Anima RPG?

[Exarch]

Hey gang, I have a quick question how how the Anima system is? My brother picked it up today and has expressed some interest in running a game for it. I looked through it pretty quickly, and the system looks pretty flexible...allowing you to play lots of different (anime) archetypes.

Has anyone played this, and if so can any opinions be given?

[Knaight]

Do you mean BESM? If so, the non d20 incarnation isn't too bad. Really though, the best way is to check it yourself, a game is already en route.

[Exarch]

No, the game itself is called Anima: Beyond Fantasy. It's also a miniature game I believe, but I'm referring only to the rpg itself.

[Jerthanis]

I've played Anima, it's a neat little fantasy system with a kind of awesome setting involving the segmenting of reality into three realms.

Basically, the system is both a class-based system and a point-buy system. You choose a class, and your class determines how many points you spend to level up the various powers and abilities. So while a Wizard may pay 3 Character Points to raise their fighter-oriented powers, such as Ki, Wear Armor, or health points, they'd pay only 2 points for Magic Accumulation, Magic Manipulation and so on.

Each of the classes end up being reasonably unique, but you can still dip into things outside your class' normal limits if you really want to, giving a lot of flexibility. There are some serious balance issues if you look for them. Technicians (DBZ style martial artists, who use Ki to shoot fireballs and fly and stuff) and Wizards are extremely powerful with a little powergaming. Certain Psionic powers are also not fun due to the way they work. High level Pyro and Cryokinesis powers pretty much automatically kill your opponent without a means of the foes defending themselves. You'd probably want to tweak some of these to require attack rolls or something.

Combat seems really, really daunting at first, but is seriously not a problem once your players get used to it. Essentially you roll against your attack versus your opponent's parry or dodge, and the margin you beat them by is modified by their armor rating to figure out the final percentage of your base damage you end up doing. If you barely penetrate a guy's guard, you may deal only 20% of your base damage. If you sneak up on a guy and hit him while he can't defend himself and roll a total of 250 (percentile dice attack rolls), you end up doing around 220% of your base damage. If you do more than half their current life in one blow, it's a critical hit, and you apply various penalties to them to represent how they got injured by your attack. You also roll initiative every round. Even so, it's surprisingly fluid and fast once everyone's on the same page.

What was strange about Anima for me was that I went into the game thinking it was a stupid game with pointlessly convoluted mechanics, and after seeing how they worked in play I really came to appreciate and enjoy them. I would play or run Anima again in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, all my friends who went into the game excited about it kind of turned lukewarm after playing it a while and now it's regulated to our gaming back burner.

EDIT: Were there any specific questions you had? I may not be able to answer exacting detail stuff well, as I don't have a book of my own, but I can summarize rules and overall systems reasonably well.