Honkai Nexus Anima Hands-On Preview: When Pokemon & Team Fight Tactics Combine

Creature feature turn-based role-playing game Pokemon and its plethora of mothership entries from GameFreak are so popular, other game companies are eventually going to make their own. Digimon, Monster Rancher, PalWorld: while the gameplay is different, the concept of cutesie mascot-style pets and freaks will never die out.

So naturally, China’s own game-making juggernaut MiHoyo are doing the same, and in 2026 no less, where the genre is still abuzz with its passionate audience. Their proverbial hat in the pocket monster ring is called Honkai Nexus Anima, and it’s a “something borrowed, something new” type design situation.

Stay Connected

In a nutshell, Honkai Nexus Anima combines two popular genres in this generation of gaming: monster collection and autochess-slash-autobattlers. You play as an anime amnesiac as he/she figures out their main objective in the world(s) they’re stuck in, all while collecting as many pocket monsters called Anima to further the plot.

Just like my headline stated, it’s a hybrid of a Pokemon mothership title and Riot Games’ Team Fight Tactics. And it is as addictive as it sounds. The world you’re exploring and picking Anima fights in is pretty laid back and similar to other open-world F2P modern era cities you’ve explored in other similar China-made anime titles. It’s not a knock against the game’s aesthetic; a game about casual monster-collecting should have a more appropriate setting that isn’t tense. The actual monster collecting opens up more avenues for party-creation when auto-battling, not to mention additional rewards for filling up your Anima-recording journal.

Speaking of monster-collecting, you will need to amass your own army of pocket monsters to fight against many collectors and opponents. Battles in Honkai Nexus Anima are done in real-time strategy combat style: you lay out your Anima units and once the round starts, they attack the opposition automatically. You can turn the tides of battle by using Eidon abilities; characters you meet will lend you their “super moves” ranging from flinging two slices of bread as single-target damage to summoning food to heal and buff all your units. While it may seem brain-dead at first, you can strategize by either finding the right Eidon abilities to equip (up to three) to using Anima of the same class. For instance, using three Reality-class Anima will add more passive buffs and abilities while using more Strength-class Anima will make them hit harder with melee attacks. I opt to use more Sustenance-class Anima like the food-themed freaks I amassed so that it complements with my Sustenance-based Eidon for more health and regeneration buffs in the long-term.

While most combat situations are one-off fights, you will eventually have to partake in rank-increasing gauntlets where you go through a roguelite level setup, getting temporary level-ups as power-ups through the multi-stage encounter using the currency you collect. So far in my beta playthrough, I have gone pretty far by focusing on the recommended Anima I was temporarily given. Said Anima was Strength class-themed, so most of the roguelite buffs were focused on that class, so my smart play was to focus on making a party with my existing Strength-class Anima to get ahead. Pretty soon, my giant tomato freak and ranged plant creature all levelled up pretty high with my sword-wielding fox Anima to take on 12 bouts of pocket monster-brawling, all for the sake of ranking up my main character to partake in more meaty story missions. Which also means rarer pocket monster-collecting.

That is the crux of Honkai Nexus Anima, and it’s all the more alluring thanks to developer MiHoyo’s creative minds in making up Anima that isn’t so legally distinct from GameFreak’s Pokémon series. In fact, I daresay that the majority of Anima -from your beauty-laden cute storks and foxes with bushy tails to koala bears with coffee fed through their IV drip- are way more creative than recent new Pokémon entries. To which I say: Nintendo and GameFreak, you really need to step your pocket monster-making game up because MiHoyo is going to eat your lunch in due time, especially when they make plushies of their trademark horse and cat-hybrid Animas.

My Little Pony (and Bear, and Cat Milk Carton Hybrid, and…)

Is Honkai Nexus Anima a good mix of familiar gameplay types and tropes? Yes it is, thanks to MiHoyo’s brand of polish for its free-to-play games similar to Genshin Impact, ZZZ, and the Honkai games before this one. Granted, the beta does feel complete but it’ll be a while until we get a 1.0 version and dish out our full thoughts about it. There’s a ton of tropes if you’re into anime gacha games, and the plot gets a bit more confusing over time as per the MiHoyo standard. But the gameplay and creature collectathon-slash-exploration mechanic feels meaty enough for you to plough through it for hours on end. The beta does dish out a good bite-sized amount of awesome gameplay loops and exploration, but whether it has more staying power like MiHoyo’s previous titles is only solvable through the passage of time.

No release date has been announced for Honkai Nexus Anima, but it is scheduled to be released for PC and mobile (iOS/Android).