Anomalith

I’ll be honest: survival horror isn’t really my thing outside of Resident Evil. But when I heard about a game featuring anime girls with guns and eerie liminal spaces wrapped in a cool Showa-era Japanese aesthetic, I was intrigued enough to give it a shot.

Developed by Furyu, a studio known for games that often receive mixed-to-poor reception, Anomalith had me approaching it with some reservations based on my past experiences with the developer’s titles. It’s a third-person survival horror shooter, set in an alternate Japan plagued by spatial distortions, and I certainly kept my expectations tempered.

However, this game pleasantly surprised me in some unexpected ways. While the combat and progression systems have their share of shortcomings, the eerie environments and twisted narrative kept me invested far more than I anticipated. The story, in particular, turned out to be a real highlight.

Story

The story drops you into the middle of an operation to investigate a newly formed Anomaly Zone. You play as Reona Minazuki, a newly recruited Diver who has just completed two weeks of training. Alongside her fellow Divers, she’s sent into the Anomaly Zone to eliminate the mutated enemies lurking within. While the opening feels a little abrupt, it introduces the key personnel at the Anomaly Zone Countermeasures Office and their distinct personalities. It also serves as a natural tutorial, giving players a feel for the controls and the game’s core structure.

At first, the premise seems fairly straightforward: you’re a soldier fighting to survive in a nearly post-apocalyptic world overrun by mysterious anomalies. However, the Office’s leadership hints almost from the very start that there’s more going on beneath the surface, particularly regarding Reona herself. Flashbacks to before she became a Diver reveal how she and a friend survived a traumatic incident at a shopping mall when the Anomaly Zones first appeared. These glimpses gradually connect Reona’s search for her missing friend to the larger mysteries surrounding the Office and the anomalies themselves.

As the narrative unfolds, several unexpected revelations take the story in surprising directions. I won’t spoil the details, but what initially seems like a fairly familiar premise gradually develops into something much more intriguing. I became increasingly invested in uncovering the truth, and I especially liked the direction the story took toward the end. The various pieces of the mystery come together in a way that left me satisfied, making the narrative one of the game’s biggest strengths.

The characters and dialogue also help bring the story to life. The writer Romeo Tanaka had shared that Reona was designed after Leon from the Resident Evil games, and the game clearly pays that homage in her cool, nonchalant attitude as she kicks butt on Dives. The supporting cast features a range of contrasting personalities, though some occasionally lean into familiar character tropes associated with their roles at the Office. Still, their interactions add personality to the world and provide some memorable moments.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the side quests. The ones I played had their own interesting storylines, giving me a reason to care about them even when they sent me back into Anomaly Zones I’d already explored during the main campaign. They add some welcome depth to the world beyond the central mission.

Gameplay and Combat

Combat is one of the more mixed aspects of Anomalith. The game takes clear inspiration from modern Resident Evil, particularly entries like Resident Evil 4, by blending survival horror with action-oriented combat, weapon upgrades, and character progression. It’s a direction I can appreciate, especially when it leads to tense encounters and satisfying boss fights. Unfortunately, Anomalith struggles to bring these elements together, with uneven pacing and some tedious systems that often undermined its stronger ideas.

Gunplay is central to the combat, with five weapon categories to choose from: pistols, submachine guns, shotguns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles. Each category features different weapon models to discover and upgrade through exploration and crafting. Ammunition and other useful items can be found throughout the zones or dropped by defeated enemies, while a dynamic drop system increases the likelihood of finding resources you’re running low on. This reminded me of the system in the Resident Evil 4 remake, helping keep supplies coming when you need them most. Headshots deal the most damage, rewarding accurate aim. Although aim assist is available, I didn’t feel the need to use it, even as someone who’s less comfortable playing shooters with a controller than with a keyboard and mouse.

The shooting feels satisfying though basic, with firearms offering distinct recoil and firing characteristics. When enemies close in, encounters can become tense, particularly when you’re down to your last few rounds and a mutant is bearing down on you. Aiming while moving with a controller can be tricky, which makes successfully dodging an attack and landing the shots needed to take out an enemy all the more rewarding.

