Aniimo Hands-On Preview: A Pocket Monster Mash-Up of Everything That's Come Before

There's more chance of hell being confirmed as being real, and then freezing over, than there is for Pokémon to be taken down as the king of creature collectors. It would be wrong to say, however, that every gamer is perfectly pleased with how the king of cute critters is handling the genre. Palworld, Cassette Beasts and Digimon Story: Time Strangers have proven there's space for alternatives out there, and recently we've been spending some time in Aniimo, a shiny new creature collector that seeks to carve its own space among this fast-growing subgenre.

Aniimo is... Aniimo is... Well, to be honest, it's really hard to pin it down to one sentence or even paragraph that sums up all the things you can do. My notebook is scrawled with random notes that make me feel like the maddened protagonist of a Lovecraft story as I look back through them. In essence, the game is what you'd expect from a creature collecting adventure. You make your own character, who of course is an absolute natural at catching the adorable beasties that fill out the tutorial zone, then find yourself joining a research expedition with the hopes of exploring the wild region known as the Idyll. All of this serves as a grand excuse for you to catch more Aniimo, train them, and do battle as them.

Yeah that's right. You battle as the Aniimo in the game, not with them. It takes the turn-based formula you'd expect from something like Pokemon and does away with it for real-time battles in which you can twine with your Aniimo to essentially play as it. From our few hours with the game, this appears to be Aniimo's strongest USP, as it essentially turns the game from a rather passive experience, with you just deciding the cool stuff your creatures do, to a much more active one, where you're thrown into third-person combat against other creatures and big raid bosses. Each Aniimo comes with its own moves and type, and as you can expect, these types play against each other in classic rock-paper-scissors style. Fire beats grass, water beats fire, and so on.

The obvious comparison for any game of this time is Pokémon, although I have to say I got much more of a Digimon vibe from Aniimo. From the story to the design of the creatures and the way they evolve or reach their Nova Stage, yes it looks familiar if you've played a Pokémon game, but takes what it can from other big franchises in the subgenre, too. Where you'll likely feel like you're playing an alternate dimension version of Pokémon is in the catching, as this is very similar, especially to the free-roaming, real-time battling of Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Weaken an Aniimo to increase your chance of catching it, try and sneak up when you can to catch it unawares, you know the drill. There's also a breaking mechanic, where if you batter an Aniimo enough you can stun it for a time, making it the prime moment to catch.

If you've played a game like this before, you'll get to grips with most of Aniimo well enough, with the only exception being the aforementioned twining mechanic. This isn't just used for battling, as it also lets you access multiple traversal options on the map, such as swimming, gliding, climbing, and more. The Aniimo you catch and keep in your squad are therefore quite important, as they act as constant HM users, able to take you where you need to go quicker. Considering the map is absolutely massive in Aniimo, too, you'll need these features when you want to get somewhere in a jiffy.

While the creature designs are nice enough, the twining feels unique and fun, and the world is pleasing to the eye, Aniimo throws so much at you so quickly that it can be hard to appreciate and understand any one thing. Information overload feels like a bit of an understatement, as from one look at the game's menu and all the things to choose from on it you'll see what I mean. If you compare to the subdued introduction of Pokemon, for example, where you start in the quietest town and given the simplest overview of what the world is about, Aniimo is a whirlwind of exposition, ideas, and mechanics that sends you spinning before you're even out of the tutorial zone. It's a bit TikTokified, in a way, as it doesn't give you the chance to get bored as you've always got some new number popping up on screen with a flashy effect to match.

There were a few performance issues, alongside visual bugs in the game's cinematics, but as we're looking at an early stage of Aniimo here, we can hope those will be fixed in time for its full release. At this early stage, though, I'm not sure where I stand with Aniimo. It certainly feels like the developers are throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what sticks. That might be enough to attract players initially, but it might not work in the long-term. Only time will tell, but for now at least I can say the twining mechanic is a stand-out, if only for how seamless it is in game.