Reviews Anthem Reviews

[lashman]

Game Information

Game Title: Anthem

Platforms:

• PlayStation 4 (Feb 22, 2019)
• Xbox One (Feb 22, 2019)
• PC (Feb 22, 2019)

Trailer:

• Anthem Official Gameplay Reveal (2017)
• Anthem Official Cinematic Trailer (2018)
• Anthem Gameplay Features – Our World, My Story Trailer
• Anthem Official 2018 Game Awards Trailer
• Anthem Launch Trailer
• This Is Anthem | Gameplay Series, Part 1: Story, Progression, and Customization
• This Is Anthem | Gameplay Series, Part 2: Endgame
• Anthem Official Legion of Dawn Trailer
• Anthem CES NVIDIA Showcase

Developer: BioWare

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 61 average - 14% recommended

Critic Reviews


Rectify Gaming - Dave Rodriguez - 8.3 / 10

Strong alone, stronger together, Anthem is a fantastic action-RPG experience for solo players or groups.

GamingTrend - Ron Burke - 80 / 100

Anthem's rich storytelling and engaging combat lays the foundation for Bioware's newest adventure. While there are plenty of quality of life improvements to be made, Anthem's ambitious approach to the looter-shooter genre is encouraging given the development team's steadfast community engagement. With a roadmap stretching far into the horizon, we'll be flying around the world of Anthem for a long time to come.

GamePitt - 8 / 10

In short, Anthem is a great game which has had some bad reviews based on what is on offer right now and the fact that it’s not quite sure of its identity. While promoted as a multiplayer game, its deep storytelling makes it more an experience I wanted to discover alone. That being said, once the campaign is finished, it’s great to be able to play end game content with friends as that’s part of what keeps you coming back, playing with people you know. To me, Anthem is a single player game with some co-op experiences, there is no PVP for the hard-core shooter fans out there and that will put some people off. Sadly, the fact it’s being labelled as multiplayer has also put off people that enjoy single player games, people who I think would enjoy this game very much.

Everyeye.it - Alessandro Bruni - Italian - 7.6 / 10

Anthem is the imperfect result of a creative birth that has placed in the hands of the public one of the most promising shared-world shooter of the last few years.

IGN Spain - David Soriano - Spanish - 7.5 / 10

We prefer to highlight the playable elements that make Anthem fun to play at times. Everything else that surrounds the Bioware game has yet to improve and add more content to mitigate the feeling of repetitiveness, because the history and the world of Bastion has a huge potential that at the date of its release still seems untapped.

Gaming on PC - David Dominguez - 7.5 / 10

Long loading screens and weird design choices that feel out of place in a loot shooter conspire to bring down an otherwise incredibly entertaining sci-fi adventure.

Pardis Game - Sadra Salehi - Persian - 7.5 / 10

Despite the fact that the gameplay and the graphics are high quality and the game has its own share of fun and memorable moments, for now the game remains a unrealized potential. Anthem needs improvement in many departments: story, level design, boss fights, looting and more content in general. As of this piece, the game doesn't have much to entertain a gamer for hundreds of hours. There seems to be a long time schedule for supporting Anthem and evolving the game. It remains to be seen wether Bioware will fill the world with new contents and items, cause right now Anthem has the markings of a great shooter looter.

Gamerheadquarters - Jason Stettner - 7.2 / 10

Anthem delivers a fairly solid experience, it has enjoyable elements but does also come across as rather generic.

Gamersky - 不倒翁蜀黍 - Chinese - 7 / 10

Wearing armor and fighting like the Iron Man is really amazing, but this game at this time is also full of flaws. The story is dull. The gameplay is repetitive and boring. What's worse, there are too many bugs and network issues. Maybe it will be a great game when its DLCs come out.

CGMagazine - Cole Watson - 7 / 10

Despite its myriad of issues, I still enjoyed the fun gameplay of Anthem and plan to revisit the game after it has developed a larger suite of content and events for me to experience.

Destructoid - Chris Carter - 7 / 10

BioWare will need to build quickly on top of its shimmering jet-fueled foundation to hold people's interest, but folks looking for a new neighborhood to move into might want to give Anthem a try -- either now or after fixes and updates.

Hobby Consolas - Álvaro Alonso - Spanish - 70 / 100

Under a myriad of problems and bad design choices, lays a fun game, with rich lore and lots of potential... Maybe even a Bioware game. Sadly, right now it's difficult to find it.

