Anthem First Impressions - Before you buy

[Skid_Marc_]

For anyone considering picking this game up tomorrow, just some information to note;

So far in our (very limited) findings, it appears that a lot of our issues could be connected to memory/storage speed. I've looked at a few tickets, and EA's ticket form includes requesting CPU, GPU, and RAM information, but it doesn't ask for the storage device, which seems to be quite important.

@Brainling , @Kenadian, and I have had very few issues with the game, and we're all playing off of NVMe or SATA Solid State Drive's. JMart thought he was playing off an SSD when dealing with several issues throughout the demo and first weekend of gameplay, but it turns out he had his hard drives confused and was running them off an Hard Disc Drive. He switched to his SSD and has experienced few issues since (the game is far from bug free, but I'll address the bugs I've encountered so far, below.)

To give you an idea of HDD, SATA SSD, and NVMe SSD differences;
My Western Digital "Black" HDD has a read speed of 160-170 MB/s
My Samsung 860 Evo SATA SSD has a read speed of ~550 MB/s
My Samsung 970 EVO NVMe SSD has a read speed of ~3500 MB/s

Obviously, I'm not a benchmark or troubleshooter, and I know that sythetic bencharks don't translate perfectly to real-world applications (Matt and Ken on their NVMe's don't load in 7x faster than JMart and I), but there really seems to be a huge bottleneck if some of your squad is running on SSD's and some are running on HDD's. The people on SSD's get in and have to wait while the people on HDD's load, and sometimes they never finish loading. Often the HDD user(s) will get stuck in the load screen, or even crash back to the desktop.

I think it helps that we're in a community and have been squad-playing together and know each other's specs, while people who are playing by themselves, and are just loading into public events with randoms are really suffering and left clueless to what the issue could be.

Or maybe it's just been a coincidence that that is how it's gone down so far for us. Again, I can't guarantee anything, I can only HIGHLY recommend you install this game on some sort of Solid State Drive, as I'd recommend with any online game, at this point.


Just listing some other bugs that I've encountered so far;
Talking to Max for the first time in the bar, certain dialog trees resulted in crashes, which meant I was forced to pick very specific answers. I'm not good at those memory games, so trying to remember which dialog options I could and could not pick was annoying. Should have just written them down and saved myself some frustrating mis-clicks. So far, it's only been with Max, and only the first two times I talked to her.

Missions not ending has occurred a couple times for Ken and I. You'll reach the end point and it won't go away. The first time we had it, the host just needed to go to their map and "Force Respawn". On reload it just ended the mission and took us to the Mission Success screen. The second time it happened was in the middle of a mission with Deb. We all "Force Respawned" and then Deb crashed out, and the rest of us were able to continue through the cutscene without issue.

I've had a total of two or three game crashes or server disconnects in ~15 hours in the game so far, not including the Max dialog tree or my internet crapping out Tuesday night, and it just came back, so I haven't had a chance to test the game since the last update.


I also haven't been able to watch many of the reviews that I've wanted to watch for this game, especially that of Skill-Up Gaming, as most of them have spoilers in their reviews which are kind of frustrating. I get that these kinds of games are almost all about the end-game for most people, but it sucks, as someone who ISN'T just here for the end game, that game reviewers are just blowing past the story. I think a lot of reviewers are of the opinion that the story just doesn't matter, but I haven't felt that yet. I'm actually still really intrigued by the stories so far, but even more, I'm loving the varied combat.

Ken and I were discussing how we were watching each other play, Ken playing "Storm" and I playing "Colossus", and how jealous we were about the other's play style. I wished I could fly around for as long as Ken could, and Ken wished he could withstand the damage that I could take, but the Javelins don't allow for it. And, for my part, I don't think I'd be able to pull off Ken's style of gameplay as well as he does it anyways. It's a very nimble and fluid Javelin to play, and I'm having way more fun bashing brains, and shooting flame throwers, and I love that that dynamic exists! This is the first game that I've ever played that has drawn that class-line so clearly beyond just "...I suck, eveyone else is good..."

Also, there was some confusion about how much your non-essential dialog choices matter. Originally I was told they mean nothing, but that is incredibly misleading. It may not have any effect on the story missions, but it does change how your future interactions with a character plays out. Some of them may not be night and day, or even change much of anything, but some of them do seem to change actions in both those peoples life and makes little changes around the fort. Again, I'm not spoiling anything, and I don't want anyone to spoil it for me... They're not on the same level as choices in Telltale games, or Fallout 3 (only Fallout game I can comment on), but to say that they don't matter isn't really fair, in my opinion, either.


