Game Review: Anime vs. Evil: Apocalypse

By Al

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

Anime vs. Evil: Apocalypse (Referred to as simply "Anime vs. Evil" from here on out.) is a third-person shooter that recently dropped onto consoles following an earlier Steam release. It's out now on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, and we're going to be taking a look at the Switch version today. Though it bears a slight resemblance to the ecchi themed games we've reviewed in the past, it seemingly offers quite a bit more in terms of gameplay. Is that enough for it to be worth picking up? Let's dive in and find out!

Seeing as I don't really know what to say about this game's story, I'm going to copy it exactly as it appears in the eShop description: "In Anime vs Evil you will fight the monsters that take over the whole world by mystical polygonal magic. Find the survivors, look for the supplies, beat the story mode and finally finish with this mess!" It's not often that I cut and paste stuff like that for a review, but I honestly can't tell you much more about the game than that. Each Story Mode stage has cutscenes that bookend the beginning and the end, but they don't make a whole lot of sense. They mostly serve as an excuse to get the player to some other location, and to unlock another anime girl. I guess I can applaud the game for bothering with a story at all, but the entire afterthought vibe makes me unsure if I should do that. Toss in the fact that both the writing and the voice acting seem like they were done via AI, and I'm at an even bigger loss as to how to come to terms with this aspect of the game. I guess I could simply throw my hands into the air and say: "It could've been worse!" but even that seems to be giving Anime vs. Evil too much credit. I will at least say that the game does offer various characters to play through the game as, and there is a lot of variety to be found in their default forms and customization options, but I'm only starting this review and I'm already stumped as to how I feel about it overall. Hopefully things get better, but I for sure can't wait until I'm finished with this mess.

Anime vs. Evil is a third-person shooter that has a surprising amount of variety when it comes to weapon types and level layout. Even though that may sound like a promising way to open a paragraph discussing gameplay, it really isn't. Variety doesn't matter much when most if it feels pointless and unnecessary. Let's start with weapons. All weapons have unlimited ammo, with their damage output and reload speed being the only important things to consider. You can only carry one gun at a time, so it makes sense to go with something like the machine gun, which has decent damage and ammo. You're given a gun at random at the start of each stage, and I strongly suggest restarting if you're given anything but the machine gun. Don't get me wrong either, I tried every weapon in game, they're all just not as good as that one. Others may seem more powerful, but their slower output usually makes for a quick game over. Melee weapons operate separate from guns, and it's a good idea to get one early on too. Unfortunately you're not given a melee weapon at the start, so you have to find one if you want one. Additional weapons are usually found by way of performing in-game missions, or sometimes by floating item drops or chests. Missions are minigames that can be found on the map, and usually involve picking up a certain number of items, or taking out a certain number of enemies, within a set time limit. Some of these missions are required to complete the game, but many of them are just busy work. There are no proper "side missions" to speak of, so it really only makes sense to run to the stage's main objectives and complete only those. These core story missions pretty much always involve getting parts of a gate code that open the area to the stage's boss. These bosses are quite often dragons, and can be very annoying to fight at times. Dragons and a lot of pointless fluff... we're off to a great start.

I'll admit that I had quite a bit of fun with Anime vs. Evil early on, but then I began to notice how annoying and repetitive it can be. Enemies constantly respawn with no rhyme or reasons, so you'll always have to be on the move or watching your back. This may sound like normal a gameplay quirk, but everything here just feels so wonky. Levels are huge expansive areas, but feel like they're big simply for the sake of being big. There isn't much to them, and they feel needlessly padded out. Running across wide open areas may seem fun, but I never cared to venture out or explore anything. I simply wanted to get through the next gate, and get on my way. Missions themselves can be just as annoying too, as the game seems to have an spawn-in limit that can make them very hard to complete if you've let enemies live far from where the mission starts. This means you'll often have to repeat missions that time out, and just generally add to the other nonsense present in the game. Even though the game is really generous with health drops, the fact that death means you start over the current stage from the beginning just feels mean. My first time through the game I spent more than 30 minutes getting the most out the level, only to have the boss dragon take me out in about a minute. This made me simply rush to the end from then on, and I suggest you do the same. There is a system of buying items from an in-game ATM-like shop, but I rarely bothered with them beyond the occasional healing item purchase. So much of this game feels unfinished or poorly thought out. I'd hazard to say that the developers didn't anticipate anyone truly taking it very seriously to begin with due to how casually broken much of it feels. There's a part of me really wanted to like Anime vs. Evil, but there's so much that keeps that from happening.

