Honkai: Nexus Anima could be the free-to-play Pokémon killer

Honkai: Nexus Anima feels like a logical evolution of Hoyoverse's ambitions to create its own take on a range of beloved games or genres. If Genshin Impact was its open-world action RPG à la Breath of the Wild, and Honkai: Star Rail was its take on Final Fantasy-style turn-based RPGs, then Nexus Anima is its twist on the creature collector.

Although the game has had two closed betas already, my first chance to get hands-on with Honkai: Nexus Anima was at Gamescom 2026.

If much attention on Hoyoverse was on how it's pivoting away from its trademark anime aesthetic, following the reveal of its newest project, Nodusfall, at Gamescom Opening Night Live, then upcoming titles Honkai: Nexus Anima and cozy life sim Petit Planet are there to reassure you that the company isn't changing what it does wholesale.

Anime auto-battling

At first glance, I even thought Honkai: Nexus Anima looked remarkably similar to Genshin Impact when my character loaded into a bright and colourful city location.

If you jump from a high point, you can also open a glider to get around similarly. The difference is that this city also has creatures standing or roaming around known as Anima, and if I want to, I could just approach one to engage in a battle, a somewhat more polite approach than catching Pokémon in long grass.

Yet the Nexus battles of this game also differ from Pokemon, as instead of turn-based battles, you assemble your team of Anima in a top-down arena in auto-battles like Team Fight Tactics. I must admit that the concept of auto-battlers isn't something I'm used to, because other than where you place your Anima on the board, all that seems to be left is to just start the battle and leave them to it.

It probably doesn't help that the build I was trying at Gamescom already gave me a huge roster of high-level Anima, which made the battles I engaged in a cakewalk in which I couldn't discern any kind of strategy.

That said, you can also equip up to three cooldown-based ability cards belonging to allies, which you can just drag and drop into the arena, some to target one enemy causing you a problem, while some have a handy AoE to make the battle end even quicker.

Still, if you're to scrutinize the stats of each Anima beyond their familiar designs, they're categorized into more unusual and abstract classes known as Aspects, which differ from the elemental varieties of a typical RPG. For example, there are Anima that are associated with Love, Satiation, Pride, and Reality.

I couldn't tell you what any of that means, but I respect that Hoyoverse is in fact trying to do something a little different, while even their Anima designs, from a boxing poached egg to a sentient wind chime, aren't just copying Game Freak's homework.

Gotta gacha 'em all

Obviously, a creature-collecting game with gacha elements is a cause for concern, especially for players compelled to spend money in order to get the five-star Anima.

While that wasn't something I could speak to in the Gamescom demo, my concern was more that it's possible to defeat an Anima and then bond with them so that they join you. To do this requires using certain resources to entice them, and you only have a handful of attempts to do this before they run away, prompting the dilemma of whether to spend money to obtain the item that guarantees a 100% bonding result.

Outside of the auto-battling, the demo also placed me just outside the town's Nexus hall for what seemed to be the beginning of a qualifier for an upcoming Nexus championship, which is, of course, very Pokémon as well. Before I could enter the qualifier, however, I also needed to obtain certain numbered badges belonging to other competitors that I had to find and fight.

Hoyoverse has a knack for populating its worlds with lots of characters and lore, and Honkai: Nexus Anima seems no different, given the characters whose abilities you'll be able to summon during your Nexus battles. It's also having a bit of fun with the narrative in sillier ways, and I don't just mean one character called Mr. No, who will only reply to you with 'No', which is ripe for exploitation.

What ended up catching my attention unexpectedly is the voiced second-person narration that occasionally occurs. While it's used for conveying your thoughts, when it's a posh-sounding omniscient male voice, it almost gives me the vibe of Baldur's Gate 3's narrator.

Whether that is the intent, I can't really say at this point, though, given its backstory of a cataclysmic event called The Sundering or being greeted by someone with a bread for a head at the beginning of its closed beta, a coherent story is probably not on the priority list.

Honkai: Nexus Anima is coming to PC, iOS, and Android. Pre-registrations are open now.