Masters of Anima is an interesting game that combines real-time strategy with light RPG elements and a lot of exploration… and does it rather well. It was developed by Passtech Games (Space Run; Curse of the Dead Gods) and published by Focus Home Interactive.

Backdrop of the story is pretty satisfying and serves its purpose rather well. Many eons ago Mount Spark spewed forth raw and untamed Anima energy that took the form of Golem Giants who overran the lands. Born from chaos, they’ve destroyed everything on their path. Seeing the plight of man, a merciful goddess was moved to pity, and revealed to a brave few the secrets of Anima. They became Shapers and created the first Guardians to fight beside them in a war against Golems. The Shapers were victorious, the Golem forces shattered. The sacred mountain’s molten core now slumbers deeply, protected by the Heartshield. It’s what keeps the world safe, and Golems at bay.

Game revolves around eponymous Anima, a magical substance that can be used to create and control Guardians, structures and other objects within the game’s world. Player controls Otto, an apprentice of Anima who is just about to become a Shaper, when hell breaks loose – Mount Spark starts to spew raw Anima energy again, bombarding all of its surrounding areas with boulders that turn into Golems and Otto gets caught in the middle of it all, while trying to get inducted into the Guild of Shapers.

This premise works well, Otto becoming an accidental hero in the making that initially sets out on his journey to save his fiancée Ana, but ends up becoming the only one capable of stopping the main antagonist – evil warlock Zahr and his golem army. The only problem I had with Otto is that he is rather dim sometimes, not a very well written character – this is evident in comedic undertones of his dialogue. It would be fine if implemented correctly, here however it undermined my identification with the protagonist. In fact, a lot of the dialogue in this game has satirical undertones which I wasn’t very keen on and found it to be rather a nuisance than something I enjoyed listening to. Luckily, this is the only major disappointment – the rest of the game is surprisingly solid.

What does it do well? The pacing and balancing between its two core mechanics – battles and exploration. Real time management of your minions in battle is smooth, once you get a hang of it (at least on Nintendo Switch) and works great. There’s a lot of satisfaction to be had here, especially on harder difficulties, enemies vary in their looks, and attacks – pushing player to adapt different strategies when commanding creatures. The exploration serves as a welcoming catch-a-breath break from real time battles, which can get very intense sometimes. The game pushes you into managing your Anima reserves carefully as it is needed to summon and command creatures and executing special moves such as Battlecry for example will use up your Anima reserves. It can be replenished by destroying crystals, vases, defeating enemies or finding Anima fountains scattered throughout the game world. The amount of Anima energy in Otto’s staff is represented by spheres of which Otto has a limited amount. The total amount of spheres held can be increased by finding parts of the spheres in the game world – find four parts and you’ll get an extra sphere. Same goes for increasing the amount of health – a bit like God of War’s Gorgon Eyes and Feathers.

Otto can summon five different types of Guardians: Protectors, Sentinels, Keepers, Commanders, and Summoners and can command up to 100 Guardians at a time. Each Guardian is different: Protectors are your cannon fodder – equivalent to a simple soldier, Sentinels are archers, Keepers can extract Anima energy from enemies during battle (it's a life saver during lengthy fights) and so on and so forth. Players control the units indirectly through Otto’s commands by selecting them and issuing various orders, such as Attack, Move etc. Otto himself can directly affect the outcome of the battle, whether through attacking with his staff (only worth doing after a few upgrade points are invested in this skill) or activating special abilities for the units he has summoned. Each and every battle feels different, enemies and types of attacks you’ll need to deal with vary. Each battle also feels like a mini boss fight. There are 4 large battles per level on average and story progression is broken up into separate levels that progress linearly, but paths branch out, just enough to keep exploration interesting.

The areas are relatively open, it’s not a corridor type of gameplay – Masters of Anima wants you to explore in-between fights and puts an emphasis on it. Whereas half of the game consists of battles, the other half however is a lot more relaxing - you will be exploring your surroundings, looking for collectibles, Anima and Health improvements, doing collectible side-challenges for extra experience points (e.g. dig out 5 skulls; collect 15 Silver Lilies) and solving a fair share of puzzles that will require you to use Otto's Anima powers and creature control. These puzzles range from moving obstacles to activating switches and uncovering hidden paths and objects. Most of them are environmental. They add an extra layer of depth to the game, and are a welcome addition.

Apart from those two core mechanics, that's pretty much it when it comes to gameplay. There’s the progression system for Otto and for each type of Guardian separately – essentially six different skill trees, where you spend upgrade points earned from levelling up. This is an okay addition, although genuinely I wouldn’t miss it if it wasn’t there. And you have to spend an upgrade point to be able to use Otto's roll/dodge move with your right stick – which I think is stupid. This guy is becoming a Shaper of Anima, but doesn’t know how to roll? I don’t buy it.

You level up from defeating enemies and completing the aforementioned side-challenges. Game does allow for a re-spec of skills between levels, so you can tailor skill trees to fit your current playstyle or use the re-spec if you struggle with certain battles to maximise your chances. Again, this is only really needed on hardest difficulty, playing on medium is challenging but very balanced and I think I only died three or four times overall. After every battle you will get a rating with S being the highest and D (I think) being the lowest - based on damage taken, Guardians lost and time taken to defeat the enemy. The replay value is there, especially for gamers who like to perfect scores and levels.

At first, I really missed the active-pause button during battles, having previously played a lot of games with this feature I felt like I was playing one-handed. Once I got into the mechanics of giving orders on the go however and played with it for a while I could perfectly understand why the active-pause feature hasn’t been implemented here. While the battle system and managing your Guardians is very engaging in Masters of Anima, it is also very basic. While it works great on the fly, making some battles really, really intense it would lose its charm with active-pause – it’s just not complex enough to warrant it and, as a consequence gameplay would end up being boring as hell after a while. So, kudos to the developers for keeping away from active-pause in this instance.

I did not expect to enjoy Masters of Anima as much as I did. It’s a fun game, and a slightly different one as well, it tries hard not to copy a lot of ideas from other similar titles and excels at keeping the player engaged in its combat. If it wasn’t for the dim and sometimes annoying protagonist which I found hard to identify with and the comedy-infused dialogues that most of the time completely miss the mark, this would be pretty close to 5 stars in my book. I had a great time with both mechanics and in short bursts on the go this was almost a perfect experience for me. Would I call it a hidden gem? Yes. Unrefined perhaps, but still a gem.