Hello all!

I am a huge fan of Fantasy Flight Games and what they have to offer. I have been playing in a Rogue Trader game for about a year and running a Dark Hersey game for almost as long. Though I have not had a chance to play Deathwatch looks very cool!!!!

Which leads me to Anima.

I have been hemming and hawing about this game for awhile. I have flipped through the pages of the main book every time I drop by the local game store (the artwork is the BEST I have ever seen in RPG!).

What I want to know is - is it an easy game to pick up and learn and play? Flipping through it - there are some things that appear to be rather complicated.

What I would like to know is - what do you who play think?

Thanks!

Todd

tcabril said:

Anima is not an easy game to pick up and learn. In fact, it is quite hard. If you stick with it however it is an easy game to play. Easier in play than Rogue Trader IMO

A lot of the complexity is front loaded in that PC creation is a real maze of options. If you want to skip that part and get a taste of the game in play, check out the GM Screen as it has 20 pregenerated PCs and a good ready to run adventure.

I have to confess that it is a hard game to learn. But I would say that it is worth it. I too played DH and RT. And I loved the games for the world and the characters that you got to play. But after a while I realized that the systems themselves are pretty limiting. For that reason they are pretty easy to learn. Extra easy to learn one if you have already played the other. I love these games, but it is mostly because I love the world and the types of adventures you get to play through (especially RT). And their systems have good points, mainly how quick they are to learn. But over time, the speed I learned the rules becomes less important and I started to want a system that allowed for more variation and creativity.

Anima is sort of the opposite of DH and RT. It will take some investment to learn all the rules. But once you learn them the system itself is really good.

I admit that their are some players that never really learn the rules though.

It's not that the game is difficult, it's that the book is poorly written and has no index. If you take your time to go through it a few times, you'll get it, and making characters will become cake.

I like to compare Anima to Photoshop. Its not user friendly at first - you have to figure out how it works, and get familiar with its various functions. However, once you become fluent, you may not want to settle for anything less

pirouette said:

Seconded. And while this is already bad for a player, you'd have to hear the words our GM came up with to describe that certain drawback!

Hopefully something they'll do better in future releases.

But back to the rules themselves. The ruleset is not exactly difficult, but there's a lot of it! So it takes quite some time until you're really settled in. A player has the advantage of not having to learn all the rules in one go. If he doesn't make a gifted at first, he can pretty much leave the magic part of the rules to the side in the beginning. Same goes for psychics and also, to a part at least, for ki. All in all it reminded me a bit of back when I was learning AD&D. Or Shadowrun for that matter. A lot to take in at first. But once you're settled in, a relatively easy and fluent system.

Certainly one of the less combat oriented game systems though, if you ask me.

The splatbooks all have Indexes, or at least Gaia and AE do. I guess they learned their lesson about excluding simple features created centuries (most likely) ago.

pirouette said:

You might be glad to know that Core Exxet does have an index. The books are close enough you might even be able to use it for the existing core book

Skywalker said:

Is it possible to pick up Core Exxet in english atm?

Be prepared to tear your hair out during Rules arguments. We've been playing this game for 2/3 years and still we want to burn the book. Poor translation doesn't cover it.

NekoShogun said:

Nope. My estimate is 2013.