Opinions on and potential substitutes for Anima: Beyond Fantasy

Not a Decepticon · Friday at 3:30 PM

Saw a video about setting lore of Anima: beyond Fantasy and gotta say, it looks pretty interesting. I want to know how well does the game play and how crunchy it actually is. I would like some info on how crunchy or complex it is and whenever it steers closer something like Pathfinder, Warhammer Fantasy or PbtA/FitD family of games.

Also, if you find system bad, could you recommend a good replacement system that could handle such setting?

SteveC · Sunday at 3:19 AM

It is an incredibly crunchy game. I say this as someone who played Hero for years, as well as Rolemaster. I really like the setting, and I think the rules have some mad brilliance to them, but I wouldn't play this without a VTT with serious automation. As for what game to replace it, I think the natural one is Fabula Ultima. It does the JRPG world very well, but you'd need to do some heavy lifting to convert everything. Along those same lines, you could use the Hero System, but you can use Hero for just about anything. I'm actually really interested to see if someone will have some good crunchier systems to suggest.

That said, I'd play Anima anytime, and I'd try to help a GM run it.

SteveC · Monday at 12:56 AM

I see that there is a Foundry module for the game that was last updated two weeks ago, making me think it is usable. With that in place, I think the game would be a lot of fun.