that the developers introduce such social areas in a different way somehow.

Speaking of social interactions.

The matchmaking is a blast.

I wish something like that would exist in Destiny 2.

It is ultra fast and very very comfortable. This clearly is one of Anthems big strengths.

A weakness are loading screens.

I was on a mission which did lead me to multiple areas of the map.

I had to go through 4 loading screens in the middle of the mission. That breaks the immersion of the world.

All videos of the past years showed an Anthem that was totally open world without interuptions. That is not the case in the final game.

The world is very big and you have loading screens between the areas.

I currently have the game installed on a normal HDD. The loading times were ok... maybe on a SDD it wont be a problem at all.

Crashes and server issues?

none so far.

Ok, my assumptions about the social hub and the city were correct

The battles can get very intense in this game.

The last mission had a bossfight at the end which took a bit longer to finish. The team i played with mostly tried to damage the boss and took cover as soon more enemies appeared. I noticed that this isnt much effective as you cant deal much damage and your health and shields only reloads pretty slow so i went all in, jumping around like a crazy bunny and throwing everything I had at the enemies. That somehow kept me alive due to the regens they dropped when dying. I even took the chance ot heal during phases when only a few enemeis were left.

I guess all these small icons below my char at the debriefing screen stand for "dont mess with me".

Please EA... dont mess up this game... it is good.

One big strength of this game might be its story telling.

The demo contained something which I assume to be a side story which involved multiple story missions.

Here is where Anthem clearly is better than other games of the looter-shooter genre. It tells interesting stories and that in pretty interesting way.

When I compare it with Destiny there are worlds between these games when it comes to the real story telling.

Destiny big strength is its lore. The backstory of the game... told by text fragments you can collect in the game.

The backstory is really good in Destiny but that is not a story you can experience. The real story campaigns of the game mostly have been pretty weak.

One of the main problems in Destiny is that you as player are just a tool for other NPCs. You have no personality, you have no name, no emotions, no opinions, you dont even talk (with 2 very smal exceptions). Whatever NPCs tells you to go from A to B... you follow that order. That is the entire structure of the campaign.

Even worse.... the ghost that is supposed to serve you does all the talking and makes the decisions.

You as player are just a stupid tool.

In Anthem... in this very limited demo I was able to talk with NPCs about their stories... learn more about them... and also talk about my own characters stories and motivations. In Anthem the player is not a dead tool but an evolving person. Conversation choices have an influence on the story. Choices matter (to a degree).

The story telling is not on the level of a Mass Effect or Dragon Age... but it is good enough to be enjoyable.

The demo contains the side story (I assume many more of these lead to a bigger story element in the final game).

There is a freeplay mode in which you just can jump into your Javelin and explore the world (this appears to be the main method to collect crafting materials).

And the demo contained a mission type that I think is something like a strike. A bit more difficult and lengthy then the other stuff with a big boss at the end.

Anthem™ Demo - Fort Tarsis + Freeplay

Anthem™ Demo - Ranger Freeplay

Anthem™ Demo - Customization

Anthem™ Demo - Storm Freeplay

Anthem™ Demo - Stronghold (normal difficulty)

Anthem™ Demo - Stronghold (hard difficulty)

Too bad I couldnt finish the stronghold on hard difficulty. It was sunday and already a bit late when it said that the demo servers were taken offline just a few mins before the missions could be finished.

But I guess it still is a good reference how the difficulties feel.

During the VIP Demo +1 week ago more than 2mio of these grabbits were killed.

I am sure that casulties during the public demo were significantly higher. I am responsible of 2 kills. I feel guilty now (no, actually not... i just ran out of bullets).

Well I tried the Anthem VIP and public demo already too. The VIP demo had a lame bug that caused the players to join any activity - as far as i have read numerous players were affected and in most cases the PS players hung in the loading screen. The workaround to close the application and then restart and joining your previous session worked so far, but yeah not a nice feeling. But they solved this nasty bug for the public demo the last weekend.

I had the opportunity to test 3 of the 4 available Javelins; the Storm, Interceptor and Ranger. Haven't tried the Colossus.

The Strom Javelin is a bit like the Warlord in Destiny, the Interceptor gets close the Hunter in Destiny and the Ranger is a mix of both - there is not a real comparison as character in Destiny. The Colossus is like the Titan. Apart from the nasty bug i really enjoyed this new game. The graphic was quite OK - surely not what you expect on an game fair. The sound and the feeling is really good, when you control your Javelin through the map. The feedback is also good that you get, so flying around is really easy to learn - aside from this the most have the capability with long jumps and a bit of floating. I pre-ordered the game already in December (my own xMas gift :)).

