The latest game in the grand HoYoverse has been unveiled. This morning, Chinese developer MiHoYo announced a new entry in the Honkai series – Honkai: Nexus Anima. The game was initially teased during Honkai: Star Rail’s anniversary concert back in May, but it’s been officially revealed today.
Nexus Anima is essentially MiHoYo’s take on the legendary and long-running Pokemon series. It blends creature-collecting with adventure game elements, and you may even be able to get your hands on it soon.
Honkai: Nexus Anima’s reveal trailer is more of a tone piece, and doesn’t show much of the gameplay. It does, however, introduce us to Anima – the creatures you’ll be befriending in the game.
The world of the game – Nexus – features “unseen bonds” between different, paired concepts, such as Love and Hate, Light and Dark, Life and Death and so on. As it often happens, however, the delicate balance that held them together has been shattered.
When the rupture occurred, the concepts were scattered across the land, with their powers taking the form of the creatures you’ll be collection, Anima. After you forge a bond with one, you’ll be able to unlock abilities based on the power that birthed it in the first place.
You play as a character capable of traversing various realms. Over the course of the story, you’ll encounter Anima with their own personalities and unique abilities. The press release says these abilities will help with both exploration and combat.
Speaking of which, we don’t quite know how combat is going to play out in Nexus Anima, but it does appear like it’s going to be similar to Pokemon’s turn-based combat, albeit from a different, Teamfight Tactics-like perspective. We won’t have to wait too long to see it, though, because the game’s first closed beta is on the horizon.
Registration for the Nexus Bond Test is live now and until September 12. It’s available for anyone on PC and iOS. Until we can see gameplay, it’s worth perusing the official site, as it does offer an early look at few Anima, as well as Animasters – the characters you’ll be playing as.