Anode Heart

This is a mixed review. You may love it or hate it. Please read on to learn more about the game and if you'll like it. Positives: * The characters are memorable and fun. * The monster designs are cute. * The area designs are unique. Especially Memory Meadow. If there's one "best" thing about the game, it's Memory Meadow. * The concept of "TP" (time points) is cool. It determines when your turn is over, and therefore, makes you plan which moves you'll use based on how much time they take. * Lots of content! Some of it is very easy to miss, so don't go too fast with the story! * The story is intriguing and so I really wanted to finish the game. More on that in the next section. Negatives: * MOUNT NEXUS. I bought the game a few months ago and had to put it down when I hit the endgame. It felt completely impossible, and extremely UNFUN. I picked it up again recently with a new playthrough, and was able to complete the story. However, this area was still unfun. Climbing 10 levels of the tower? Easy. Everything after that? Not enjoyable. Too difficult for certain types of gamers. I got sooooo lost in the final subnet area. Too much potential for "Oh, you didn't do X and Y and Z? Time to start a new game and try again!" I did, months later, but I think most casual gamers who get stonewalled here are going to uninstall the game. * "Feels bad" mechanics. Specifically, rebooting and breeding. Both of these are essential to the game (I didn't do breeding on my stonewalled playthrough... more on that in another bullet point). Rebooting resets your tama's level to 1, making you feel like you're starting over with them. And you have to do this over and over in order to increase the level cap and progress. Breeding deletes two of your tama to create a new level 1 tama. You have to do this very strategically if you want any chance in the end game (see previous bullet point). If you're familiar with this mechanic from other games (I was not), you'll be fine. * Some things are simply not explained or not well explained. I still don't quite understand breeding, or why I am being forced to delete two tama to make a potentially slightly stronger tama after I re-level it. The tama breeding is kind of explained, but only after you play around with it and lose all your potential because you have no clue what's going on. Feels bad. A lot of the combat stuff is never explained. You just have to hope it shows up in the INFO menu in combat (sometimes it doesn't). If I had to turn this all into constructive feedback, I would recommend making the "school" happen earlier, and maybe have more books to read with this info. Target Audience: * Min-maxers. If you don't know what this is, this game might not be for you. If you enjoy spreadsheets to optimize teams and doing a bunch of research before even starting the game, you'll love this. * Hardcore gamers. This game is difficult. If you want a challenge, play this game. * Casual gamers will enjoy monster collecting and the story, but will likely rage quit at Mount Nexus. In summary, this game was really fun up until Mount Nexus. Having to restart the game to know what is coming and still not being prepared for it? Not great. But it is redeemed by finishing the story and finally beating the game.

Yes yes this looks like a cute little digimon game in spirit. In reality this is a frustration simulator only an insane person can enjoy. But honestly HOLY ♥♥♥♥. What the hell was the developer thinking here? So much tedium. Why are certain encounters unrecruitable just for being THE FIRST encounter with this mon? The restriction makes no sense if I can then capture it just 3 meters away in the same area. Atleast make me not waste my entire inventory on them with no reaction? Just tell me "unrecruitable", grey out the gift option and leave it at that. Why do I have limited item space and have to use a bank. Why are all of the upgrades also clogging up my inventory system and why are they displayed in such an unintuitive way when equipped? You could've just given us a complete Upgrade only Inventory and let us equip / unequip them on a single page instead of this current weirdness. Why does every single Segfault mon own me even when it's a couple levels below me. Why can I only use half my roster in a fight. - Quest Givers won't even pay attention if their requested Tama is currently benched. Why are enemies seemingly not affected by Move Points the way you are? (Looking at that dumb Shindoll of the temple leader with 25 armor, 12hp and their normal moveset per turn). Just constant self buffs and no recoil in sight anywhere. Why do I have to remember where every single teleport station connects to? Give me normal fast travel. Why would you put an optional trainer fight at the end of a path (Misty swamp or smt) with no saves or heals going on followed by a forced encounter you simply walk into to get to the next area? This is just more wasted time with the limited inventory and having to go all the way back to just heal / safe. Whats up with the element colors? Water is blue, Wind is blue, Electricity is blue, Ice is blue. Dark native also looks blue. Why is the shovel only relevant in a single area for a single quest? Why do I have to go into a different menu to assign the potential after every single level up? Either let me do it during level up or miss me with this system. Why does this game have the most console style ever UI and yet every button still only shows it's Windows mapping? Is this really the standard for a 2023 released game? All in all just a plethora of design choices that seem to only exist to shoehorn the player into a very specific vision the developer specifically intended, no matter how frustrating, void of any QoL. This becomes incredibily visible, seeing how barely a third of all players got the achievement to collect 10 cards of town folks. Everyone else bounced off beforehand already. I myself am at 8 and already tired of the previously mentioned systems. I shall see if this get's better at all but man do I not have my hopes up. All this game has done so far was get me into the mood to boot up an actual Digimon game. Buy on sale or skip.

