Dave Cohen

I found this game absolutely infuriating. I gave it two stars for the part that is actually the story and the gameplay loop of the main game. But the endless interruption of pointless mini games made me want to throw my controller out the window. This may be the game a lot of you out there wanted to play, but it is not the game I wanted to play, I forced myself through about 30 hours of the game before I finally gave up and went to play dragons dogma too, which is amazing

The gameplay is decent. The combat mechanics can be fun. But the Melodramatic tedium of the story Ended up making me quit the game after about 20 hours. The dialogue is so terrible. The story is so convoluted and pointless. I just couldn’t keep playing.

I could not make myself keep watching past the first episode, the writing was lazy and predictable, the characters one sided and the action sequences were terribly choreographed and filmed making the whole thing seem like a disjointed keystone cops mishmash of stupid and poorly cut moves. The beginning of the story shows you a 5th century English village in a forest that looks like some kind of fantasy theme park setting that reflects no real forest anyone has ever seen. The characters are all dressed in perfectly clean, I mean spotless, costumes of woven cloth that is far too fine for the period and the colors are intensely vibrant. Everyone is riding horses and has steel weapons and swords. There is no level of realism at all. The average village in the assumed time period would only have a few draft horses and no commoner would be riding them around. Commoners did not have swords or weapons. Their feudal lords would not allow them to. This series is just stupid, poorly written, high school drama drivel, stamped with some flavor of Arthurian legend. Don't bother.

If you are expecting a real live service game with the potential to replay and progress for years, do not buy this game now. It isn't ready yet. If you want 30 hours of gameplay that can be pretty fun and engaging if you don't encounter the bugs and disconnects others seem to, then you might enjoy the game for a while. Just don't expect to be playing this for years...yet. Anthem is beautiful, the combat is fun, and it is amazing to fly like Iron Man and explore the world they created. The story will carry you almost to max level and if you take your time will be about 30+ hours of play time. All of this assumes that by the time you play it, that the thin storyline, the fairly common disconnections and crashes due to bugs, and extremely long load screens have not put you off. Then you will find your self ready to head on to endgame. This will involve doing the same 4 strongholds, some rather monotonous contract missions, freeplay events, and recycled story missions called Legendary Missions over and over on harder difficulties. This will be fun for a while until you are geared up with all Masterwork Weapons and Gear. Then it becomes a horrible soul crushing grind as you discover that the Legendary Weapons, Components, and Gear drop only VERY sparingly, and even when they do, you often get repeats rather than upgrades. Additionally you will discover that the harder difficultly levels that are supposed to reward you with better chances at rare loot, really don't, and there is no reason to run on that level because the return on time spent is not worthwhile. I could go on, but there really is no need. Anthem, on the face of it is a good game and could be great if they have time and resources to make it so, but I would not spend money on it now unless you are content with the first 30+ hours of game time to be the most fun and then are willing to shelve the game until Bioware pulls something together, of which I am skeptical yet hopeful. I want to keep playing this game, but I can't see the point right now. UPDATE: With the 1.4.1 patch and the addition of the Cataclysm, Anthem is much more interesting and fun. If they continue to add new content like this on a regular basis, Anthem could reach its potential and really shine.