The Stronghold is the community hub - like the Tower in Destiny. But steering around is really something they have to improve - although it must not feel the same in Destiny - but its way too slow and i feel its relative big. A lot of rooms were locked or seemed to be locked. I have no idea if they will be released for the final release. The available strike was really funny and challenging - i tried it several times in hard mode and yeah provided a lot of fun. What i didnt like is the fact that whenever you're shot down and your Javelin was destroyed you had to wait until a team mate did repair you. You had no chance to switch to their view seeing them in action. I believe that is something they will change in the final game - cause if there is really action ongoing it could last a few minutes till they can safely approach and repairing your Javelin. I also felt the grouping a little bit too complicated, inviting team mates and start action. Would love to do that on the map or having better and faster options to do that. I believe this function is entirely reworked in the final game, cant imagine this stays the way it was. Yeah the final boss was like a big bug/spider and took some rounds to beat it up - not too complicated at all - there was the middle "room" which was way more challenging as there you had enemies nearly everywhere around you + snipers with deadly hit capability.

Anyway now i have to wait for the final release. Not everything was good in the demo - but hey it was a demo. I am looking forward for a good game that offers some hours of game play aside to Destiny.

PS: As far as i know they dont want to have micro transactions in the game - and actually everyone should be able to get the gear by playing - although they surely will offer possibilities to buy stuff. They just have to balance that when buying in game gear this is no advantage to other players and mostly remains style and look of the Javelin and not power and performance gear. Well - we will see.

I personally wouldnt compare the classes to the ones from Destiny.

In my eyes the classes in Destiny feel very similar. The main differences are their super abilities and how jumping works.

In Anthem switching from the Ranger to the Storm instantly got me killed multiple times within seconds until I noticed that Storm takes significantly more damage when standing on the ground instead of floating in the air. That is a totally different gameplay. Also the way how the Storm casts elementary damage is a huge difference to the Ranger class.

I think Anthems biggest strength is the diversity of the 4 classes. They feel unique and require to play totally different.

I also can not get rid of the feeling that loadouts play a very important role in Anthem. You have to decide which abilities you want to combine... which abilities actually fit together in order to cause combo damage and probably also how to play out these abilities in a team (as you can detonate a combo that was primed by your teammate).

In the demo I tried out many different things... many which did not work well. In one of the vids above you can see that I was fighting a few NPCs in a dungeon and actually didnt do much damage against the shielded enemies. A clear case of a totally messed up loadout. It takes a bit longer to learn about the weaknesses of the enemies and which loadouts work best.

In Destiny you didnt need to think about such issues... you were able to kill almost everything with ease no matter which crappy gun you took into a fight. The loadouts only decided about how long such a fight would take. You could spend a few mins on a boss fight (e.g. Riven in the last wish raid) or kill that boss within a few seconds if you took the right guns. The result always was the same... its just a difference in how long it took to reach that result.

I think in Anthem you mess up a fight completely.

You are absolutely right with the repair stuff.

Once you got killed your team does not get a clear enough information about your status.

It is great that you have this "wall hack" where you can see all members of your team even through walls and stones and it is great that there is a hard to overlook red icon on killed team members. But you only notice that when you really look into that direction. When you are busy fighting enemies and dont see that icon because it is behind you might not notice that your entire team got killed and you are the last one fighting.

In Destiny you have an audio message indicating that someone is down. Anthem needs that aswell.

But putting that aside its not much different aside from the fact that you can not respawn at all.

In destiny you are locked out from respawn for half a minute and can even be repaired after 15 secs. In Anthem you can not respawn at all and might have to watch your team getting killed in the meantime. Maybe that makes teamplay even more important but some audio feedback at least would help.

I am not sure about grouping at all. I played alone (i dont have friends on Origin launcher... I never used Origin before). However, the matchmaking was a positive surprise. It was MUCH faster than in Destiny... and also always put players of equal levels together. I never was put into a team with members that were more than 1 level above or below me. That is positive.

In Destiny as level 50 players you can end up in an Iron Banner match with lvl20 players and since level advantages are meanwhile active in IB you are doomed to lose the match. Match making in Destiny 2 sucks... there is no different way to say it... it sucks. Solo players get put into matches against 4-6 clan players (which meanwhile is the default result when you start a match solo) or you get put into already running matches which are declared lost within 30 seconds after you joined or you end up on the map as only team member. And then there are the many activities which dont even have match making.... where you have to go to an app or alt+tab to a lfg website to find players (I hate that).

Matchmaking in Anthem simply worked for the activities available in the demo. A satisfying experience.

Not so satisfying are the loading screens when you entered a dungeon or left it again. But to be fair... in Destiny when you switch from one map to another you also have loading screens (they are animated and therefore feel a bit better) but its not different.

The microtransactions could be a problem... or maybe not.

The problem is that people have spread leaks that might be true or maybe not.

