Anima Gate of Memories is a 3rd person action RPG developed by a company from Spain and funded by a Kickstarter campaign. The official website describes Anima: Gate of Memories as telling “the story of two beings bound by an unwilling pact, an ancient monster and a girl who lost her past.”
Anima Gate of Memories follows the Bearer of Calamities and a talking book called Ergo Mundus. Early on it is revealed that Ergo Mundus is actually an evil ancient being bound to the Bearer. The book is just a manifestation of his form until the Bearer transforms into him. She receives some of his powers in exchange for being his vessel. They are in pursuit of a former member of the order of Nathaniel who has stolen a powerful artifact called The Byblos. This pursuit eventually leads them to the mysterious Tower of the Arcane. It’s a very interesting and engaging storyline filled with detailed world building and history.
The art of Anima Gate of Memories is beautiful though reminiscent of a few games from the Xbox 360/PS3 era. The combat is easily picked up, but grows in difficulty requiring the player to learn the weakness and attack patterns for each enemy. With enough trial and error, it could just be button mashed through. There is a decent skill tree for leveling up both Ergo and the Bearer of Calamities. A large part of the game involves exploration since there isn’t a lot of hand holding or a map icon to point the player in the direction of the goal. The next step isn’t always immediately clear and can sometimes lead to a feeling of blindly fumbling around hoping to bump into something interesting. There are also puzzle solving elements to flesh out the gameplay.
The game itself is quite fun and I’m always excited to see a game feature a number of female characters. There are some issues that lead me to wonder if a woman was anywhere on the development team for this game though. I noticed early on that Ergo constantly refers to the Bearer as “baby.” It was a small enough thing that I figured I could play through it, but it gets applied a little thickly and begins to grate very quickly. At a point later in the game when the Bearer wakes up from having been unconscious, Ergo says “Don’t worry, nobody came near you or did anything to you while you slept. Except for me… Hahaha.” I really am hoping that they meant this less creepily than it comes off. Worst case scenario they just made a really disturbing rape joke. Ergo’s rampant misogyny continues when he tells another incredibly powerful female character “you and your ass are still my favorite.” It’s pervasive enough to be jarring for a female gamer who will constantly be pulled out of the story to go, “Did they really just say that?”
Overall Anima Gate of Memories is a good game, but the treatment of female characters will be a deal breaker for some gamers. It’s a shame because the story is a really intriguing one.
The trailer is available now:
Hiya Katrina!
I am Carlos, the writer of Anima books and the story of Gate of Memories. In first place, I want to thank you a lot for doing the review of the game of a small three people studio like us, and I am also happy to know that you liked the game so far with all its flaws.
Sadly, you are quite right; the three of us are men. ^_^¡
When I saw you tweet, I had a lot of curiosity to see a female perspective of the story (you are the first female reviewer of Anima GoM that I have seen till now ^^) and I couldn’t resist to do a comment, not about the review itself, which is pretty cool, but to get your opinion and advice.
Before all, one thing that I want to assure you; that line is not nor pretended to be a rape joke. Ergo just want to bother her because she was defenseless. It will be something that is presented later in the game, but just the fact that I didn’t consider it in such a bad way is quite bad from my side.
With that said, I don’t think that Ergo is misogynist (or at least it wasn’t my intention for him to be so we I designed him, something that if i did worries me); he is supposed to be a jerk that want to be a nuisance to everyone, man or woman and the more the better. In fact he specially despises the most Romeo Exxet, another guy who appear in the game later.
I wanted to create a situation which shows the strange bad relationship that links both main characters. Neither of them really despise the other, but at the same time they wanted to make the other think that they do. It escalates in the game while you go on playing, making both to be in even worse terms later on, and only through the player decisions, you can see their real link.
But do you think that the comments of the beginning were too harsh and can be taken really in a negative way for a female player? I mean, I wanted Ergo to be mean and ill-mannered but not in a misogynist way.
Finally, let me tell you that I thank you a LOT for share your perspective. I always want to improve as as writer (in special character-wise) and this kind of comments help me a lot to create a better story ^^
Carlos, thank you so much for your very well thought out response. I didn’t realize that this game was made by a three person team. I tried finding information on the team, but was fairly unsuccessful. It’s an even more impressive accomplishment coming from such a small studio.
I’m glad to hear that you didn’t intend for that particular line to be a rape joke. I ran it by a few other friends who play games to see if maybe I was reading it wrong and they all had a similar reaction. Once I realized you were in Spain, I wondered if it might not be a cultural or translation- based misunderstanding. Either way, it’s nice that you’re open to hearing criticism on it.
I played for a few hours and didn’t get to the part of the game featuring Romeo Exxet, so Ergo’s interactions were limited to the female characters I did encounter. The only male character he encountered was Nameless and I don’t recall any of the dialogue there. I’m definitely open to seeing how Ergo interacts with other characters as the game progresses and may have to do a piece revisiting my thoughts once I’ve finished the game.
Again, thank you so much for your response to my review. It’s always nice to get a look into how a creator’s process works.
Hi Katrina
It is me who should be thanking you for taking your time to share your point of view ^^
I appreciate it a LOT.