Ananta has always been a game that we’ve been following ever since we saw its first-ever trailer. It boggles the mind how a game like this is slated to launch for consoles, pc, and mobile. At this year’s Tokyo Game Show, we were finally able to get to try the game for ourselves, and while it was just a short demo, I’m happy to tell you that this game just blew us away. Here are our Ananta First Impressions.
I basically got to experience two types of gameplay with Ananta. One was more story-driven, and the other was more centered on its open-world experience.
In story mode, I got to play as a guy called Captain who had some powers that could be compared to how Marvel’s Spider-Man depicted their titular hero. Combat felt great, as while you could say that the controls aren’t that complicated, the gameplay did feel surprising and interesting. My character would fight with fists and his powers, but I found myself picking up their weapons and being able to equip them for combat, and I could also toss the weapons aside through a radial menu, get another weapon, and then attack in a different way. This made combat look so visually fresh as I found myself looking intently at how the battle animations would play out as I tried various combos.
A car chase scene soon followed, and while I have seen a lot of similar scenes play out, I was very impressed with how the game allowed me to shoot at the wheels of enemy vehicles, which caused them to spin out and crash. Yes, I understand that this is very basic to some, but I honestly didn’t expect this kind of detail to be part of a game — given how ambitious the game was already looking, I was half expecting that this type of gameplay detail was going to be overlooked.
Up next, I was able to do the game’s open world mode, and while I did have fun with Captain, I saw that I had the option to change characters, which I did. The camera then zoomed out, shifted to another part of the city, and zoomed in to where my next character, Taffy, was shown lazing about but getting ambushed with a call on her phone that pressured her to get to work. I then stopped a random car (as a nice added detail, I didn’t just drag out civilians out of their car, Taffy would show her badge and commandeer the vehicle, which the civilian would be more okay with. What followed were a few missions of me taking up some random delivery jobs, with one of them being really memorable and involved me transporting a coffin that housed a vampire… which would constantly throw up at the back due to my driving.
Vehicle gameplay felt good and easy to learn, and what I do really like about the game is how glorious their radio station tracks were. It really set the vibes for this game, and I felt so pulled in to the game that I finished my session just wanting to play more and more!
As you can probably see, Ananta seems to take heavy inspiration from many gaming titles, such as GTA5 and Marvel’s Spider-Man, and while some can criticize the game for this, it still does make me wonder how an anime GTA game has never been done before. It just seems to make so much sense. There are also reports that Ananta will not have their characters be part of a gacha system, which also makes me wonder how the monetization of Ananta will be in the future.
One thing is for certain, though, if the team is able to successfully launch Ananta, they may be sitting on a gold mine of opportunity, especially in terms of how the game can potentially be received in the Philippines. It wasn’t too long ago that net cafes were filled with people playing GTA games, so there is a chance that Ananta can expect a huge number of Filipino players to immediately try their game out and be enamored with it as I have.
As of now, there’s not much information about Ananta’s release date. However, after being able to play the game, our Ananta First Impressions are that of much excitement and anticipation.