Anthem Review: 4 Ups & 9 Downs

2. Fort Tarsis Is A Sluggish, Uninspired Hub World

Fort Tarsis is the hub world where you'll be spending most of your time outside of missions, a cramped, claustrophobic little settlement where you can talk to the principal NPCs, accept contracts, spend some cash, tune up your Javelin and basically just hang out. All in first-person view, of course.

Except Fort Tarsis is a stunning bore of a hub, and the primary issue is that the game forces players to walk at an absolute snail's pace, with no ability to sprint or even power-walk.

This again feels like a desperate last-ditch attempt to elongate the game's core length, and though it could easily be patched, doing so would only emphasise just how little game there actually is.

On top of this, the bustling market city we saw in the game's marketing isn't at all representative of what Fort Tarsis is in the final product. It feels desolate and uninviting, thoroughly wasting the top-notch visuals in the process.

There's little tactile relationship between Fort Tarsis and the outside world, hammering home just how much of a bizarre oddity this part of the game truly is.

A hub that existed in third-person within the main world of the game would've surely worked better, if only to maintain a consistent aesthetic experience and cut down on those loading screens.