Something that’s lacking from the game is the ability to customize your Pilot. With each javelin having its own distinct look, it’s really fun to drop into a mission and see how all my teammates chose to design their suits. While some cosmetic items like new wear states or certain materials are tied to increasing your loyalty with different factions, this approach encourages you to play the game more and provides a sense of accomplishment once you’re able to obtain these items. Players who love to customize every little detail have a lot of tools at their disposal, with a decent pool of materials, vinyls to decorate your javelin with, and a color wheel available from the start. Hopping into your mech suit in first-person makes you genuinely feel like you’re Ironman, even though people keep calling you a Freelancer for some reason. Where Anthem truly shines is in its gameplay mechanics and javelin customization. Additionally, the game experiences frequent server crashes and is prone to not giving players rewards for completing missions. Players have reported instances where they are unable to pick up objects or revive teammates. UPDATE: Players are reporting an even higher number of performance issues in Anthem after a recent patch. Given the current abysmal length that’s required for loading into missions or even the game’s hub world, I can only imagine how much worse it must have been before.
I started playing the game at launch after installing a patch that was supposed to reduce load times. Even if Anthem was designed primarily for mid-generation consoles, it should be able to run flawlessly on any platform it’s available on, yet it doesn’t.Īnecdotes aside, there’s one problem that will bother every player, especially those playing Anthem on PC: ridiculous load times.
Although he played the game on a base PS4 and me on a Pro, I don’t think this excuses the game’s clear lack of optimization. This led to a lot of gaming sessions being understandably cut short simply out of frustration. I play mostly with my brother, who’s had his game crash multiple times, been unable to gain access to areas during missions, and in some cases received no rewards or story progression after completing a mission. While I only experienced one game crash and a few small bugs, my squadmates weren’t as lucky.
PerformanceĮven after a day-one patch that addressed several problems, Anthem still has too many performance issues for a game that was supposedly under development for six years. While BioWare has stated that this was an unintended bug that they plan to fix, all signs point towards it being a method designed to force players to either invest more time playing or purchase materials from the game’s store. UPDATE: A recent patch has affected the drop rate for Masterwork and Legendary items, making it harder for players to obtain higher-rarity materials like Masterwork and Legendary Embers. However, the store can be easily avoided should you wish never to make a single purchase.
And, if you do find yourself wanting to buy a piece of armor for one of your javelins, you’re forced to purchase the entire set instead of individual pieces, which greatly increases the cost. Right now, some items do feel overpriced, like emotes. It does have an in-game store where you can purchase crafting materials, armor, emotes, and decals for your javelin with real money, but none of these are tied to player performance and can all be purchased with in-game currency. As of now, Anthem does not feature any of the predatory micro-transactions that are known to plague EA published games. Regardless of what the result looked like, there was a portion of gamers that would instantly reject the game. This created a situation where the odds were stacked against Anthem from the start. This is understandable given EA’s track record for injecting micro-transactions into every facet of their games and BioWare’s feeble execution of Mass Effect: Andromeda. Ever since its official announcement at E3 2017, most of the discussion surrounding Anthem seemed to be more about the development studio behind it (BioWare) and the game’s publisher (EA) than the game itself.