20$ for an armor set is maybe a bit much. You for sure are able to earn it in the game the question is how difficult it might be.

In my eyes that pricetag discussion that is currently running is based on way too many unknown factors.

It is unclear if the 20$ is even correct. That is something we only will see when the game is released.

Is 20$ too much? Maybe... maybe not.

IF the game has only very few of these armor sets then 20$ in my eyes is not too much. Why? Because people which purchase these items finance the next DLC. It is a voluntary purchase and when the game is not full of armor options a 20$ purchase is actually not bad.

In my eyes... the more armor sets exist the lower the price tag has to be because then much more players are willing to invest into the game. The only thing that matters is that at the end of the season enough money has been earned to finance the next seasons. The pricetag has to be a variable that needs to scale on the amount of content available.

"But its 60$ game already". That is true... and for your 60$ you get a nice game... future content costs extra.

If you have bought Destiny 2 when it was released and the DLCs of year 1 (or the Season pass in which these DLCs were included), then the Forsaken Update and the annual pass of year 2, you have paid ~150$ for Destiny 2 for the content of the first 2 years.

That is a hefty pricetag for a game especially if you consider that you did not even have the option to skip a DLC. In Destiny you are forced to buy every DLC if you want to experience the latest content of the game. The option not to buy the Curse of Osiris DLC does not even exist for you if you want to play Forsaken content.

In Anthem you pay once for the main game... and then all future updates and content are free with the exceptions of cosmetic armors. You might end up paying 60$ for the main game and then receive new content every year for free without any additional payments. Paying 20$ voluntarily for an armor set somehow doesnt look that bad anymore if you consider the forced pricetags on other games.

As you said, buying stuff keeps the staff paid and the server running...There have to be supporters and as soon you can get all that gear by playing or just have an outfit that just changes style than i support this kind of financing.

Yeah, and thats why i make my decision to buy the game depending on how the ingame economy is balanced.

I tested the demo to see if the gameplay is enjoyable so one deciding factor is done.

The reported bugs from the VIP demo were mostly fixed 1 week later in the public demo... thats a good thing.

The lack of content in the beginning doesnt bother me that much actually since I have to work on the new CF update anyways and there is still Destiny (eventhough I am pretty disappointed by the latest content.... or lack of content).

Quote from Huor

Well I tried the Anthem VIP and public demo already too. The VIP demo had a lame bug that caused the players to join any activity - as far as i have read numerous players were affected and in most cases the PS players hung in the loading screen. The workaround to close the application and then restart and joining your previous session worked so far, but yeah not a nice feeling. But they solved this nasty bug for the public demo the last weekend.

I had the opportunity to test 3 of the 4 available Javelins; the Storm, Interceptor and Ranger. Haven't tried the Colossus.

The Strom Javelin is a bit like the Warlord in Destiny, the Interceptor gets close the Hunter in Destiny and the Ranger is a mix of both - there is not a real comparison as character in Destiny. The Colossus is like the Titan. Apart from the nasty bug i really enjoyed this new game. The graphic was quite OK - surely not what you expect on an game fair. The sound and the feeling is really good, when you control your Javelin through the map. The feedback is also good that you get, so flying around is really easy to learn - aside from this the most have the capability with long jumps and a bit of floating. I pre-ordered the game already in December (my own xMas gift :)).

The Stronghold is the community hub - like the Tower in Destiny. But steering around is really something they have to improve - although it must not feel the same in Destiny - but its way too slow and i feel its relative big. A lot of rooms were locked or seemed to be locked. I have no idea if they will be released for the final release. The available strike was really funny and challenging - i tried it several times in hard mode and yeah provided a lot of fun. What i didnt like is the fact that whenever you're shot down and your Javelin was destroyed you had to wait until a team mate did repair you. You had no chance to switch to their view seeing them in action. I believe that is something they will change in the final game - cause if there is really action ongoing it could last a few minutes till they can safely approach and repairing your Javelin. I also felt the grouping a little bit too complicated, inviting team mates and start action. Would love to do that on the map or having better and faster options to do that. I believe this function is entirely reworked in the final game, cant imagine this stays the way it was. Yeah the final boss was like a big bug/spider and took some rounds to beat it up - not too complicated at all - there was the middle "room" which was way more challenging as there you had enemies nearly everywhere around you + snipers with deadly hit capability.

Anyway now i have to wait for the final release. Not everything was good in the demo - but hey it was a demo. I am looking forward for a good game that offers some hours of game play aside to Destiny.

PS: As far as i know they dont want to have micro transactions in the game - and actually everyone should be able to get the gear by playing - although they surely will offer possibilities to buy stuff. They just have to balance that when buying in game gear this is no advantage to other players and mostly remains style and look of the Javelin and not power and performance gear. Well - we will see.

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btw. Console or PC version?

How was the performance for you?