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Time to get this it's own topic, I think.

I've been playing around with the demo today. Some odds and ends...

- The free play run around the world doing whatever you want sort of stuff can be done solo. The game will automatically match you up for the story missions, though. I *think* you can force it to allow you to solo by doing a private server. But I haven't confirmed this. There's also a single dungeon that's available.
- Content is scaled to your level and gear. The game explicitly notes that two members of the same party can have the same content scaled individually to each of them.
- The power armor suits are called "Javelins". There are four different models, and you pick one based on the role you want to fill. The Ranger, which everyone gets at the start of the demo, is the jack of all trades model, though it does have some unique abilities. The Colossus is the heavy. The Interceptor is the light, agile model. And the Storm has access to powerful elemental attacks. As previously mentioned, you start with the Ranger. You can unlock a second suit when you reach level 12.
- Flight is a lot of fun. You jump into the air, activate your thrusters, and head in the direction that you're facing. You can continue flying until your thrusters overheat, at which point you'll fall to the ground (which doesn't hurt you). Environmental conditions (such as a waterfall) can cause your heat to build more slowly, or even be reduced. Skimming just above the surface of water is a great way to extend your flight time, assuming you're careful not to actually touch the water (which will cause you to crash).
- Most of the powerful enemies have weakpoints. They don't have big flashing signs saying "Shoot me here!" But you can usually figure out where they are without too much trouble. And when you shoot them, your damage numbers change color.
- With one exception (noted below), I enjoyed the mission fights.
- There are world quests that you can come across when you're wandering across the landscape. The difficulty seems to vary tremendously from mission to mission. One mission had me take out five small boxes on the ground, and then mop up the surviving enemies. Another had me take out the contents of three small storage buildings... and two heavily armored powerful gun turrets.

Overall, I had fun with it. None of my friends have signed on (I don't know whether they'll be trying it out), but the group content seemed fine with just the pickup groups that I ran with.

- The world map takes a little getting used to. Once you figure it out, though, it's not a problem. You'll quickly realize that the area around Fort Tarsus is apparently made up of a lot of twisty canyons, separated by very high (I.e. you can't fly over them) but very thin ridges.
- The second storyline mission had a fight that seemed dramatically harder than anything else I had to deal with. I'm not sure if that was just because the fight is really supposed to be that hard, or because I missed something "obvious".
- I had a bug in the third storyline mission. When I reached the first enemy camp, there were no enemies. This broke the mission, and I had to exit. When I reentered, everything worked properly. Also, the storyline video after completing the mission froze up right at the start.


- Scar grenade spam sucks. You'll know what I'm talking about when you first encounter them.

I played around with it over the last half hour.
Looks pretty. Buy, ye gods, loading screen after loading screen after loading screen, with menu after menu after menu. Flight controls take some getting used to if you're using keyboard and mouse, as they use mouse-steering rather than keyboard-steering. You can play by yourself, but it ain't easy. I tried the first mission by myself, got killed pretty damn fast, joined a group, and breezed through it. I'll try it some more over the weekend.

Eumerin wrote:
As previously mentioned, you start with the Ranger. You can unlock a second suit when you reach level 12.

If you played during the vip demo, you get all four suits to play around with. During the actual game, you'll unlock suits at different levels than in the demo.

I wasn't impressed with the game to be honest, it's right up my ally but for some reason It just felt...meh, maybe it will grow on me, I am looking forward to the division 2 and still need to finish resident evil 2... Which is bloody awesome.

 Formosa wrote:
I am looking forward to the division 2

Oooh, you're in for a disappointment XD

I for one liked Anthem a ton. They do need to fix some bugs, but I found the gameplay itself to be quite solid.

 Melissia wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
As previously mentioned, you start with the Ranger. You can unlock a second suit when you reach level 12.

If you played during the vip demo, you get all four suits to play around with. During the actual game, you'll unlock suits at different levels than in the demo.

One of the loading screen messages in the demo tells you when you unlock suits. The first one is at level 2, and the second is at level 12 (which is when you unlock it in the demo). I don't remember off the top of my head when you unlock your last two suits, but the third suit unlocked quite a bit later on.

I don't know whether the Ranger is the default suit at level 2 (it would make sense if it was, since it's the generalist suit), or if you get to choose which Javelin is your first.

Buy, ye gods, loading screen after loading screen after loading screen, with menu after menu after menu.

I seem to recall that there was quite when I first started up the demo. But I didn't particularly notice the issue later on. I don't remember if that's because I got used to it, or there really was more right at the start of the demo.

 Melissia wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
I am looking forward to the division 2

Oooh, you're in for a disappointment XD

I for one liked Anthem a ton. They do need to fix some bugs, but I found the gameplay itself to be quite solid.

I know... I know, what ever happened to good games

According to the devs, you do get to pick your first Javelin. Unlocks are at:
2
12
20
26

You can't spell stEAl without EA.

the microtransactions allready seem nuts.....

No microtransactions exist in the game right now, so there isn't yet anything to be ridiculous. I know there will be in the future, but acting like it's already in...

Also? The devs have said they intend to include no lootboxes-- no gambling mechanics. If you spend money, you will get what you intended to get. If you want to pay for a certain cosmetic piece to your Javelin, you'll buy with in-game currency or premium currency.

At least complain about actual problems. Anthem is far from perfect in its current iteration from the demo we're playing right now.

