TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 9,805
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
Does whatever a (legally distinct) Spider(-Man) can.
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Ananta remained a mystery for many years, but it's finally got a solid 2027 release date. Plus, there's now plenty of proper gameplay footage and hands-on impressions to peruse in the meantime, letting us all in on the secret of what else "anime GTA" is actually offering.
From its release date, to characters, to gacha and gameplay, I'll explain everything you need to know about Ananta (previously Project Mugen), so you can decide if any of its approximately one million features are for you or not.
Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, Neverness to Everness—if there's an open-world + gacha equation in the works, I've probably invested one too many zero's of my time into exploring it. So it takes a lot for me to be surprised by one. Enter: Ananta and its no character gacha. Oh dear… seems another anime open-world is set to add to my collection of zeroes.
After years of no-showing at big events, it finally turned up to Gamescom's 2026 Opening Night Live to announce that Ananta is releasing on January 15, 2027 for PC, PS5, and mobile. You can play it via Steam, or its own separate launcher.
There has never been an open beta for Ananta, and it's not looking like there will be one before the game's January launch either. That's uncommon for gacha games, but Ananta is developed by a NetEase studio, and NetEase's live service games don't tend to get open betas—just closed private testing. So all is (disappointingly) normal here.
Yep! You can head on over to Ananta's official site and sign-up for pre-registration goodies right now. The rewards are the usual handful of weirdly-named currencies with unspecified purposes (y'all know what a Golvent is?), but there's also a regular ol' outfit up for grabs as the top milestone.
It's worth keeping in mind that Ananta will likely dish out these rewards to every player at launch, not just those who pre-register. This is the norm for live service anime games, but there is a chance Ananta bucks this trend, as nothing's been confirmed yet.
As well as highlighting your main character, the Captain, and their crew's bizarre shenanigans about Nova City, Ananta's newest trailer revealed its second city: Chongxiao. Its other location, Nova City, seems more urban and Tokyo-inspired, while Chongxiao seems to be using China's Hangzhou as a reference. It's a little more tranquil, with scenic lakes, greenery, and historic architecture.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
If you want to know how it was revealed three years ago, you can check out Ananta's very first trailer above. Anana changed more than its name since then—its city and protagonist looked a lot different, and it had a more serious tone.
PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon went hands on with Ananta at Tokyo Game Show last year, and he thought that although Ananta is borrowing—or brazenly copying—a lot, that it "might have some wild-ass ideas of its own, too."
He found the influences of the Batman Arkham games, Sleeping Dogs, Uncharted, and Spider-Man pretty clear, but they all worked well enough. "This may be a game that does dozens of things acceptably well. And it made me laugh," he said. You can read Wes's full Ananta preview for more details.
Ananta is a free-to-play urban open-world RPG that may look like the next Genshin Impact or Neverness to Everness, but actually has more in common with GTA, the Arkham series, and Insomniac's Spider-Man. Just, you know, with 500% more anime-ified silliness.
While there seems to be some underlying sinister plot involving supernatural occurrences unleashed upon the dual cities of Tokyo-like Nova City and Hangzhou-like Chongxiao, Ananta is leaning harder into its goofy side. With a social media and follower system linked to your "Yeet Squad" saving the world.
At any moment you might be swingi...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Ananta remained a mystery for many years, but it's finally got a solid 2027 release date. Plus, there's now plenty of proper gameplay footage and hands-on impressions to peruse in the meantime, letting us all in on the secret of what else "anime GTA" is actually offering.
From its release date, to characters, to gacha and gameplay, I'll explain everything you need to know about Ananta (previously Project Mugen), so you can decide if any of its approximately one million features are for you or not.
Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, Neverness to Everness—if there's an open-world + gacha equation in the works, I've probably invested one too many zero's of my time into exploring it. So it takes a lot for me to be surprised by one. Enter: Ananta and its no character gacha. Oh dear… seems another anime open-world is set to add to my collection of zeroes.
After years of no-showing at big events, it finally turned up to Gamescom's 2026 Opening Night Live to announce that Ananta is releasing on January 15, 2027 for PC, PS5, and mobile. You can play it via Steam, or its own separate launcher.
There has never been an open beta for Ananta, and it's not looking like there will be one before the game's January launch either. That's uncommon for gacha games, but Ananta is developed by a NetEase studio, and NetEase's live service games don't tend to get open betas—just closed private testing. So all is (disappointingly) normal here.
Yep! You can head on over to Ananta's official site and sign-up for pre-registration goodies right now. The rewards are the usual handful of weirdly-named currencies with unspecified purposes (y'all know what a Golvent is?), but there's also a regular ol' outfit up for grabs as the top milestone.
It's worth keeping in mind that Ananta will likely dish out these rewards to every player at launch, not just those who pre-register. This is the norm for live service anime games, but there is a chance Ananta bucks this trend, as nothing's been confirmed yet.
As well as highlighting your main character, the Captain, and their crew's bizarre shenanigans about Nova City, Ananta's newest trailer revealed its second city: Chongxiao. Its other location, Nova City, seems more urban and Tokyo-inspired, while Chongxiao seems to be using China's Hangzhou as a reference. It's a little more tranquil, with scenic lakes, greenery, and historic architecture.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
If you want to know how it was revealed three years ago, you can check out Ananta's very first trailer above. Anana changed more than its name since then—its city and protagonist looked a lot different, and it had a more serious tone.
PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon went hands on with Ananta at Tokyo Game Show last year, and he thought that although Ananta is borrowing—or brazenly copying—a lot, that it "might have some wild-ass ideas of its own, too."
He found the influences of the Batman Arkham games, Sleeping Dogs, Uncharted, and Spider-Man pretty clear, but they all worked well enough. "This may be a game that does dozens of things acceptably well. And it made me laugh," he said. You can read Wes's full Ananta preview for more details.
Ananta is a free-to-play urban open-world RPG that may look like the next Genshin Impact or Neverness to Everness, but actually has more in common with GTA, the Arkham series, and Insomniac's Spider-Man. Just, you know, with 500% more anime-ified silliness.
While there seems to be some underlying sinister plot involving supernatural occurrences unleashed upon the dual cities of Tokyo-like Nova City and Hangzhou-like Chongxiao, Ananta is leaning harder into its goofy side. With a social media and follower system linked to your "Yeet Squad" saving the world.
At any moment you might be swingi...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?