Masters of Anima

For the price I paid the first two missions alone were more than worth it.
The game has some issues though, the kind that you would expect in a small indie title, mainly it is not as responsible as you would like an RTS to be, you can't click and drag to select multiple units (the game is also released on console, so that's probably the reason), the short cutscene before each fight cannot be skipped which gets kind of annoying if you're resetting fights to go for S rank.

For the price it is sold a fun little game for inbetween. Nothing really bad to say about it, nothing really groundbreaking either. Got it on sale for less than 2 USD, it was ok for that.

ℍ𝕠𝕝𝕪 𝕞𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕪, 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕘𝕒𝕞𝕖 𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕦𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕪 𝔹𝔸ℕ𝔾𝕊!

Also reminds me a lot of two games, if those two games were actually on STEROIDS, they would be Masters of Anima. Remember Locke's Quest? Or even better, Heroes of Mana for the DS? They are both games where you play as a summoner, in the first you conjure all manners of scrap golems to do your bidding, and the whole game revolves around that mechanic, in Heroes of Mana, well... it's the same concept except a little less interesting. In my opinion, Masters of Anima is the best actual game that gets it completely and utterly PERFECT.

You play as Otto, a shaper; individual with great power that can use his staff to conjure "Guardians", nether creatures bound to the staff and 'shaped' (rightly so) to do Otto's bidding. As another shaper, Zahr, conjures his own Golems to take over the world, he sundered Anna's soul (Otto's fiancée, and also one of the best shapers around), turning her into fragments of her former self. Otto is then sent on a quest to return Anna to her former self, as well as foil Zahr's plan... Otto's got quite the special gift, the gift of Shaping.

The gameplay, although looking like a piece of cake at first, becomes more and more difficult as you advance through the story! There are ten stages, each with a special mechanic related to them... I loved every single bit of every single level. In the desert, you're tasked to collect pearls for Hakim, the flying merchant... In the forest, you can straight up take control of another character, the Nymph Maya etc... It's all never-ending fun. Otto, while moving at a snail's pace outside of combat, can summon up to five kinds of golems; Guardians, which are the melee, very easy paper-cut units that die in one shot but are great cover for ranged golems, Archers (no need to explain), Keepers that can drain the enemy golem's of their Anima, Commandoes who encourage your other golems to do more damage and finally Summoners, which basically are the most broken and they can summon their own "moppets" that explode upon contact. In combat, the Micro kicks in and sometimes it gets too overwhelming trying to commandeer all your shaped troops into doing specific things! At first, you'll get a lot of B ranks in combat, but worry not, after you repeat certain levels for a certain amount of times, you'll figure it out and you'll be getting S ranks in no time. The trick here is to use your keybindings to micro units in combat. Also, depending on how well you did, Otto gains experience in each level and there is a skilltree to upgrade, skills to unlock for both Otto and his units. I swear, this game concept doesn't get any better than this.

The voice-acting is also quite nice, with some very over-the-top moments that will definitely make you at least giggle... Let's just say Otto is not the smarest guy in the bunch! He's like that wannabe hero from Orcs Must Die lol Also graphics are to die for, and the sounds Otto's units make while affected by Otto's battlecry are also so satisfying (especially the BOW CHAOS sound after you motivate like... 30 archers to do the exploding arrow attack all at once, PRICELESS)

I guess you already know what score this game should be... a 10/10 experience and as I'm reaching the end with all my levels on S rank in the highest difficult... I can't help but wonder... Will this ever have a sequel?? I'd buy it so fast, like... A nyan cat on crack

Big old Warcraft games nostalgia and the protagonist is just a goof. My orbs are definitely filled with anima.

Very nice game! Interesting mechanics and puzzles. The duration is quite right. Beautiful visuals. Totally recommend! I enjoyed playing it!

A nice decent indie title with entertaining summoning mechanics. I like the puzzle aspects a lot. The fights, on the other hand, are too long and requires too much micromanagement sometimes. They were never truly hard but time-consuming and sometimes frustrating.

As a Pikmin and Overlord fan, I find this game to be amazing.