Anima: Beyond Fantasy RPG

[OrionRising]

Love the card game, love the idea, but HOLY STICKER SHOCK!

By comparison, the 320-page D&D 4e Player's Handbook retails for $34.95. I think that this is going to hurt sales a bit for Fantasy Flight. I know that I can't afford to buy this game, and I've been looking forward to it for a long time.

[Randolph Harris]

never played the card game or the miniature game, but i hope this book will be cool. ive been waiting on this book for over a year now.... BTW go to amazon.com, i got my book on preorder for only 37$. still alot but i hope the book is great.

[LazarusLeonidas]

If anyone wants a reference concerning this RPG-verse, it's simple enough. If you've played any of the FF games (more specific the ones that are medieval but with a touch of steam punk tech.) Also any of the Suikoden games are a great visual reference in terms of how the world functions.

If played two different campaigns. One pre-scripted and the other more free form. The scripted one was written by Fantasy flight and is pretty straight forward. The flexibility truly depends on the GM. Our group was a fighter/summoner, a monk fighter, a psychic melee fighter and myself a mage (necromancer "non evil").

Magic for me was the aspect I wanted to explore, since i don't really enjoy it in the other settings as a player. And it was highly different and efficient defensively and offensively. And since I was playing a mage, the trick was to never really show i was casting a spell, or any of my necromantic ones. In that world, mages are few and there isn't a school of magic per se.

Being a mage wasn't extreme in the sense i couldn't cast what I wanted, only that normal people aren't used to see spells that change reality in a drastic way. But all in all the customizing of all the character templates is very extensive. You can be a fighter/mage and still be a very good fighter without any major drawbacks.

There are merits and flaws that greatly affect your character creation and the skills are widely ranged. Be careful and plan ahead, because leveling up isn't as fast paced as other settings. It's a percentage based game for skills and combat. And trust me combat is more deadly then I've seen in D&D 3.5 .

As for the setting, amazing and a lot of the world is still being explored. Not everything is known by the players in regards to history, ecology and fantasy creatures. Normal people don't interact a lot with it as D&D does. It's more supernatural that way and less "that's an undead. Undeads are vulnerable to healing spells, and etc."

Everything is a true discovery. So depending on your GM, it can be an FF game with RPG rules. Or it can be a true foreign experience for gamers and fill that little niche of a new world with a lot to offer.

And the art is so great!!!

[venzuan]

OrionRising wrote:

Love the card game, love the idea, but HOLY STICKER SHOCK!

By comparison, the 320-page D&D 4e Player's Handbook retails for $34.95. I think that this is going to hurt sales a bit for Fantasy Flight. I know that I can't afford to buy this game, and I've been looking forward to it for a long time.

the game has been developed in Spain.

Here in Spain retail price for Anima in publisher web store is 39.95€ its about 55€ with todays currency prices.
You should add the expenses for translating and locating the game.
And the edition you get is the revised one, it corrects bugs and adds the first addon published in Spain with added monsters, spells, merits flaws and a new system to gain merits or lose flaws instead of gaining stat points on level rise-ups.

Its a good deal. You won`t need any other book on a long time, with D&D you need other books before start playing.

[Lazaro]

LazarusLeonidas wrote:

And the art is so great!!!

I'm a HUGE fan of Wen-M's art! If you haven't seen it check his deviantart page.

But still 54+ dollars is overkill for me. Heck I have(had) problems paying from my paizo subs. Maybe for Christmas, or my birthday.

[etharos]

it depends on what you want : There's no need for a DM guide (it's included) and there are rules for creating monsters and a bestiary included.
I find it not that expensive for a complete game. Be warned though that the rules are closer to rolemaster than to D&D 3.5 (percentiles, skills etc...)

[fray]

Just picked this up at BORDERS yesterday with my 40% coupon. :)

I'll be reading it for a while... it sure is pretty too.

[LazarusLeonidas]

I'm registered in deviant art and I've enjoyed all of wen-M's artwork. I love it and have found his vision for fantasy RPG breathtaking. Everyone should see it first hand...

[Dogbert]

I could press the book against an emery for a full hour and there would still be plenty of rough edges in the system's mechanics. Any system that forces book keeping and calculator use for every other action in a combat round is a crime against gaming ergonomics.

Still, Anima has plenty of other virtues, and shows some real premise, I'm looking forward to future revisions when the system perhaps matures into something simpler and actually useable, but meanwhile the book is still worth checking for the otaku factions of the roleplaying community, who will no doubt find enough appeal in Anima as to actually brave its godawful combat system.

My recommendation for a future revision? Remove that rule of halving XP for things like not killing an enemy or being K.O'd, you're just penalizing players for not playing one-tracked-minded hack&slashers.