The mutants themselves are another highlight. Their designs are often unsettling, and one enemy in particular reminded me of the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who, advancing toward you whenever you’re not looking directly at it. Needless to say, encounters with that thing were particularly unnerving! The variety of enemies across the Anomaly Zones also encourages you to adapt your tactics as the difficulty increases.

One small tip I’d recommend early on is to check the settings and enable the option to have running set as the default. Having to repeatedly switch between walking and running became tedious, especially when attempting to dodge attacks or navigating packed areas with enemies. Keeping running enabled made movement feel much more natural.

Reona also has more moves beyond her firearms. The anomalies have altered her dominant arm, giving her access to powerful melee attacks that can finish off stunned enemies or deal damage at close range while conserving ammunition. These abilities consume stamina, which you can replenish by shooting enemies or sacrificing some of your health through the Demi-Humanization System. This adds another layer to combat, forcing you to consider when it’s worth getting up close rather than relying on your guns.

A skill tree lets you unlock additional melee attacks and other abilities, ranging from defensive moves like upgraded parrying to powerful attacks with lengthy cooldowns. These skills can come in handy during boss fights, which were among my favorite parts of the combat. Each encounter features varied attack patterns that call for different strategies. Some bosses make creative use of the environment, while others test your timing by requiring you to fire your weapons at just the right moment. I also appreciated that breakable objects in boss arenas would yield ammunition and healing items, giving the player a chance to replenish supplies mid-fight. These opportunities encourage you to go all out rather than worry about conserving every last resource.

Unfortunately, regular encounters don’t always offer the same level of engagement. There were plenty of situations where I could run straight past enemies without taking damage, sometimes even bypassing major encounters altogether. As enemies became tougher later in the game, I found myself doing this more often to save ammunition and healing items for upcoming boss fights. When supplies are limited, skipping a fight can feel like the sensible choice, but it also makes you question why you should engage with those encounters in the first place.

This is where Anomalith‘s survival horror mechanics start to work against one another. Melee attacks help conserve ammunition, but their stamina cost makes close-range combat risky, especially when healing items are scarce. Limited ammunition can also make relying on firearms difficult. Although balancing the two becomes increasingly important as the game progresses, resource pressure often made avoiding combat more appealing than experimenting with the different systems. Scarcity can create tension in survival horror, but here, it sometimes discourages engagement rather than making encounters more exciting.

Progression adds to this problem. Weapons, skills, and other upgrades require materials, and unlocking more options can involve considerable grinding outside the main story. Despite regularly clearing enemies and exploring the zones, I only unlocked a fraction of the available crafting options and skill tree upgrades. The game places considerable emphasis on improving your equipment and developing Reona’s abilities at the Office hub, but the amount of extra farming required to find compatible objects in the zones made progression feel like a chore.

Inventory management is another common survival horror mechanic. Items occupy different amounts of space in a grid-based inventory, so fitting weapons, ammunition, healing items, and other supplies together can feel like playing Tetris. In theory, this should create the familiar tension of deciding what to bring into each zone, what to leave behind, and whether it’s worth making room for one more item.

In practice, those decisions don’t always carry much weight. Designated portals scattered throughout the zones let you save your progress, return to the Office, or send items back to base to be used for upgrades later. However, portal spacing can make inventory management becomes tedious. More importantly, you can drop items on the ground and return for them later, including when you’ve reached an activated portal. This makes many inventory decisions feel arbitrary. Rather than having to commit to what you bring and make meaningful sacrifices, you can often leave items behind temporarily and retrieve them when it’s convenient.

Anomalith seems caught between survival horror and action. It has the weapons, abilities, and upgrade systems to support more action-oriented combat, but its resource restrictions and inventory management suggest a game built around careful planning and difficult choices. Unlike modern Resident Evil, which often balances these elements to complement one another, Anomalith struggles to make its systems feel cohesive. The result is an experience that can swing between engaging boss fights and tedious stretches of gameplay without quite finding its rhythm.