The Digital Fix - Eden Penketh - 7 / 10

Anthem's technical shortcomings, dull combat and pretty but messy environments combine poorly with a narrative that uses pointless binary conversation choices, a thoroughly typical, snarky protagonist and worn out tropes to fuel it's characterization and plot. These elements come together to make Anthem a chore of a game that's highly unlikely to satisfy anyone but the most desperate groups of loot motivated gamers in it's current state.

SECTOR.sk - Matúš Štrba - Slovak - 7 / 10

BioWare put a lot of effort into Anthem but every single brilliant idea is overshadowed with something boring or shallow.

TechRaptor - Samuel Guglielmo - 7 / 10

Anthem's fast-paced shooting gameplay is a ton of fun, but it suffers from long loads, repetitive missions, bad filler, and an iffy story. Still, this is an extremely solid base for more content.

Twinfinite - Jesse Vitelli - 3.5 / 5

The controls of Anthem are intuitive and engaging. Flying through the world of Bastion is a sight to behold, and coordinating with your team on higher difficulties like Grandmaster is rewarding. Despite some questionable design choices and shortcomings, Anthem has a strong foundation that has potential to be a genre leader, but isn't quite there just yet.

PlayStation Universe - Laddie Simco - 7 / 10

Anthem may never get the chance to live up to its potential due to a series of unfortunate game design decisions and issues. The first IP from BioWare in over ten years displays moments of grandeur with fun and unique gameplay that unfortunately is undermined by the game's current condition.

Atomix - Miguel Reyes - Spanish - 70 / 100

Anthem is not a bad game as a whole, but rather an interesting project with wasted potential. It has really great gameplay mechanics and an awesome setting that, sadly, got negatively affected by bad choices and poorly implemented ideas like a forgetable story with horrible narrative, repetitive mission structures, painful loading screens and a multiplayer approach with null sense of cooperation.

Game Informer - Andrew Reiner - 7 / 10

Anthem tries to be too many things, and ends up losing focus in all aspects of the experience

Attack of the Fanboy - William Schwartz - 3.5 / 5 stars

Anthem impresses on the presentation front and the javelin suits are a blast to play with, but a lack of diversity in the game and uninspired loot-driven progression system make it feel like Anthem could be a much better game than it currently is with a few updates.

Softpedia - Silviu Stahie - 7 / 10

I will review the game again after a year of new content and patches, with the hope that Bioware still exists. And I can only hope that they return to do what they know best, and that is adventures with great characters and engaging stories.

Boomstick Gaming - Deadite AGK - 6.9 / 10

It's not quite the endlessly fun online grind-a-thon experience that will have you logging on nightly for months, but instead, Anthem is a fairly competent action RPG shooter.

Just Push Start - Oliver East - 3.4 / 5

Comparison aside, Anthem can be a fairly chilled game to play with friends, despite explosions big enough to fill screens, and this is 100% the way to play the game. The constant challenges to defend areas or collects things are made less of a chore with a competent ally. Also, having a friend to cooperatively combo with helps push all of the over the top fun to the surface. The niggles are still there and present but it is much easier to forgive when not solo. With all the glorious map there to fly around, the vast ways to cause explosions and cooperative play, Anthem is well worth playing, especially once the roadmapped content starts to come online.

The Games Machine - Erica Mura - Italian - 6.6 / 10

Anthem is a hymn to laziness, where a great potential is held back by strong repetitiveness, the absence of some basic features and the artificially increased level of difficulty. Moreover, BioWare and Electronic Arts made an incomplete product, a mere idea of a full game with the promise that each patch will bring us closer to what we might call a final product. Still, is it possible to have fun with a group of friends and spend some pleasant time exploring or fighting? Sure, but the experience will quickly turn into an infinite loop devoid of any goal.

Cerealkillerz - Patrice Naderi - German - 6.6 / 10

n his current state, Anthem is a nice action game in the beginning, that loses its momentum very fast due to strong flaws in game- and missiondesign, a slow RPG part, a weak story, uninspired mechanics and many technical issues. We currently don`t recommend a buy and only a round in the play first trial with EA or Origin Access after a potential healing in a couple of months.

IGN - James Duggan - 6.5 / 10

Anthem has energetic combat but it saves too much of what precious little content it has for the endgame, making playing through its mismatched story a tediously repetitive grind.

