I want to kick off with a review of one of my favorite games, Anima Beyond Fantasy, a roleplaying game of high powered heroes, anime and dark fantasy.
Advertised as a joint effort between European Authors and Asian artists, the game boasts a hefty 315 pages of excellent quality paper and beautiful illustrations that would make any Anime Otaku go out of its way to buy it and gleefully stare at the pretty pictures regardless of the arcane symbols that surround them (also known as Romaji to some cultures and the alphabet to others).
But we are not here to talk about the art, right?… no… we are here to get our hands dirty, how does this baby handle roleplaying?.
Let me start the review by stating that I own a copy of the book in spanish and a couple of books in english, the Spanish version desperately need an Editor outside the authors of the game, I’m pretty sure that to them it makes perfect sense, but the way they explain the rules is a convulted mess that only makes sense once you are familiar with the system -yeah you understand the book that’s supposed to teach the rules by knowing the rules… how self-gloating is that?)… up until that moment when I failed my sanity check and my mind snapped in two -AKA the game clicked- I felt like a retard reading a book on astrophysics. the English translation reads as if it was done by a German whose proficiency in Spanish comes from a vacation he spent in Madrid (In all fairness the original material is hard to understand for even a natural speaker as myself and as to my knowledge the English translator was going through some difficult issues at the time).
The basic system of the game reminds a lot of D20, 1d100 + attribute bonus + skill > difficulty, thats it, certain actions require an attribute check (the attributes go from 1 to infiny being the suggested starting limit a fancy 10), in those cases the player rolls a d10 aiming to roll LOWER than the attribute in questions (BTW there are eight of them, strength, dexterity, agility, constitution, power, willpower, intelligence and perception), yes kids, we are back to the roll high/roll low diatribe of AD&D, fortunately, its simple enough as to never get confusing (DAMN YOU THACO).
But wait, if I roll a 90 what happens? -you may ask if you have nothing better to do- in that case you get to reroll and add that roll to the total (much like Rolemaster and HARP), if you roll high again you get to reroll, but at each step the minimum number required to reroll goes up by one, so the first time the dice “explode” with a 90 or better, the second time with a 91 or better, the third time a 92 or better, and so on, and so on, freshly rolled characters have a cap of 319 on checks, but as they grow in power their maximum potential grows as well.
Botches?, yeah, we have those to, if you roll a 1-2-3 you may have botch, roll again and add a modifier depending on what your rolled the first time (1=+25, 2=+0, 3=-25) if you roll less then 50 then its just a normal failure, over 50 is an spectacular failure and over a 100… you might want to print a new character sheet.
If you are getting the vibe that the game is a nitpicker and takes into account every little detail… then Im doing my job right, because the game focus way too much on those little bastards… take for example active actions, you can only take as many actions as the sum of two of your attributes allows (usually that means two) and I get a -25 to all my actions for each action beyond the first, BUT attacks (never mind how many you make) are considered only one active action, you can make an extra attack for every 100 you have in your attack skill (-25 per extra attack), so a warrior with a 120 attack can make 2 attacks (one active action) and use his intimidate skill (another active action), so in the end he has -25 to his intimidate and -50 to both his attacks (-25 for each active action, and another -25 to the attacks because hes doing 2).
Wait Hortum… you said that this was one of you favorite games… why are you selling people off it?… because I´m an honest guy, and I know that the system is far from perfect… but if you put up with terrible editing and an obssesive rule system (which by the way compared to D&D 3.5 its the equivalent of RISUS) you get this in return (and I´m not talking about the horrible dub):
Not something kind of similar, no, exactly this, and how does Anima accomplish such a feat?
- The formless class system, classes are not a set of abilities, its a cost list that tells how you can spend your points to build you character, you want your warrior to cast spells, sure!, go ahead, its a expensive, but entirely possible.
- The game offers over 500 spells, a system for summoning and controlling creatures (or invoking stuff ala final fantasy), Ki Dominion (think of Exalted charm you build on your own), and psychic powers, all the systems seem pretty balanced against each other and offer the character and amplitude of choices tactical and role playing-wise. (I´ve been playing a game for the last six months and no one in the groups shows a clear advantage against any other for the first few levels).
In a nuthsell, with magic and ki you accumulate a certain amount of “energy” (zeon if its magic, ki if its… well, ki), and once you have enough, bam, off goes the ability, Psychic dont have energy pools, but if they fail their checks they get fatigued, Summoners can either summon, banish, control or bind a creature (bind means locking it inside a fetish and completly bending it to your will) all those actions cost zeon (and to bind something you have to pay a zeon upkeep cost daily), invocations are spells that use the summon skill insteas of the magic projection skill.
Each subsystem has its own set of rules, I know that’s a bother for some, but for me is a giant plus, I like the feeling of different game styles depending the class you pick (like older editions of D&D).
- Players begin as D&D characters but quickly grow in power, by level 5* they already have spells that allows to control emotions in several miles around them… the power level is very VERY high.
* Yes, its a class-level system, but instead of getting flat bonuses when you level, you get more points to spend according to the costs given by your class (plus a few extra bonuses depending on the class to favor your main strengths)
There is a setting built in the game… to be honest I only skimmed through it and found it pretty boring, the only interesting fact about it is that they based their fantasy world around christian myths and that players don’t get to play as original races but rather humans who have inherited a small part of another race´s soul.
If you are into Anime or just love over the top flashy powers, flying warriors kicking the living hell out of each other while canalizing their energies through their weapons, if you want a system where mages and psychics are as versatile and audacious in combat as your warrior, this is the system I would recommend, its very front loaded and its hard to get into it, but once you play it a couple of times the game flows beautifully.
P. D: People say that the game uses way too many tables, in truth you only need one (and that is if you are lazy like me and don’t want to memorize the formula), a calculator is highly recommended to speed things up.
P. D2: Here is the opening video for my current campaign with anima:
Hortum
