I’ve been pondering Anthem, so I watched a few streams for a bit today. And I discovered that I genuinely cannot tell the difference between the two games from watching people play. Like I clicked on the first stream to watch and had to double check to make sure I hadn’t accidentally joined a warframe stream.
Will anyone help me decide whether to give a go or not by comparing the two games? I’ve played Warframe, but not Anthem. There must be differences that aren’t readily visible to a viewer, but when I tried googling it all I’ve found are toxic vitriolic arguments.
I’d say its a bit too early to bother with tbh. If you’re already playing warframes then that makes it easy to compare from my own understanding. That being said don’t quote me on it.
Warframes has parkour and requires a bit of finesse; Anthem has a “magical” dodge function in most of their suits.
Warframes is free, has a crap ton of content, and is still being worked on; Anthem is highly likely to have paywalls, and sequels to buy.
Warframes is a stand alone game although you can get it on steam; Anthem will require an origin client.
Warframes has a cash shop but what isnt cosmetic you can grind up in the game, minus the arbitrary inventory slot paywall; Anthem is made by EA bioware which is notorious for pay to win mechanics with RNG loot boxes, the MTX cashshop is pending launch but shareholderslol.
Warframes require either special abilities or their archwing system enabled to fly; Anthems big selling point is flight built into the mechs you’re playing with albeit for a limited duration.
Just a note, Anthem does not have any pay to win currently, everything that can be purchased at the cash shop is purely cosmetic and can also be paid for using coin earned in game (although it’s a lot of coin)
Having played both a little, they are very different games. The similarity is that they’re both basically lobby based shooters with story and some limited overland free-roam; neither are mmos.
Anthem has 4 “classes” (Javelins) you can play on one character. They’re very much like traditional classes. You have a tank (Colossus), a ranged nuker (Storm), a melee dps (Intercepter), and one that is sort of a does-it-all but not as good in one thing as the more focused ones (Ranger). Combat is meant to be group play, although you can play the missions and free-roam solo (there’s even a difficulty choice below “Normal” if you have a hard time soloing), and the Javelins are designed to have a sort of synergy using a combo system.
Warframe has a jazzilion Frames each with its own unique playstyle. I don’t know anything about group play in Warframe, as I’ve only ever soloed. It doesn’t seem to encourage grouping as much as Anthem does.
Anthem is also quite similar to Destiny 2 in many ways.
Personally, I prefer the gameplay of Anthem over either Warframe or Destiny 2. I won’t ever be going back to Destiny 2, though Warframe is pretty cool and different enough that I will be playing it. Anthem just feels right to me; I love it so much I bought the version for my XBox One X too.