MMORPG.com - Michael Bitton - 6.5 / 10

Six months or a year from now, Anthem, like many of the other games before it, may be a wholly improved experience and complete its redemption arc, but right now it may as well be AAA Early Access.

Paste Magazine - Dante Douglas - 6.5 / 10

Anthem is not “for me”, yet Anthem is trying desperately to be “for everyone.” It is a slow, sometimes terribly frustrating game with nonetheless incredible flying mechanics and adequate shooting. It is the future of videogames, built to be played forever and yet somehow forgettable—the sustenance meal of the online shooter-looter genre, inexplicably buoyed by a company known for legendarily good writing forced to hide its own characters behind mission talk-overs and loot notifications.

GRYOnline.pl - Dariusz Matusiak - Polish - 6.5 / 10

Anthem is a constant emotional see-saw. There is a lot of fun from flying, shooting and admiring this beautiful world, and almost as much frustration due to a surprising amount of bad ideas and issues. Some won't be bothered by them and keep flying, and others will go somewhere else. Anthem is a game to both love and to hate at the same time.

GamePro - Linda Sprenger - German - 65 / 100

The basic structure of the Bioware shooter is fun, but story and mission design disappoint. Anthem still has a long way to go.

Xbox Achievements - Dan Webb - 65 / 100

Anthem is a game that despite poor optimisation, agonising load times, bizarre design decisions and an unbalanced loot system, can actually be a lot of fun to play. The open-world, story, characters and combat are all solid, the rest, not so much. Anthem has potential to be a good game, it just isn’t right now. It could be one day though.

Leadergamer - Alper Dalan - Turkish - 3 / 5 stars

Anthem has a great potential. But right now, it has a few problems.

Windows Central - Brendan Lowry - 3 / 5 stars

Anthem offers amazing combat, astounding visuals, and excellent all-around production value, but suffers from baffling design choices and awful writing that hold it back from being something truly special.

CDavis_Games - Chris Davis - 3 / 5 stars

It’s crazy that Bioware did the hard part so well and created a system of combat and movement that I absolutely love, while failing nearly everywhere else. Hopefully, Anthem can be fixed and with any luck, Bioware will look to Diablo 3 for inspiration, not Destiny, because that’s where the true potential lies.

Metro GameCentral - 6 / 10

There are flashes of brilliance, especially when it comes to the flying, but confused storytelling, boring loot, and unsatisfying missions don't justify the game's massive time investment.

Daily Mirror - Matt Osborn - 3 / 5 stars

As it stands, Anthem needs some work done to it if we want to see its full glory.

Gameblog - Camille Allard - French - 6 / 10

Even if it has some good ideas, plays very well and is dashing technically speaking, Anthem is a huge disappointment. Because of its repetitivity and lack of real of real attractiveness in terms of story and characters, it feels more like a technological showcase without a soul.

COGconnected - Scott Sullivan - 60 / 100

Despite Anthem’s very noticeable hiccups, there’s enough of a solid groundwork here that I think Anthem can be built off of into something unique. Sadly, it falls into the same shortcomings as its predecessors, featuring a minimal endgame and some almost obtuse design choices.

PCGamesN - Richard Scott-Jones - 6 / 10

Beautiful and mechanically robust throughout, but weighed down by repetitive missions, a flabby structure, and a lot of the people you meet in Fort Tarsis. Even the strongest beats become tiresome if repeated or drowned in white noise, and that's Anthem in a nutshell.Richard Scott-Jones

GameSpew - Jack Bampfield - 6 / 10

At this point in time, Anthem feels like a title that needs more work. I want to like it, but damn does it make it hard. Like the games that came before it in this genre, I’ve no doubt that Anthem will get better and bulkier with updates over time, but if Bioware takes too long in getting there, I fear most of the player base will have moved on.

GameSpot - Kallie Plagge - 6 / 10

BioWare's Anthem has good ideas, but most of those ideas don't end up working well together.

Press Start - Ewan Roxburgh - 6 / 10

For all its flaws, it has to be said that Anthem is a lot of fun. Some 60 hours in, between both PC and PS4 where I’m onto the endgame in both, I still enjoy the moment to moment gameplay.

AusGamers - Kosta Andreadis - 6 / 10

It’s a shame then that everything surrounding this core feels so disjointed. A story that lacks momentum outside of a few moments, mission design that reveals all its nuance in a matter of minutes, and a cumbersome progression system interrupted by walls

Stevivor - Hamish Lindsay - 6 / 10

Bungie fixed Destiny. Massive fixed The Division. Bioware have all the pieces of the puzzle, but right now Anthem isn’t living up to its potential. It’s bad, but not so bad it can’t be fixed.

