Some folks will tell you that comparisons are a lazy crutch for critics. Don’t tell your reader what a game is like; tell them how it stands on its own merits. The problem is that game design is an iterative process. One of the first video games was *Tennis for Two*, but the first breakout hit was eerily similar, yet much more refined: *Pong*. Hell, we used to call FPS games “Doom clones.” Comparison is a useful tool because so much of game design is based on iterating on the competition.
**Ananta: The Everything Bagel Game**
Ananta takes this logical endpoint by essentially acting as a blender to emulsify popular game mechanics together for something bizarrely unique in its sheer lack of new ideas.
So, what is NetEase’s next big game? Well, to use that useful crutch, it is one part *Grand Theft Auto* open world, one part *Batman Arkham* combat. There’s a dash of *Like A Dragon’s* zany side-missions, a touch of *Spider-Man* movement, alongside some of the bones of a linear Sony first-party action game. There is also a sprinkle of *Persona* character building.
All of this is held loosely together with anime aesthetics and a gacha structure that amounts to a game feeling like a dozen experiences you’ve had before—but somehow less than the sum of its many parts.
In many ways, it’s like an everything bagel. Or, more accurately, it’s like when you were a kid and your friends mixed every flavor drink at the freestyle machine for something truly nightmarish. Ananta isn’t going to make you want to throw up like a Coke-Pepsi-Seven-Up-milk combo drink, but even after a thirty-minute demo, I could tell its “everything, everywhere, all at once” design approach makes me wince in places.
None of these elements are bad—in fact, in isolation, they are excellent distillations of the core ideas borrowed from other games. Developer Naked Rain clearly understands that video game innovation comes from iteration. However, when this many elements are combined after being recreated so authentically, the disparate pieces quickly rub against each other, causing friction in the act of playing Ananta.
**Concessions in the Name of Volume**
This first became clear as soon as I started playing. The demo kicks off with a story mission, where our Spider-Man-in-a-business-suit is ambushed by countless assailants. This introduces the first combat form: hand-to-hand Arkham-style brawling.
In theory, this combat should play out like a *Batman: Arkham* game, or *Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor*, or even *Mad Max*—take your pick. However, in practice, many controller buttons are reserved for movement abilities used in the open world, pushing punching and blocking to the shoulder buttons. The result? A combat experience that feels much less comfortable.
This discomfort is further exacerbated when you switch to guns. The triggers are reserved for special moves, so aiming and shooting end up on the shoulder buttons as well. During the scripted mission I played—featuring a car chase—it was nearly impossible to fail. In these segments, you magically forgo reloading with your assault rifle and unleash an endless barrage of bullets.
These issues aren’t deal breakers per se, but each element seems to cede ground to others just to keep the game functioning.
Ananta also features GTA-inspired driving. I describe it as GTA-like because the driving model resembles that of *GTA* rather than other open-world driving games. But why would you ever use the car when playing as the main character, “the Captain,” who can literally swing above traffic at twice the speed? Or when you can fast travel via the subway, complete with Spider-Man-esque loading screens showing the Captain commuting with city locals?
**Gacha Theft Auto**
It’s worth noting that this gameplay diversity is somewhat justified both narratively and structurally. Ananta will apparently be a free-to-play gacha game, meaning you’ll control an ever-growing cast of characters, expanded through continuous pulls.
So it makes sense that one character controls like Peter Parker while another uses an electric unicycle to get around quickly. In fact, gacha mechanics seem to be one of the few systems cleanly integrated with the overall GTA-like open world.
You can create a roster of three characters to swap between quickly through a “zoom out on a world map and zoom back in” menu, straight out of *GTA 5*. You usually pick up with your new character in the middle of a funny little encounter.
Keeping up the pattern of borrowing beloved mechanics, the character building of *GTA: San Andreas* is present as well. After trying some side missions, I took one of my characters to the gym to level them up—just like CJ trying to get cut.
Are gacha pulls and character leveling really something I wanted in my GTA-like game? Not really. I can’t exactly see myself excited to spend money pulling a legendary future cop. However, I’m likely in the minority, considering the game’s recent TGS trailer has over five million views on the official PlayStation YouTube channel alone.
**Like Like A Dragon**
After all that, and having played the game myself, I still can’t help but wonder: what am I doing in Ananta? What is this game?
Yes, it will have a main narrative focusing on the Captain, with set pieces and all that, but what about the roster of gacha characters? Why would I continue investing time and money into a free-to-play GTA-like?
It seems that each character you gain will have their own set of missions—some leaning into the wackiness of *Like A Dragon* sub-stories, with the structure of GTA filler content.
In the mission I played, I was tasked with delivering a mysterious crate in the back of a kei truck. After a quick hand-to-hand brawl and some driving, it became clear the crate held a sleeping vampire who woke up due to our vomit-inducing driving. Yeah, I don’t really know either.
The mission capped off with a pretty funny sequence where the bunnygirl I was playing as was recruited to continue making similar deliveries before she could protest.
While the cutscene was fun, it made me realize I was partaking in the much-derided GTA mission structure, which has rightly been called out as padded filler since *GTA 3*. I drove somewhere, beat up some guys, got in a car, listened to character dialogue during the ride, and finished the mission.
Games like *Genshin Impact* and *Honkai Star Rail* have similarly repetitive mission structures, but their gameplay is inherently more engaging moment to moment. Genshin’s exploration and Honkai’s turn-based combat both create a satisfying rhythm for completing dailies.
I’m skeptical that I would find similar joy driving the same streets over and over again in missions like the one I played in Ananta.
**Less Is More**
The more I think about it, the more Ananta feels like the everything bagel of video games. It sounds great on paper: a bunch of all the things I love, loaded with all the toppings. But halfway through eating an everything bagel, I always have the same thought: “I kinda wish I was just having a poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese. Nothing fancy, but doing one thing better than anyone else.”
I may end up eating my words, but I wish Ananta was doing less.
The idea of an anime-style GTA-like game is fun, but with so many systems and ideas taken wholesale from other games, it ends up cluttering itself with constant bloat. While gaming innovation often starts with borrowing good ideas and building on them, yanking a dozen different ideas together and adding nothing new may only lead to an overcomplicated bagel.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146329/anantas-kitchen-sink-approach-to-game-design-is-as-overwhelming-as-it-is-impressive