HoYoverse has announced its newest entry in the Honkai series with Honkai: Nexus Anima, a creature collecting strategy game coming to PC and iOS. Eager players can sign up to be among the first to try Honkai: Nexus Anima with the first closed beta test. Players will need to create a HoYoverse account to register and play.
We don’t know much about the new game, and even the press release plays coy with details.
Players are “plane-hopping travelers” who embark on an adventure across various worlds. This looks like the first HoYoverse game where players can create their own custom avatar, which is nifty.
They encounter creatures called Anima, and engage in Nexus Battles. Shown briefly in the new In-game footage trailer (below), Nexus Battles look more like tactical Auto Battlers than turn-based RPG (and never once is the game referred to as an RPG), but with a whole party of Anima versus many enemies.
Although part of the Honkai series (such as Honkai Star Rail), the world and art look very similar to HoYo’s biggest game, Genshin Impact, with a free roaming world and bright colors.
The Anima you befriend accompany you during travels, and many can serve as mounts on land, and in the air. The creature designs are very Pokémon-like, and based on real-world animals and objects. I particularly love the stretchy avocado in a hat!
HoYoverse specializes in developing and maintaining free-to-play, highly produced, live service gacha games, including their most recent release, Zenless Zone Zero (which I quite liked). We don’t yet know how the gacha system will manifest with the creature collector.
The first closed beta test for Honkai: Nexus Anima, the Nexus Bond Test, is only available on PC and iOS mobile devices. Registration is open now through September 12, and will include a data wipe.