Critical Hit - Darryn Bonthuys - 6 / 10

Anthem may look like a slick blend of action and exploration all wrapped up in some shiny armour, but beneath its surface lies a game that is riddled with bugs, shallow world-building and a paint by numbers approach to its design.

Geeks Under Grace - Joe Morgan - 6 / 10

Anthem is like playing in a mud puddle. It's a mess, but it's fun. It features fun third-person shooter combat with likable characters. Unfortunately, the rest of the experience is marred by technical bugs, bad design decisions, and poor pacing. You'll have a good time when all the gears are turning, but the downtime may cause death by a thousand papercuts.

Cheat Code Central - 3 / 5

Anthem is a game that tries to be an answer to Destiny’s popularity and even seeks to answer some of the issues people have with that game. At the same time, it ends up feeling derivative, and any fatigue you have with Destiny is likely to carry over

God is a Geek - Mick Fraser - 6 / 10

Despite some new ideas and a core gameplay loop that does its best to carry the experience, Anthem is ultimately a bit of a disappointment from BioWare

Daily Dot - AJ Moser - 3 / 5 stars

If BioWare can salvage the great gameplay ideas the game is built on and streamline some of the obtuse checklists, maybe Anthem will become the engrossing, living world I wanted it to be. But maybe I’m searching for something that was never there.

SA Gamer - Garth Holden - 6 / 10

Anthem has moments that shine out and feel amazing, but you have to push through too much drudgery to reach those moments.

Flickering Myth - Shaun Munro - 5.5 / 10

Slick flying and gunplay collide with infuriating design choices throughout Anthem. But its biggest problem is a lack of soul – this is a cynical, committee-produced product bereft of any significant creative spark.

PC Gamer - Steven Messner - 55 / 100

Anthem's disjointed story, boring loot, repetitive missions, and shallow endgame are all disappointing. At least it's pretty.

Merlin'in Kazanı - Furkan Güler - Turkish - 55 / 100

We are really afraid, because Anthem could be last game we seen from BioWare. The game has big issues from both gameplay and performance aspects. The lack of content is biggest problem of it.

Gadgets 360 - Rishi Alwani - 5 / 10

That said, great combat and traversal alone don't do enough to warrant playing Anthem right now. Poorly thought out progression, grating characters, and inconsistent performance make EA's answer to Destiny and The Division one to skip until after a major update or two hits.

GamingBolt - Will Borger - 5 / 10

When everything clicks, Anthem is great. But it is a game with major flaws, and how much you enjoy it will depend on both your ability to tolerate them and BioWare's ability to fix them.

PC Invasion - Jason Rodriguez - 2.5 / 5 stars

Anthem offers near unlimited potential, with certain features, taken separately, representing a marvel in design. Combined together and it proves to have a lot of style but very little substance.

Fandom - James Pickard - 2.5 / 5

Right now, though, Anthem is in a bad state –- and no patches or performance improvements are going to be a quick enough fix to solve the fundamental problems that make it such an unfulfilling game

Game Revolution - Mack Ashworth - 2.5 / 5 stars

Unfortunately, I feel like fixing this game goes beyond patching glitches, fixing bugs, and then cramming in expansions.

USgamer - Mike Williams - 2.5 / 5 stars

Anthem is a frustrating experience. There's a core gameplay idea that's fun, but it's not enough to keep the experience alive in endgame and beyond. It wants to sell us on flying and combat, but Grandmaster levels stop that dead. It offers a wide world to explore, but offers no reason to do so. Anthem ultimately doesn't feel like the best BioWare can do, and that's a horrible shame.

Screen Rant - Cody Gravelle - 2.5 / 5 stars

Anthem has a few good ideas, but it struggles under the weight of its own gameplay mechanics and some truly baffling design decisions.

GamesRadar+ - Sam Loveridge - 2.5 / 5 stars

Anthem is ultimately severely flawed, and very unfinished. There's half a good game in there, but it doesn't do enough to diminish the overall feeling of emptiness and repetition.

RPG Site - Natalie Flores - 5 / 10

Anthem feels less like an evolution for BioWare and more like a deviation into conformity.

