HoYoverse's Honkai: Nexus Anima Mixes Auto Battlers and Pokémon Catching

A Genre Mashup That Actually Works

HoYoverse has never been shy about trying new things inside its sprawling ecosystem of games. Auto battler modes have appeared in Honkai: Star Rail’s endgame mode Currency Wars, and similar events have popped up in both Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, the latter featuring the beloved Bangboo characters. Whether those were deliberate testing grounds for something bigger is unclear, but the payoff appears to be Honkai: Nexus Anima, the studio’s latest release that fuses Teamfight Tactics-style auto battler strategy with Pokémon-esque creature catching.

Push Square’s Sammy Barker got hands-on time with the game’s recent closed beta, and his verdict is cautiously enthusiastic. “Having played the game’s recent closed beta for a few hours, I think it’s a compelling blend,” he writes. The basic loop has players capturing creatures out in the world and deploying them in tactical formations. Frontline monsters soak up damage while backline critters buff or heal, and placement matters alongside synergies between different roles and creature types. Barker admits he hasn’t yet cracked the full depth of the system, noting that unlocking it will require careful attention to statuses and build-crafting. The suggestion is that there is a lot of strategy to unpack, even if the closed beta only revealed the surface of it.

Where It Stands Next to Pokémon

The creature-catching angle is clearly the hook HoYoverse is leaning on, and Barker finds the open world more lively and interactive than what Game Freak typically delivers. The world itself draws comparisons to the busy urban environments of Honkai: Star Rail’s Planarcadia, the latest area in that game, though the creature and character designs are noted as not yet reaching the iconic standard Pokémon has spent decades building. That is, as Barker acknowledges, an almost unfair bar to hold any newcomer to.

Familiar faces from across the HoYoverse catalog show up, including Blade from Honkai: Star Rail and Otto from Honkai Impact 3rd, which gives longtime fans something to latch onto. The narrative, however, leaves Barker cold. He expresses fatigue with the studio’s habit of piling on proper nouns and subtitle fine print, writing that if he sees one more subtitle with smallprint explainers he might just explode. The world’s charm is evident, but the storytelling scaffolding around it is a familiar HoYoverse pain point.

The Gacha Question Looming Over the Creature Hunt

The more pointed concern is how the gacha system interacts with the game’s Pokémon ambitions. Players pull for both creatures and Trainers, the Eidoses who attach to your team and add additional strategic layers. Barker suspects Trainers will be paired with signature creatures in a manner similar to how weapons work in Genshin Impact, which would mean the strongest endgame compositions depend heavily on what you pull rather than what you hunt and catch out in the world. That tension could undercut the very fantasy the game appears to be selling.

The PS5 Question

For PlayStation fans, the most pressing uncertainty is platform availability. HoYoverse has found real success bringing Honkai: Star Rail to PS5, but Barker writes that Nexus Anima feels notably more mobile-centric than any of the studio’s previous titles. He tested the game on an iPad Mini, where it ran well in both long sessions and quick bursts. He believes adapting the controls to a DualSense would be straightforward enough, but questions whether that is where HoYoverse actually intends for the game to live.

No PS5 version has been announced. That absence is notable given how natural the jump has been for other HoYoverse titles, and it leaves one of the more interesting new creature-collecting games in recent memory sitting behind a platform question mark for console players.