Ever since Persona transformed the RPG into a wonderfully voyeuristic Japanese tourism simulator, I’ve had an appetite for games that let me experience living on the other side of the planet. Whether it’s roaming the streets of Osaka in Yakuza or trudging across the dung-filled fields of Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s medieval Bohemia, there’s something satisfying about picking up a controller and being given a window into someone else’s life.
Yet since Persona offers a disappointingly linear Tokyo to traverse, I’ve been left pining to get lost in a truly sprawling virtual metropolis. Thankfully, it turns out my oddly specific prayers have been answered. Welcome to the slick and exciting new anime open-world RPG from Hotta Studio, NTE.
Hot-ta Go
Developed by the creators of the 2021 hit, Tower of Fantasy, NTE is a fully open-world anime brawler made using Unreal Engine 5. Putting players into the near-future city of Hethereau, anime-styled characters are free to roam the futuristic metropolis as they see fit. Feeling like a blend of Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo, Hethereau is fully explorable in its gargantuan glory – and it finally satisfies that free-form slice of life itch.
It helps that the city of Hetherau looks absolutely stunning. As crisp character models are brought to life with expressive animations, Lumen lighting tech brings street lamps and puzzles shimmering to life with impressive reflections. In a nice touch, exploring this cityscape feels pleasingly kinetic. From sprinting across packed plazas to sipping coffee at a quiet cafe or fighting anomalies in back alleys, there’s an impressively vast map begging to be explored. As you hop into a car and crash into incoming traffic, chat to overly excitable citizens and then head into a portal to slice up some dudes, it’s hard not to feel like you’re playing a Shonen Jump twist on GTA.
Real-time weather helps to keep your time in Hethereau feeling fresh – no matter the forecast. Whenever you boot up NTE, you never know what kind of day awaits, with your daily adventures shifting from sun-soaked ambles across packed city streets to racing across town with snowflake-laden windscreen wipers. It’s all surprisingly well realised and immersive stuff, with snow even affecting NPC behaviour. Pedestrians leave snow prints as they go about their days, and heavy snowfall even brings traffic edging to an authentic standstill.
Anomaly of a Fall
Still, it’s not all a breezy good time here – there is an existential threat facing humanity, after all. With people around the world suddenly mutated by thick goo falling from the sky, a hyper vortex has corrupted and maddened once ordinary citizens, and it’s up to the authorities to try and contain this horrific anomaly before it spreads. As a member of the Anomaly Control’s Containment Unit, it’s up to you to help keep citizens safe.
Much like in the games that inspired it, there’s a murky distinction between regular city life and the action-packed showdowns with anomalies. In NTE, the vast city of Hethereau shimmers with a surrealist quality, seamlessly blending day-to-day city life with reality-bending sci-fi. Divided into two main sections, the city’s Frontworld is a meticulously ordered, seamless open-world cyberpunk metropolis where players can explore and progress the story, while the Backworld – you guessed it – is littered with local urban distortions caused by those pesky supernatural anomalies.
The sun-soaked streets of the Frontworld offer a nice contrast to the murky, horror-tinged encounters that define the anomalies. One such section saw me roaming an eerily abandoned school. With its glistening corridors devoid of life, and a pulsating crimson oozing out of the windows, these spooky sections are nice and atmospheric – a welcome change from simply being dumped straight into combat.
Speaking of combat, NTE offers unique mechanics depending on your character, such as character-specific Critical Dodge Counterattacks and Parry Attacks, which add fresh layers of strategy and style to enemy encounters.
Grand Theft Anime
In a Michael-Scott pleasing touch, urban exploration comes with a parkour twist, allowing players to navigate the sprawling urban metropolis by sprinting, jumping, and climbing their way across the packed city streets. If that all sounds far too exhausting, you can instead opt to simply hop on the subway, chatting to the locals for new leads on anomaly locations, or to engage in some enjoyably silly side quests. If parkour doesn’t float your proverbial boat, you can always take to the sky, hopping on a zipline to speed across the neon skyline and uncover the city’s hidden corners.
Of course, it wouldn’t be GTA-like without, well, some grand theft auto. Just like in Rockstar’s flagship franchise, vehicles in Hethereau can be commandeered under Anomaly Control’s Containment Unit (more on them later) authority via Requisition gameplay, allowing you to peacefully take over any car if it will help you keep the city safe. If, however, you step out of line and attack fellow citizens, you’ll trigger a Wanted level, with the Security Office putting out a warrant for your arrest and chasing you down. Continuing to break the law will increase your wanted level with escalating consequences based on the severity of your offence. The more you attempt to escape or the more wanton destruction you cause, the higher the said wanted level. GTA VI, eat your heart out.
And if that wasn’t enough law-flaunting for you, you can also team up with friends to try out street racing challenges, competing with crews from various districts in high-octane multiplayer races. If you fancy testing your driving skills, Hetherau’s streets are littered with fast and furious drivers, all itching to put the pedal to the metal and helping you try out all manner of torque-testing new rides. Just be careful in bad weather: the snow might be immersive and realistic – with snowflakes organically blowing in the wind and the snow getting deeper in real time – but rain or snow means slippery roads and a greater chance of you dramatically spinning off track.
In NTE, you’re an anomaly hunter, with the game’s core missions revolving around hunting down said anomalies. Story beats are punctuated with gorgeously rendered cutscenes, leaning fully into their anime inspirations, as devious plot twists and turns are delivered with pleasing cinematic flourish.
Beta Than Paradise
Whether you’re cruising down the streets in your sweet new ride or clambering up the side of buildings, NTE is a surprisingly varied and feature-packed game. I was pleasantly surprised by the open world’s scope, with developer Hotta Studio promising that players will be able to choose how they mould their own destiny – yet it was too early to tell how these choices will ultimately pan out.
If the year-long wait for GTA VI has got you down, and modern gatcha games aren’t doing it for you, you can always take a trip to Hethereau when NTE comes out on PC, mobile, and PlayStation 5. The NTE beta on PC is available now until July 16th, and you can register your place here.
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