Niche Gamer - 5 / 10

I’d be remiss not to mention that I personally really enjoy looter shooters, way back to Borderlands in 2009, and I actually adore Destiny (fight me). There was a part of me that really hoped this would be Bioware’s comeback, but that just wasn’t meant to be. Anthem doesn’t just not reach the bar set by others, it doesn’t even attempt to reach for it.

Shacknews - Ozzie Mejia - 5 / 10

Right now, Anthem is not good. And given what's come out of BioWare in the past and the kinds of lasting, impactful experiences that the gaming world knows BioWare is capable of delivering, that's truly sad.

Push Square - Robert Ramsey - 5 / 10

Given time, ANTHEM could slowly start to bloom into a much more cohesive experience, but the worry is that it won't be given a chance. There's a good game in here somewhere, but only the flashy, satisfying combat stands out amongst a background mess of shockingly bad design decisions and woefully undercooked systems. ANTHEM feels unfinished and, frankly, undeserving of your time when there are much better live titles currently available on PS4. Check back in a year from now, and we might be onto something.

Cultured Vultures - Ashley Bates - 5 / 10

Though the core gameplay loop of getting better loop will undoubtedly hook players in, Anthem currently doesn't offer enough original content to make the investment worth it.

NoobFeed - Adam Siddiqui - 50 / 100

The starting moments of Anthem are truly amazing, with breathtaking environments, a promising story, and the ability to take to the sky at will. This excitement eventually fades as you continue forward on your journey to kill hordes of the same enemies to obtain lackluster loot and explore the same areas. Anthem looks and plays like it should be better than it is but suffers rigorously from repetitive gameplay, bland loot, and tiresome characters.

Guardian - Rick Lane - 2 / 5 stars

BioWare's shooter jets promisingly into battle on a stunning alien world, but what unfolds is patchy

Telegraph - Tom Hoggins - 2 / 5 stars

It would be easy to write off the bewildering state that Anthem is in as the result of video game design by committee.

The Angry Joe Show - Joe Vargas - 4 / 10

Video Review - Quote not available

Eurogamer - Oli Welsh - No Recommendation / Blank

Beautiful, broken, with flashes of brilliance, Anthem is a disorganised mess in search of a reason to be.

Polygon - Russ Frushtick - Unscored

Anthem trips over itself trying to blend two genres into one

Ars Technica - Sam Machkovech - Unscored

Wait until EA finishes the game, if that ever happens.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Alice Bell - Unscored

I want to want to spend more time with it, because there are bits of it I really enjoy. But it needs more than the world map to change a bit, or have seasons, or better social interaction. It needs changes to how it actually works, which is a lot to ask. But the biggest fight I’ve had with Anthem so far is against Anthem.

Tech Advisor - Dominic Preston, Lewis Painter - Unscored

We only had a taste of what Anthem’s end-game has to offer, and we can’t wait to see what else the developer has in store for players over the coming weeks and months.

AngryCentaurGaming - Jeremy Penter - Never Touch

Video Review - Quote not available

Skill Up - Ralph Panebianco - Unscored

Video Review - Quote not available

TrustedReviews - Jade King - Unscored

The core of Anthem – being its fearsome gunplay and angelic flight mechanics – are stellar, yet they’re held back by the mission structure that dictates them.

 

[prudis]

i see lots of clenched butcheeks to score GaaS title with a number ... fascinatig to see after the slaughter of F76

 

[Le Pertti]

Without Apex EA wouldn't be doing so good. They haven't had much luck lately.

 

[lashman]

Without Apex EA wouldn't be doing so good. They haven't had much luck lately.

yeah, kinda sad

 

[Ge0force]

It seems Respawn is my only hope for decent games from EA.

 

[lashman]

It seems Respawn is my only hope for decent games from EA.

seems like it and it's a shame too

 

[K-putt]

All the talent and IP's EA has.. and they do this. Not the biggest fan of EA and how they do things, but this is still unexpected in how bad it's reviewing.

 

[lashman]

All the talent and IP's EA has.. and they do this. Not the biggest fan of EA and how they do things, but this is still unexpected in how bad it's reviewing.

yeah, exactly .... i was expecting 8s and 9s (regardless of actual quality) ... but this is just ... yikes

 

[prudis]

I guess time has come

 

[freshVeggie]

Anthem looked painfully bland and generic way since it's first showing.
But I'm still surprised how low reviews are so far.
BioWare's second strike.

