Preview: Honkai: Nexus Anima Is HoYoverse at Its Weirdest, and PS5 Owners Need to See It

I’ve written a little bit about Honkai: Nexus Anima before, but I hope you’ll indulge me a little longer while I tell you about its latest build.

I went hands-on at Gamescom, in Chinese dev HoYoverse’s business area. And while I was sceptical of this project when it was first announced, it’s really grown on me.

It’s important to state right out of the gate that a PS5 version isn’t currently announced, but I continue to pester the team about a port because I do think console owners would enjoy it.

This is effectively the Genshin Impact maker’s answer to Teamfight Tactics, but it also mixes in elements of Pokémon for maximum commercial appeal.

Effectively, you build teams of “Anima” (or little monsters) which synergise with different creatures in various different ways.

While it looks cute, there’s a lot of complexity here: certain statuses only trigger when specific conditions are met, so you really need to think about your team compositions and how they will work in unison.

My demo started out in a kind of Pokémon Gym-style environment, where I needed to dispatch a variety of different opponents, each with unique personalities.

As this was a convention demo, I was auto-assigned a fairly strong team, so making progress was a walk in the park. But I did take time to experiment with all the different “Anima” and “Eidoses” in my inventory; Eidoses are the equivalent of Pokémon Trainers in this universe, I guess.

It’s cool because in addition to the auto-battler gameplay, your Eidoses will charge up super moves which can be dragged onto the screen to support your team further. I do like that there’s a real-time element to the loop.

I also think the title is just really well written; the localisation is irreverent and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, which is unusual for a HoYoverse title, as the Chinese translations can often come across very dry. The sense of humour is strangely British, to be honest.

I’d liken the tone to the English language translations of Yakuza. For example, there was one character I encountered who apparently only had the ability to say “no”. This triggered some pretty amusing dialogue where I got him to say all kinds of heinous things about himself.

There are also a lot of underlying stats that feed into the dialogue system, such as INT and STR which alter the outcome of conversations. NPCs will remember some of the decisions you make, and this will influence later aspects of the story.

If I was being cynical, I’d say all of the creatures have clearly been designed with plushies in mind, as HoYoverse has a pretty robust merch division these days.

But one specific Anima I took note of is Kaffiend: a koala bear hooked up to an espresso drip. His move involves launching coffee at his foes.

It’s all a bit wacky and weird in a way I appreciate, and while I concede the gameplay will probably feel most at home on mobile, there’s got to be a place for it on the PS5 – especially considering the success of HoYoverse’s other games on console.

It took me a while to really appreciate this project, to be honest – as a Honkai: Star Rail stalwart, I just wasn’t sure about the auto-battler format.

But I think what the team’s put together here is really vibrant and cosy. I do hope it comes to PlayStation so I have a reason to talk about it more.