Besides Story Mode, there are a few other ways one can play the game. One way to add a bit of spice to the gameplay is to change the character you're playing as. Characters are unlocked as you play through the game, and you can use in-game money to purchase new outfits for them. You're also able to adjust various aspects of their models. That latter point means that not only can you adjust their skin, hair, and clothing color, but you can also adjust their height, thigh size, and breast size too. You can slide all those to the max, and put them in the skimpiest of outfits, and get something resembling an ecchi game protagonist. Admittedly this game doesn't exactly pass itself off as an ecchi themed game, but I still think it's worth pointing out that it's very light on such content. Oh, and in case you're wondering, everything regarding characters is cosmetic only. They all play the same, and their visual upgrades change nothing in-game. Besides Story Mode you get Survival and Free Modes to play around with. Survival Mode is pretty much what you think, with waves of enemies coming at you until you die. Even though I spent a silly amount of time in this mode, it is a bit disappoint that every Survival Mode run becomes impossible not by the sheer number of enemies, but because they get stronger health-wise. Later waves of enemies require entire rounds of ammo to take out, and I'd much rather have been overrun by hundreds of zombies instead. I guess it's done this way for the sake of the game's performance, but it seems an odd way to raise the difficulty of later waves. Though Survival Mode is pretty pointless in the grand scheme of things, I did play it a lot nonetheless. I guess there's something to be said about mowing down dozens of enemies at a time to take the edge off of a bad day. Free Mode is simply playing through the Story Mode levels with no set objectives. I guess you can use this to learn the layout of the stages better, but I really don't see the point of its inclusion.

I have essentially the same things to say about Anime vs. Evil's graphics and sound, so I'll cover them together now. While the in-game character models and environments won't be winning any awards for their originality and design, I didn't particularly think they were bad either. They are very random though, and that randomness made me feel that the entire game was most likely one huge asset flip. I find it hard to believe that all the enemies, the boss dragons, and the anime girls, were all specifically created for this one game. Then there's the music and sound effects. Just the same as with the graphics, they have a generic feel to them too. Nothing about the sound design stands out, even though I didn't think it was nearly as mid as the visuals. The problem is that so much of the game gets by with the bare minimum, that being "just okay" has to have a limit somewhere. Then there's the fact that many of the in-game customization options, like the purchasable outfits, don't seem to properly be rendered in-game. There are no real performance issues to speak of here, but seeing the game have trouble rendering a few outfits takes away any positives I might've tossed in otherwise. Lastly, and my biggest issue of all, has to be the voice acting. I mentioned it already earlier, but I am practically 100% certain that this game uses AI for its voice acting, and I just can't get behind that at all. Like many projects that use AI tech in them, its inclusion makes me wonder if AI was used in other aspects of the game. While I can't say for certain it was, or even that it was used in the case of the voice acting I guess, it did leave a bad taste in my mouth regardless. Things just keep getting messier.

Normally I'd be pretty lenient on a game like this if as they're pretty much always released at a budget price, and I think it's unfair to judge a game like that against others that come with a more premium price tag. In short, I had more than a decent amount of fun with the game, there are a lot of customization and gameplay options to be had, and it even features multiple endings for those completionists out there. The problem is that this is no budget release. Coming in at a whopping $24.99, it almost feels insulting that the makers of this game are asking so much for it despite everything I've already mentioned. It's currently on sale at the time of this writing, and these are the kind of games that quite frankly tend to go on sale quite often, but I can't help but feel like Anime vs. Evil should be priced under ten dollars at best. I try to not let price get in the way of discussing a game's merits too much, but that literally could've been this game's big saving grace. There are simply too many other games out there that are several times better than this one with a far better price tag.

Even though I already went on longer than I thought I'd be able to for this review, I guess it's time to wrap it up. I think it's rather obvious that I'm going to say that it's best to pass on Anime vs. Evil: Apocalypse, so I guess we'll just leave it at that. It's really not a bad game, but its many questionable aspects make it hard to justify its current price point. There's simply no reason to play this over practically anything else. I had fun yes, but even I'd have to say that my time could've been spent elsewhere with much better use too. If you're looking for a game to play over the summer, get anything else. You can thank me later. See you in the next one!

Check Out Anime vs. Evil: Apocalypse on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/anime-vs-evil-apocalypse-switch/

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Story: C
Gameplay: C
Graphics: C
Music/Sound: C
Value: D

Overall: C-

Pros:
+ An action-packed shooter that has its fun moments.
+ There is a surprising amount of weapon variety to be had in-game.
+ Though the story isn't the best, it can be amusing at times.
+ Each of the game's stages are huge open areas with lots of things to see and do.
+ Character customization may be cosmetic only, but there's a lot of variety to it.

Cons:
- Though the stages are on the big side, most of them seem to be padded out with repetitive missions and large barren areas.
- Having to completely redo a stage if you die seems very mean-spirited considering each stages size.
- Difficulty balance is all over the place, and avoiding everything but the core missions is usually the only viable course of action.
- The graphics aren't exactly impressive, and the randomness of the enemies and stage elements make the game feel like an asset flip title.
- Not only are the music and sound effects largely forgettable, but the voice acting seems to be done with AI too.
- Has the content of a budget title, but at $24.99 it seems priced way above that.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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I forgot to mention that this game makes you do math!

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