Finally 100% completed it—what a blast! It’s very challenging, though. As a game inspired by *Digimon World 3*, it delivers on all fronts. A complete RPG experience in the creature collector genre: * In-game card battles * Quest system * Compelling story * Branching quest routes (at certain points) * Interesting NPCs (recruit them to your town for benefits) * Fusion system (called breeding) * Shared EXP for the whole party (main 3 + bench 3) * Unique tama designs (though lacking lore) * Plenty of mini-games * Adjustable settings for a better experience (e.g., level scaling) * Engaging achievement challenges * Unique skills (both passive and active) for most creatures * Skill transfer (via glyphs and breeding) * Equipment crafting * Status effect mechanics (confusing at first, but very fun) * Rebirth and Potential mechanics → Any Tama can be trained to become powerful * Quick map access via the DIVE terminal (an underground network connecting multiple locations) * Day and night cycle (affects Tama spawns and NPC behavior) Cons: > Poor inventory management—no grouping and only alphabetical sorting; needs major QoL improvements > The breeding still underdeveloped

Anode Heart is very inspired by Digimon World 1 & 3 and as a huge Digimon fan it really resonated with me. The designs of the Tama's are very cute and all around look great. The world design is super fun and does the whole thing Digimon World 1 did where exposed circuit boards can be seen on the ground and a ton of very large objects litter the area. The character portraits are also very expressive and really bring some of the characters to life. The story is rather simple and follows some conventional tropes of progression but despite that puts a fun spin on things through the deep lore and interesting environments. There is a lot of ways to train your Tama, though I have to say on a casual playthrough it's not so difficult that you really need to make use of everything available to you. The twist on combat that seperates it from Digimon and Pokemon is how you manage your time points to do several attacks in one round, aswell as techs having a certain amounts of command points and attacking after it runs out doing progressively more recoil damage back at you creates an interesting dynamic that I honestly think is a lot more fun compared to other similar games I have played. Shoutout to the devs for including an incredible card game with tournaments and entire side quests dedicated to it that borderline rivals the normal game length. For more experienced players or achievement hunters the game does have built in challenge modes to do stuff like nuzlockes, speedruns or limited lives, etc with optional even harder hardcore challenges. With the ultimate challenge to complete the game with every single challenge at the same time. If you're going for a 100% you're looking at a very challenging experience! Overall Anode Heart is an incredible indie game that I can not recommend enough. I implore everyone to atleast try the demo and see what you think!

Feels like a modern digimon world game, and has super fun character and monster designs!

If you like Pokemon, you'll like this game. If you like Digimon, too, you'll love this game even MORE. Made me feel like a kid again with creative little critter design, sharp mechanics that I still have yet to fully figure out, and an interesting world that's diverse and charming. Please put this game on the map, it deserves more sequels and spin-offs, guarantee

This game has a lot of cool ideas, but it struggles to present many of them in an approachable way. In particular, stat optimization is a big, tedious mess. You can increase a monster's stats in too many different ways, all poorly explained in terms of exact mechanics, and as a result every play I make feels suboptimal to me. I tried to play this game three times, and every time I lost interest the moment I got to a point where I should realistically either reset my monster's level for a stat boost, or start breeding monsters for stats and movesets. I know it's PROBABLY not necessary or expected that I play optimally, but due to lack of explanations, I don't know how good any choice is that I can make. Many mechanics play into each other poorly. E.g. the game explains that you can reset levels for stat boosts, and that more levels = more stats, but then also you can do this a limited number of times per monster, and your monster's max level increases with story progression, so the optimal play is to never reset until you've maxed out the max level??? Also, what is the point of breeding? You already have a way to reset monsters for stats, and a way to teach monsters moves they otherwise can't learn. Breeding just overcomplicates things for no reason.

Fun with a great level of customization. At the very least on normal difficulty just about any monster can be made viable without too much difficulty

On the whole I like this game very much. It could use a little tuning, and maybe a little more friction, but I am quite satisfied with what is presented. However, give someone a treat then beat them up is not the best way to make friends IRL.

Asked for refund But I think I Missed the window. one of the worst battle systems I've played in a montamer. enemies randomly attack like 6 times in a row and the game is not fun enough for me to care about the meta or story. The pixel art isn't very good either at least the mons. They are so zoomed in you can barely make out what the monster is. And the main reason i quit, the 1st 4 mons I captured evolve ONCE and another doesn't even evolve period. I was led to believe from Gym leader Ed and the trailers there were "Branching" evolutions and felt like Digimon World, it doesn't. The starters have 1 alt path and the only wild mon i saw that had 1 alt was the red lizard. Not a 17.99 game imo.