Presentation

One of Anomalith’s biggest strengths is its atmosphere and environmental design. Each Anomaly Zone has its own visual identity, transforming familiar spaces into something unsettling through warped architecture, distorted landscapes, and eerie liminal spaces. The Showa-era Japanese aesthetic also gives these environments a nostalgic quality that contrasts with the bizarre phenomena lurking within them.

Although the environments lack some of the detail found in modern games, the simpler art direction works in their favor. Rather than overwhelming you with visual clutter, the spaces emphasize emptiness and isolation, making familiar surroundings feel strangely alien. I found myself drawn to exploring these quiet, distorted environments, never quite knowing what I might encounter next. The visual themes also carry over into the final boss’s design and combat, creating a satisfying connection between the world and its climactic encounter.

The soundtrack helps establish the atmosphere, particularly when the tension starts to build, but much of the music fades into the background. Few tracks left a lasting impression on me, with the ending theme being a notable exception that I particularly enjoyed.

Character customization is another welcome addition. You can craft different pieces of gear to change Reona’s appearance, and I appreciated that these outfits carried over into cutscenes. Some of the designs are pretty amusing, especially when the sillier-looking gear comes with better defensive stats. However, unlocking the various designs and upgrades ties back into the crafting system, which can make customization feel more grind-heavy than I would have liked.

The character models also have a distinct charm. Their anime designs feel slightly retro-inspired but still modern, giving the cast a unique look that suits the game’s overall aesthetic. I particularly liked the animated character portraits during dialogue scenes, which add personality to conversations through a simple but effective presentation choice.

Anomalith features full Japanese voice acting, and the performances help bring the characters to life. Combat dialogue is also voiced, though it mostly consists of brief reactions and words of encouragement rather than story-critical lines. That’s probably for the best, since keeping track of subtitles while trying to line up a shot on an approaching enemy can be a challenge.

On the technical side, Anomalith offers both Graphics and Performance modes. Playing on a base PS5, I opted for Graphics mode because Performance mode’s rougher image quality made the visuals noticeably less appealing. While Performance mode aims to deliver smoother combat through a higher frame rate, I didn’t notice enough of an improvement to justify the visual downgrade.

Unfortunately, the game also has a few rough edges that detract from the experience. I encountered two crashes that forced the game to close unexpectedly. Thankfully, the autosave system meant I didn’t lose any meaningful progress. I also noticed smaller visual glitches, including floating models and interface icons that occasionally obstructed part of the screen while exploring. None of these issues completely derailed my experience, but they did detract from an otherwise distinctive presentation. As I played a pre-launch build, it’s worth keeping in mind that some of these issues may be addressed in future updates.

Overall, Anomalith’s Showa-era aesthetic and unsettling liminal spaces give it a distinct visual identity. While the soundtrack is less memorable and the technical issues are disappointing, the environmental design remains one of the game’s most compelling features.

Conclusion

Anomalith is a game of contrasts. Its combat and progression systems have some promising ideas, but uneven execution and tedious stretches of gameplay prevent it from reaching its full potential. The story, however, was genuinely enjoyable. What begins as a fairly familiar survival horror premise gradually unfolds into a much more twisted narrative, with unexpected turns that kept me invested until the end. Combined with a memorable cast and cool but eerie liminal environments, it gives the game a distinct identity that helps make up for its gameplay shortcomings.

I went into Anomalith expecting a fairly average shooter with an interesting aesthetic, but came away appreciating it for more than that. While the game could use some additional polish, its biggest issue is that it struggles to balance its survival horror and action RPG elements. Rather than sitting somewhere in between, I think it would benefit from committing more fully to one direction, allowing its mechanics to work together instead of occasionally working against each other. Even so, its unexpectedly compelling narrative, memorable characters, and unsettling liminal environments make it worth experiencing. Anomalith may stumble in its execution, but if you’re drawn to eerie, distorted spaces and stories that take genuinely surprising turns, there’s still plenty here to discover.