 

[xist]

I doubt I'll ever play this but I kind of expect a No Man's Sky reversal at some point. There's a lot of talent and/or potential involved in the game so there's still a chance things could change for the better.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

It's about where i figured it would be at launch but i'm hoping it's the usual GAAS situation where it'll improve over the next year... IF it can keep enough people engaged to make it worth it. GAAS is certainly looking a lot more like "Early -Access" to me unfortunately. Not a problem though as i can choose either a BF5 or Anthem key with the code i got with my new card and i'm leaning towards Anthem.

I wish them good luck but any GAAS game is going to have to look pretty damned special for me to pay to jump in near launch and that's not to mention the MTX considerations. Also i don't tend to have many friends who play the same games as i do so i don't really have an "Online Crew" that most of these games are aimed at. Shame as it seems Sony are going the same way next-gen. Oh well, i've always had Nintendo and PC as my mainstays and i can't see that changing much any time soon.

 

[lashman]

It's about where i figured it would be at launch but i'm hoping it's the usual GAAS situation where it'll improve over the next year... IF it can keep enough people engaged to make it worth it. GAAS is certainly looking a lot more like "Early -Access" to me unfortunately. Not a problem though as i can choose either a BF5 or Anthem key with the code i got with my new card and i'm leaning towards Anthem.

I wish them good luck but any GAAS game is going to have to look pretty damned special for me to pay to jump in near launch and that's not to mention the MTX considerations. Also i don't tend to have many friends who play the same games as i do so i don't really have an "Online Crew" that most of these games are aimed at. Shame as it seems Sony are going the same way next-gen. Oh well, i've always had Nintendo and PC as my mainstays and i can't see that changing much any time soon.

yeah ... gaas sure looks like the AAA version of early access, doesn't it?

 

[prudis]

Yep sadly unline the Early Access ... people seem to go nuts about EAAArly Gaaasccess

 

[Milena]

From the very beginning I was wondering why they decided to make this. It always looked super boring to me...

 

[lashman]

updated reviews and score in the OP to the current ones and ... yikes!

 

[Prodigy]

I played a few hours with premier, but I have just uninstalled the game.

I can see myself returning in a years time after patches and content drops. There is a foundation for a great game, but they need to take the lessons from this and apply it to future DLC. Definitely disappointing though, so I'm glad I only got it through my subscription.

 

[TheVectronic]

Just heard from a couple of friends of mine who are deep into Destiny 2 & I found the perfect comic to describe how they feel about Anthem.

 

[Smash]

I think this is one of those games where in a few years it will turn out to be decent (potentially), depending on how much backing they put in the upcoming months/years.

 

[Ge0force]

I think this is one of those games where in a few years it will turn out to be decent (potentially), depending on how much backing they put in the upcoming months/years.

The question is how many people will still be interested in Anthem in a few years, when there are so many new games to play?

 

[Ex-User (307)]

I don't want to just say "I told you so," but I genuinely thought Anthem looked about as interesting as a wet fart when they first showed it in 2017.

The problem that Anthem has in terms of doing a "fix" a la Rainbow 6 Siege, Destiny, FFXIV or NMS is pretty huge: where's the hook?

• Rainbow 6 Siege's release, from what I recall, was mostly a technical mess and content drought. People felt like there weren't enough modes/maps/operators, and that some of the finer technical details like gun modifications and hit detection where off. But behind the issues, people who put time in could pretty quickly tell that there was a neat, tactical base to be built on if Ubisoft gave it a chance.
• Destiny's release was pretty similar as far as I remember, with the main issues being that people felt like there wasn't enough content, not enough (good) story and too repetitive of an end-level grind. But again, people could tell that there was something worth playing because of how smooth and good the gunplay felt. So even when there were droughts, people still kept playing the PvP, because the gunplay was so enjoyable.
• FFXIV was another game where there was an interesting world, but it was bogged down by overcomplicated systems, poor technical optimization, a clunky engine and bad server structure. But that game is unique probably in the history of all games, because A) it almost destroyed Square Enix, B) It was actually literally rebooted from the ground up, not just "fixed."

I don't see what Anthem has in comparison. It doesn't seem to have the particularly interesting story or lore that FFXIV suggested it might have one day. It doesn't have the tactical, cerebral, niche gameplay that Rainbow 6 had, which encouraged players interested in that hardcore niche to stick around. It doesn't have the fluid, smooth PvP to hold people over that Bungie did, both in the original Destiny and even in Destiny 2.

So how does BioWare hold onto whatever playerbase it gets for the months, if not years, that it's going to take to fix this mess?