Anthem’s rich storytelling and engaging combat lays the foundation for Bioware’s newest adventure. While there are plenty of quality of life improvements to be made, Anthem’s ambitious approach to the looter-shooter genre is encouraging given the development team’s steadfast community engagement. With a roadmap stretching far into the horizon, we’ll be flying around the world of Anthem for a long time to come.

The controls of Anthem are intuitive and engaging. Flying through the world of Bastion is a sight to behold, and coordinating with your team on higher difficulties like Grandmaster is rewarding. Despite some questionable design choices and shortcomings, Anthem has a strong foundation that has potential to be a genre leader, but isn’t quite there just yet.

Anthem is a painfully average RPG from a developer that is capable of so much more.

Anthem is a song that we've heard a few too many times before. Here's a game that promises a grand vision of an open world, of a co-op RPG shooter that you can play for dozens of hours with your friends, but at launch it simply doesn't live up to expectations. The core exosuit flying, the Javelin design, the interwoven combat and the gorgeous world BioWare have created are all excellent, but at launch it's lumbered by bugs, technical hitches and odd or uninspired design decision. I want to like this game, but sometimes it doesn't make it easy.

There’s no doubt that Anthem is beautiful, and its core of flying, shooting, looting, and upgrading your mech is fun. The campaign’s pacing is off, however, speeding through pivotal moments in the story and doling out filler content to keep players busy. Despite its cast of charismatic characters, many relationships and interactions feel forced and lifeless. Anthem’s biggest setback is how it too frequently turns fun into work.

Anthem's disjointed story, boring loot, repetitive missions, and shallow endgame are all disappointing. At least it's pretty.

Even where it is strongest, Anthem rarely stretches beyond the derivative. The combat, while well-designed, is little more than Gears of War with jetpacks, and narratively it veers between inconsequential and downright irritating. This anthem is, sadly, a tedious and conservative dirge that we’ve all heard before