Adam Beck is an Editor-at-Large at DualShockers with more than two decades of experience covering the video game industry. He began writing about games in 2003, with his first published review covering Disgaea: Hour of Darkness for PlayStation 2, and has since written news, reviews, previews, features, guides, and interviews across a wide range of genres.
Before DualShockers, Adam contributed to outlets including Hardcore Gamer and Advanced Media Network, and has experience managing writers as well as covering major industry events such as E3, GDC, Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival, and private preview events. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems.
When it comes to live service gacha games, there’s no better than HoYoverse (miHoyo). The Chinese-based studio made a name for themselves a decade ago with Honkai: Impact 3rd, but it wasn’t until Genshin Impact that things truly took off. This eventually spawned off major titles such as Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero shortly after. While they all share similar aspects to their free-to-play model, each game is drastically different from one another. Whether it’s the combat variance or visual aesthetics, there’s no denying the developer’s dedication to trying something new.
The next couple of projects fit into this mold entirely, with Nodusfall going beyond all expectations and Petit Planet falling under a cozy, Animal Crossing-esque adventure. There’s another project in Hoyoverse’s wheelhouse, but only from an aesthetic perspective: Honkai: Nexus Anima. The next spin-off for the beloved franchise, we are introduced to a creature collecting adventure with Auto Chess mechanics.
Narratively, Honkai: Nexus Anima has a unique storytelling method. It almost feels like a session of D&D where every motion, emotion or action is expressed by a narrator. To a certain degree, it does feel like it’s meant to hide some of the rather simple animations during dialogue exchanges, but it does add a different and more appealing approach that we weren’t expecting.
To that, it almost feels like you need to sit down and listen to everything that’s being said, because every interaction is unique and, while not all are meaningful, they are portrayed in such a compelling way. It’s like we’re playing Baldur’s Gate 3 but in the anime-styled world of Honkai.
Honkai: Nexus Anima is drastically different from what we’ve come to expect from the Honkai brand. Honkai: 3rd Impact is more of an action game while Star Rail is a turn-based RPG. When looking at Nexus Anima, it looked like a standard creature collector with a twist, but the twist is that it’s more of an auto battler in the form of something like DOTA’s Auto Chess.
You essentially place down Anima that are obtained by finding them in the world and taming them. Once they are acquired, you are able to place them down in a battle and have them get to work. It almost feels like it’s an event pulled from Honkai: Star Rail, but this has been built to be a full-fledged experience.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.dualshockers.com/gamescom-2026-honkai-nexus-anima-preview/
