What do people think of Anima?

[Particle_Man]

beautiful, deadly, clunky, lovable . . .

[Geiger Counter]

Do you mean the inner feminine personality in all male subconscious or this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD9UhmXpCXs

[Jerthanis]

I'm assuming you mean Anima: Beyond Fantasy, the roleplaying game?

I'm actually a pretty big fan. It's got a pretty awesome world full of choices and moral grey areas... it's also got a really cool balance between class/level based and point assignment based creation/advancement. Combat is surprisingly fast considering you roll your initiative every round and that there's an entire page dedicated to the table of resolving attacks.

I played a game of it a while back and went into the game expecting it to be laughably bad, but I found it insanely fun in play.

Every type of character is crazy-broken in their own way. Virtually every character will need some tinkering with the given numbers to get them to work at all (Summoners), or to keep them from dominating everything forever (Pyrokinetic or Cryokinetic Mentalists who invest PP directly into their best powers... pretty much every Wizard)

I really like the system and would definitely recommend people give it a try.

[Talkkno]

Its way too crunchy and poorly organized. It took me 3.5 hours to make my first character

[Talkkno]

Every type of character is crazy-broken in their own way. Virtually every character will need some tinkering with the given numbers to get them to work at all (Summoners), or to keep them from dominating everything forever (Pyrokinetic or Cryokinetic Mentalists who invest PP directly into their best powers... pretty much every Wizard)

I.

Pyrokinetic and Cryokinetic mentalists are nothing compared to Pysokientic mentalists that make hydrogen bombs with ease using atomic restrucing, and crazy broken Ground control can be abused at level 4...

[HidaTsuzua]

The combat system takes a little while to memorize key formula (Armor "subtracts" 10% damage per level and counterattacks are +5 per 10% beating IIRC), but is quick after that. The whole "love taps" or hits that do no damage but still block later actions dynamic is interesting and gives quick characters a role. There seems to be several different "styles" of melee combat (big slow hit, fast light hitter, grater, and counterattacker) that are viable at least at lower levels and combo well together.

Magic's got issues but I haven't really looked in-depth there. The English version badly needs a worthwhile index. Overall, I like to describe Anima as it's D&D 3rd edition's and HERO's lovechild who was raised by a Japanese couple in Spain.

[Longcat]

Personally, I love the miniatures, and frequently use them to portray my D&D characters on a battlegrid. I'm currently using Azrael.

As for the actual RPG system, I can't comment.

[Sinfire Titan]

Never played, but WenM is one of my watched artists on DeviantArt.

[Tyndmyr]

Magic's got issues but I haven't really looked in-depth there. The English version badly needs a worthwhile index. Overall, I like to describe Anima as it's D&D 3rd edition's and HERO's lovechild who was raised by a Japanese couple in Spain.

Having read through HERO, this scares the crap out of me.

[Zeta Kai]

Never played, but WenM is one of my watched artists on DeviantArt.

That man disgusts me with how talented he is. His art is jaw-droppingly beautiful, & insanely detailed to the point that I'm jaded to other people telling that someone else's art is "insanely detailed." I'm murderously jealous of his skill & ability to deliver gorgeous fantasy art so consistently. WenM simply cannot be human; he is a fantasy-art-crafting machine.

Here a link to his DeviantArt page, see for yourself. I think that anyone who likes fantastic visual artistry owes it to themselves to check out his stuff. You'll be glad that you did.

I love him, & I hate him. As I love & hate myself.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Having read through HERO, this scares the crap out of me.

It's... actually pretty accurate. And better than it sounds.

Myself, I love it. Combat is very deep, even for the most mundane of the 'I hit it with my sword' crowd, and character creation is beautifully flexible (and very breakable in both directions). And you gotta love any system that has coolness as an improvable skill

The best part for me is the world though. I absolutely adore the fluff. It's full of pretty much everything awesome ever. Magitek steampunk Mad Scientists, the Spanish Inquisition, the Men in Black, Umbrella Corporation, Ravenloft, an All-female ninja assassin cult, TWO pirate kingdoms, an collapsing Empire (complete with loli-empress), rebels, barbarians, clandestine cults of many shapes and sizes, magnificent bastards, the city that became Cthulu, ruins of ancient super-advanced civilizations, and a very ecchi theme park. Just a few things that come to mind. The setting allows for pretty much any game concept you could put in a vaguely fantasy dressing. I love it.

[Drascin]

Has some good ideas, and a pretty decent fluff, but it gets lost in the serious clunkiness of the rules. A game where after one session one of my players actually took upon himself to program a Java applet with the damage formulas to speed up things might be perhaps a wee bit too convoluted, methinks . Extra attacks was a horribly feared ki technique - by the players that had it, because it meant MORE math.

To this, add that half the classes are pretty much broken from the get-go (I had a Pyrokineticist that dumped PP like crazy in the big powers. It took me about an hour to realize he could pretty much kill everything marked for relatively new players in the manual by himself, alone, in a turn or two at most), that it seems to try to go in several directions at the same time, and the moderately bothersome table fetishism, and you get a system that gives a certain feeling of half-bakedness.

So, really, it's a system with good ideas (it has what is probably my favorite Summoning system in any game I've GMed. The Arcanums in particular are really stylish), but poor execution. Still an interesting read, but not a system I'd recommend buying at full price.