Gaming: Pokémon-like Gacha Game Should Be Such An Obvious Win That I'm...

After several hours in the closed beta for Aniimo, I can't find much about it that other creature collecting and gacha games aren't doing better.

"Pokémon and gachapon" is a combo that belongs on a shelf next to the other great pairs of our world like salt & vinegar or Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. It's an obvious winner. Or it should be, which is what creature-collecting gacha game Aniimo is betting on.

Someone is probably going to nail the freemium critter game combo soon, but after playing in its current closed beta test I just don't think Aniimo is the one. It's rolled a real winning pair of words, but hasn't found enough originality to win me over in the overstuffed gacha game field of 2026.

In Aniimo you're the Pathfinder, a fresh-faced recruit headed down to the continent Idyll to collect aniimos for reasons that I forgot even as they were being explained to me in a cutscene. Are any of us internalizing the story in gacha games anymore? Dramatic motivation aside, you've got to explore Idyll, catch the aniimos you find wandering its biomes, "twine" to transform into them and use their skills to solve small open world puzzles, and occasionally battle it out with high level world boss aniimos in real-time combat.

The first aniimos I find are all pretty expected for a creature catcher: a big fluffy sheep, fire puppy, fire pup's mom, butterfly, tiny bird, and a blue water dragon thing that is not a Lapras. I catch them by throwing aniipods. I record them in my aniilog. I level them up from Lumin Stage to Gamma stage. I take advantage of an elemental types chart of strengths and weaknesses to battle wild aniimos with fireballs and water jets. It's Pokémon, y'all. Pokémon plus gacha, lest we forget.

Like a cartoon character who's stuffed all their toys in a single closet, opening that door (the menu) releases the avalanche of stock standard gacha game systems spilling out onto your floor. There's the requisite handful of currencies (fame, glimmers, experience gems), a menu full of too many different limited time quest events, upgrade menus, and endless rewards to click click click away at. As it goes with gacha games, the web of interconnected busywork becomes familiar once you figure out the in-universe words this one's using for dungeons, pulls, daily quests, and so on. It's a gacha game, y'all.

Aniimo's obvious flaws are cosmetic. It's harshly lit. The audio quality of its few voice lines is poor. Animations like strafing while holding an aniiball ar

Source: PC Gamer