If you’re like me, there’s a chance you’ve been seeing Aniimo all over your YouTube recommendations over the last year or so. That’s because this new creature-catching game has been in and out of closed betas, and many, many people have dropped guides leading up to the game’s full release. Well, Aniimo is now officially out, and everyone can finally get their hands on it. While it personally won’t be taking me away from my favourite creature-catching games, there’s a lot of really interesting ideas here.
Aniimo starts with you taking on the role of a researcher in the land of Idyll. Basically, you are tasked with documenting and researching every Aniimo you come across to better understand them. Of course, there are bad guys and some conflict, but that’s to be expected. Honestly, the story hasn’t really hooked me in at all; it’s pretty typical stuff you’d see in other games of the genre. But you don’t really play games like this for the story, let’s be real.
It’s also a free-to-play live service game, so they’ll likely expand the story for a few years if they keep supporting it. Obviously, it’s way too soon to comment on the game’s future content, but that is always the case with a new live service game. It was also once a gacha game, and playtesters hated it, so they removed that feature a few months back at players’ request. It’s pretty cool to see developers adjust the game on the fly to keep players happy.
Aniimo doesn’t play quite like Pokémon or its contemporaries. Obviously, it has a ton of similarities that are impossible to miss, but it also has a ton of unique stuff that keeps it in its own lane. One of the game’s most ambitious ideas is its Twine system. Typically, when you catch a creature in any game, you fight alongside it and tell it what moves to use. Twining with your Aniimo completely changes that formula in a very unique way. Twining with an Aniimo lets you become the creature and fight as it, rather than next to it. Aniimo does away with the turn-based battle system of its inspirations and decides to lean more into an action style similar to Genshin Impact.
You always have access to your entire Aniimo catalogue; however, you’re only able to use four of them at a time. What’s interesting is that there are five different roles in combat: DPS, Break, Healer, Support, Regen – meaning you can only ever have coverage for four of them, which makes team building quite interesting. DPS, Healer, and Support are all pretty straightforward. Break acts as a poise breaker and allows you to catch Aniimo more easily. Aniimo also take more damage if you break their poise, so they open up damage opportunities for the DPS. In order to use abilities during combat, you need EP (energy points), and Regen Aniimo gain back lost EP. So it’s always good to have one on your team. Personally, I found a lot of success in DPS, Break, Support and Regen team comps, so it’ll be interesting to see where the meta lands. There’s also an elemental type system, but it’s far too early for me personally to figure out which type is best.
You can fight alongside your Aniimo in auto-battles, but it’s a very different, much simpler approach. You throw these energy cubes at enemies while you watch your companions do most of the heavy lifting. To play the game entirely like this is absolutely not how it is meant to be played, and I’m sure somebody on YouTube will upload a playthrough strictly with auto-battles, but I digress. Doing most of your traversal by playing as each creature isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it just doesn’t align with my tastes in games like this. I also prefer turn-based combat in my RPGs, so maybe that’s just a me problem.
While catching Aniimo is a lot of fun, and honestly what draws me to the game most, I’m just not crazy about the overall look of the Aniimo themselves. There is a big disconnect aesthetically between all of the creatures, and if you told me there were creatures here from different IPs, I wouldn’t doubt you. It might be a little weird to bring up The Simpsons here, but I know they have certain rules all Simpsons characters must abide by to keep the overall aesthetic consistent. While this is a creature-catching game and not an animated sitcom, the point stands. Pokémon doesn’t have this issue and there are over 1,000 of those things, so I just hope that if Aniimo adds new creatures (which they almost certainly will) they stick to a similar aesthetic/vibe so that way the aesthetic can appear more uniform and intentional. I think there are some really great designs here, but they are few and far between for me.
Another major issue for me is just how many currency types there are. If you go to the AniDex, which is a fan-made Aniimo database, you can check out the items tab and filter “currency” and see that there are whopping 34 different types of currency. I’ve played many gacha games, and even that number blows my mind. Aniimo feels like a mobile gacha game that had its gacha elements taken out, but they forgot the other weird mobile game stuff. Finding out what your next focus should be can be very difficult when the game does a really poor job explaining things to you. There’s always information being thrown at you, different currencies ending up in your wallet – it’s impossible to keep up with unless you have a detailed guide or a spreadsheet.
I think Aniimo is very easy to recommend as it is a free game. It has microtransactions, but it’s only for cosmetic items, and it doesn’t appear to have any major predatory practices… yet. I truly think there is a ton of joy to be found here, and I’m sure people will look at the creature design and be blown away. Just because this game doesn’t exactly align with my tastes doesn’t mean it won’t align with yours. As I’m writing this sentence, there are a cool 96,812 players online, so the game is clearly resonating with people! I’m very curious to see where Aniimo winds up a year from now. Something tells me this could be the next Palworld, but I really don’t think it’ll be dethroning Pokémon anytime soon.