My biggest issue with this game so far, something that I think is beyond getting fixed in a patch, is the down time between missions. JMart and I are about as close as possible to being lined up story wise, Deb is behind, and Matt and Ken are ahead.

This means that someone is always forced to go back in their story to repeat a mission, or jump ahead in their story and have bits of the mission spoiled. The best example was at the end of Tuesday night, when I did a mission with Ken and JMart, returned to Fort Tarsis, and talked to the person that gave me that mission and I repeated it. I could, and should, have talked to that person before we started the mission, but I didn't want to keep the party waiting for me while I went around the fort talking to people. If you're working on your missions, then you're opening new dialog, but if your party has already done the mission, they haven't opened any new dialog, and therefore they have nothing to do but to check the Forge, or the Store, and wait for you to talk and progress the story.

There is just this incessant pressure to either keep up, drop back and help someone catch up, or give up on your own story and jump ahead to someone elses story, just so that you can keep playing with someone. The Division had the same problem, where you were always going back and completely the lowest person's missions, but at least it was seemless. They could start a cutscene while you were outside wiping out a squad of gangsters, or LMB, and when their cutscene was over, you could move on. However, Anthem has this grueling down time. The gameplay is fun, and so far I enjoy repeating missions, but I completely understand why that gets boring for some people and they just move on.

Last thing, I'll go ahead and mention the Tombs that everyone is complaining about. I didn't mind the tomb grind because we did them as a squad, and there are certain QoL changes coming that will make them even easier, but I don't really feel they contributed to the story AT ALL, and the game doesn't do a good job of explaining what each one is. Bottom line, I think it was an okay "mission", and I think people are just using it to pile on to the game, but there is NO WAY it should have ever been a main mission, required to advance the plot. The grind just doesn't make sense.

 

[Kenadian]

Great write up @Skid_Marc_, very informative.

Moved to it's own topic as I don't want it lost within a larger and less focused discussion.

 

[ElektroVodka]

Smart move, this might actually be a proper topic to get some traffic our way.

 

[Kenadian]

I'd echo pretty much everything @Skid_Marc_ stated, however I'd like to add a few things because in my personal opinion the game is worth it.

This isn't to say I recommend the game to everyone but would recommend it to people who played games such as Warframe or even The Division and felt them lacking in some regard.

From a purely gameplay perspective, this game is very solid and quite polished. Yes there are some rough edges but in my opinion this is a very solid entry in Bioware's repertoire.

The actual combat is some of the best I've experienced in any Coop shooter to date. It is exceptionally well done, fluid and offers nearly unlimited potential, at least in open areas.

Weapon choices, buffs, powers, ultimates, etc., all have trade offs to make them balanced and are very well thought out.

The Class structure of Javelins is exceptional and also well thought out. @Skid_Marc_ did a much better job in flushing this out than I can do but I'd like to add one thought. Just picking a Javelin isn't always enough, you need to set it up in such a way as to compliment your Teams strengths.

As an example, I had an ability where I could freeze large targets in place drastically increasing the damage/shot they take, accelerating the kill. @Skid_Marc_ had some type of 00ber blow torch or flame thrower he was tanking with and would approach a frozen target and fucking thaw it out thus negating my power.

We laughed about it as there was more than enough fire power in our Squad to take care of it but it stands as an example of how you can hamper your Squads abilities without thinking it through.

Of course nothing personal @Skid_Marc_, it's funnier than hell. I just use it as an example of how well this game though stuff like this out and how much it forces you to work as a Team.

Also, I've NEVER seen a game where if a Squad-mate is down multiple Squad members flock to him/her to get off a revive. One member can make a HUGE difference so you need everyone up and killing.

From a Coop play, this game is simply amazing and I'd say second to none.

Oh and the sounds in this game are pretty wow. The sounds are good overall but exceptional at times. I've experienced numerous moments where I got goose flesh from a sound in Anthem.

...

As @Skid_Marc_ alluded to, Anthem has its share of problems as well.

Load times are borderline ridiculous and are almost certainly influenced by hardware of one computer in your Squad. Matchmaking in Freeplay is also painful and in my opinion, not really presented in a manner that compels strangers to work together.

To date I've yet to enter Freeplay and actually remain as a cohesive unit with pubbies. Someone always flies off and does something else or leaves entirely; yes there are people out there worse than me.

Also, at the Freeplay level I've seen more people just select to Respawn rather than wait for Revive which sucks as Reviving a minimum amount of Javelins is part of a Monthly Quota. To actually complete this, I had to find a mission with AI Javelins and revive them as I could not do it in Freeplay with strangers.