Not Online!!! wrote:
You can't spell stEAl without EA.

the microtransactions allready seem nuts.....

If you're referring to the leaked bit...they're waaaaaaaaaay outdated prices and they have made zero effort to hide that yes, cosmetic microtransactions will be present.

Enjoyed the demo missions. Piloting and fighting is a lot of fun. Looking forward to the full game

Two scummy companies behind it makes me give this one a hard pass. The gameplay loop being dull as dishwater doesn't help either.

Me and my partner have enjoyed the demos, when we've been able to play.

Just took down the Ancient Titan that is spawning in Freeplay during the shaper storm event, though both times we did so we were kicked back to Tarsis with the message "The server has shut down" upon its death and before we could even pick up what it dropped.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:
According to the devs, you do get to pick your first Javelin. Unlocks are at:
2
12
20
26

This. It makes sense for people to be able to pick their own at level two, also. Otherwise for all the missions between level 2 and 12, everybody will be in the same suits and so interplay between the classes will be absent.

Yeah, I've had server issues. Mostly when I play Colossus-- I wonder if somehow that's significant. Still, gameplay's been solid for me when it works.

I haven't been able to find that free play titan mission .. been flying all over, mostly just finding missions to rescue people. Hoping there will be a lot more variety in the free play missions, really hate it when I'm trying to fly somewhere new and it tells me I went to far and I get teleported away and have to wait and wait for it to re-load everything

I picked the storm for my 2nd javelin and it's pretty fun to play, love setting up combos with the 2 different powers.

 Necros wrote:
I haven't been able to find that free play titan mission .. been flying all over, mostly just finding missions to rescue people. Hoping there will be a lot more variety in the free play missions, really hate it when I'm trying to fly somewhere new and it tells me I went to far and I get teleported away and have to wait and wait for it to re-load everything

I picked the storm for my 2nd javelin and it's pretty fun to play, love setting up combos with the 2 different powers.

Is the sky different with a big glowing vortex? If yes then the titan should be around the giant mushroom area due north of Tarsis. If not, try leaving freeplay and going back in.

Got it and killed the titan rather easily. The Infiltrator ultimate might get nerfed I think, as it's really powerful.

I think I might have found it by accident roaming around. Just saw a Titan sitting there. Was a little too easy to kill, he had a lot of health but I pretty much just stood on a rock and kept using my powers on him, didn't even use any ammo. He would shoot a big ball at me once in a while that hurt a little, but by the time he would attack again my shield was back up to full again. Hopefully they make them more challenging in the end

 Necros wrote:
I think I might have found it by accident roaming around. Just saw a Titan sitting there. Was a little too easy to kill, he had a lot of health but I pretty much just stood on a rock and kept using my powers on him, didn't even use any ammo. He would shoot a big ball at me once in a while that hurt a little, but by the time he would attack again my shield was back up to full again. Hopefully they make them more challenging in the end

His most damaging move is an energy wave thatyou have to jump over. Unfortunately for the devs, that's not so dangerous when you've got uneven terrain. They need to make it more of a sphere with holes in it instead of waves.

The way you two talk about him, he seems like just another copy of that molten guy you meet from time to time - the one that takes almost no damage except for when his arms are on fire? I'd think we're talking about the same guy, except I ran into that guy rarely all weekend.

Does the fight basically go the same way?

Was also a part of one of the missions, though that one was the Greater Titan.

Yeah, we are talking about the same guy, although scale might vary.

Event started after I called it a night.

Ranger is amazing. Intercepter was cool too, and I'm sure I'll enjoy Storm/Colossus, but it's playing more Ranger that I look forward to.

The Defender and Hammerhead assault rifles were my favorite. Great accuracy and recoil, so you could tailor your bursts.

Colossus is great. But it actually takes the most skill to play IMO. Your shield is more powerful, but it also must be activated and is directional meaning you need a lot more situational awareness. But you have a ton more armor (aka health) and your abillities are supremely powerful.

Yeah that Titan wave attack murdered me the first time.. then I realized I could just stand on a high rock and avoid it all. I'm sure that's something they'll fix if Titans are supposed to be big bads.

Toward the end I found a pretty nice level 19 heavy pistol that became my main weapon, and then I had a sniper rifle for my alt.. Devastator I think? Not enough ammo, but it hit pretty hard. I was doing 10K damage on the sweet spots of the giant bug in that repeatable mission. I had another sniper rifle that was more rapid fire that worked nice too.

Devastator is going to be looked at heavily for adjustment; they found people using it waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much.

The Titan's "wave attack" is functioning as intended. It's supposed to be a thing you actively try to avoid--but it'll throw/spawn the fiery orb on your location if you don't move around too much when it isn't doing the waves.

I had fun avoiding the flame waves by jumping over them. Was like playing Mario in a mech suit!

Quite fun indeed. If it's working as intended, that's fair. I thought it was too easy to avoid, but I'm used to this kind of thing I guess.

This is one of the games I am more excited about this year, but after MEA I am waiting until the game actually comes out before I get, like, emotionally invested in it.

I've been burned, baby.

 Ouze wrote:
This is one of the games I am more excited about this year, but after MEA I am waiting until the game actually comes out before I get, like, emotionally invested in it.

I've been burned, baby.

If you've got EA Access or whatever the PC equivalent is, you can play 10 hrs of the full game starting February 15th.