As for the story, it's good at points but I'm not terribly enamored with it so far. It's ok at best but so far pretty forgettable. Of all the characters I've met, I've one I simply don't care about for every one I do.

It's not because they're not likable because that would be fine. In this regard I think I've been spoiled by The Witcher 3 so many of the characters in Anthem come across wooden in comparison.

Dialogue options also seem to run out quite quickly on at least a few characters which was off putting. Maybe they pick up later but so far I've one that simply repeats the same thing over and over and another who I "bonded with" only to be persecuted in the very next interaction.

Not the best continuity.

Having said that, something has happened which has made it more interesting for me which I'm interested to see how it plays out. Maybe it's this that disrupted my warm and fuzzies with the aforementioned NPC but how it was presented just didn't gel even if this is the case.

There are other issues like the Menu and how clunky and convoluted it is. The Menu system flat out sucks in it's current form and at Level 20 I don't feel I should still be confused by it. It still reports me to my Team as a Level 3 or Power 3 Ranger which is silly.

There's also a bug that if you launch the game in Offline Mode in Origin, you simply cannot invite Members to your Squad. Yes you can send the invite but no one will ever see it. The only fix I've found is you need to close the game and Origin. Then relaunch Origin, change your status to Online and relaunch Anthem.

This is a silly bug and it just shouldn't exist.

 

[Kenadian]

FFS, site erroring so Conclusion as follows...

I really enjoy Anthem and can see myself getting close to 100 hours out of it before I tire, maybe more. Coop is amazing and a blast if you don't have to pay attention to story.

What detracts from Coop is it's near impossible to focus on story as @Skid_Marc_ alluded to. You're either ahead or behind Squad mates so you either replay missions perhaps multiple times or get stuck playing ahead potentially ruining your own personal storied experience.

This is why I've been playing Story missions solo as I'd much rather replay a lower level than introduce plot changes to a lower level player who has no context.

Lastly, at least for me, there's a distinct air of uncertainty about the future of Anthem. I worry that if Anthem doesn't do well then it may be the last we see of yet another talented Developer ground to bits in the EA Corporate mill.

I've yet to truly experience EA's "Games as a service" moniker in any meaningful way other than swift drops in support for much of my library. To date the best game published by EA I've gotten clear value from is Battlefield 3 and that games netcode was shit.

Battlefield 4 was plagued with sound issues for me nearly the entire first year. Once they introduced the CTE things improved, all be it slowly, and too late given the price of Premium.

Star Wars x 2 sucked.

BF1 drove me nuts with "dirigibles" and that ridiculous charge mechanic where you could bayonet charge through a hail of bullets.

Now I like Anthem enough to put a lot of time into it and Apex Legends is a lot of fun. Not to mention BFV is my favorite Battlefield of all time so there is hope. Maybe we're seeing an upturn in actually putting the Customer first but given history I remain skeptical which I hate being.

A very large part of me wonders how long we'll see Anthem last and whether or not the potential in the game is ever truly delivered.

Not the firmest of footing.

Ultimately I think it boils down to the following:

1. If you watched Anthem develop and were excited about its release then there is likely enough in here for you to see value.
2. If you are purchasing Anthem site unseen and because your friends are playing it you may or may not see value in the title.

 

[Kenadian]

A quick update, last night our gameplay started off a bit slow but sped up over the course of the night. By the time it was down to myself and @Skid_Marc_, we were completing tasks, checking loot in the forge, and then back out in the world.

It was great fun and is where Anthem truly shines.

The idea of Bioware allowing us to go out in the world and keep busy while the remainder of the Squad does mission critical dialogues or what have you, would be of huge benefit to the game.

So far the only real big flaw in this game is the constant waiting around nonsense. If they can address this one issue then Anthem would be awesome. This is the most excited I've eer been about getting back into the game!

 

[Brainling]

The moment to moment game play in Anthem is really fun...but everything around that moment to moment game play can be rough. I think Fort Tarsis in general is bad. I don't like that I have to go back to town to see my loot. And the disjointed feel of having to wait for party members to talk to people before we can head back out is very jarring. BioWare needs to put a lot of work in to the infrastructure around the core game play. It's two areas where The Division and Destiny, the two games this will be forever compared to, far exceed it. Destiny especially is a much, much smoother experience when playing with friends.

That said, I'm enjoying Anthem and will stick with it for a while. I'm hoping the day one patch is a sign of BioWare's ability and commitment to keep working on the game.

 

[Skid_Marc_]

This is the most excited I've eer been about getting back into the game!

<3