Masters of Anima asks you to save a kidnapped magician with an army of summoned creatures, and it mostly works. Passtech Games built a real-time strategy game around indirect control, and the French studio’s 2018 release on PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch turns that idea into something worth playing.
Trailer, via Focus Entertainment.
Otto and the Shapers’ Guild
The plot is simple. Otto is a newly inducted member of a guild of magicians called “shapers.” The guild is attacked by Zahr, who uses forbidden magics to kidnap the prime shaper, Ana. Otto has to use shaper magic to rescue her so she can restore the world to its proper order.
That setup gives Masters of Anima a clear goal and a clear villain. It does not give it much of a story. Zahr is a threat, Ana is a prize, and Otto is the one who has to fix it. The game rarely reaches beyond that frame.
Five Guardians, One Otto
The core of Masters of Anima is shaping magic. Otto summons arbitrary combinations of five guardians: Protectors, Sentinels, Keepers, Commanders and Summoners. Each type has its own talents and abilities, useful both for exploring the world of Spark and for taking down the bosses that stand in the way.
Here is how the two halves of the game split:
| Mode | What the player does | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| Exploration | Navigates the environment, solves puzzles, uses guardians to reveal secrets | Positioning and puzzle logic |
| Combat arenas | Locked into a space until hostile golems are defeated | Unit selection and command timing |
The split matters because it keeps Masters of Anima from becoming one long fight. It also means the game asks you to solve problems with the same five tools, in two different registers.
Controlling Units Through Otto
You control Otto in a traditional third-person style. The guardians are controlled indirectly: you select them and issue commands such as Attack or Move. Otto can also act directly, attacking with his staff, activating special abilities for the units he has summoned, or triggering puzzle elements.
That last part is what separates Masters of Anima from a standard RTS. You are not a camera floating over a battlefield. You are a character standing in it, and your army only moves because you told it to. It is a harder, more deliberate kind of control, and Passtech Games commits to it.
A Bird’s-Eye View of Spark
The perspective is bird’s-eye and isometric. Story progression is broken into discrete levels that move in a straight line. There is no branching, no open map, no choice about where to go next.
For some players that will read as discipline. For others it will read as a leash. Masters of Anima knows what it wants you to do in each level, and it does not pretend otherwise.
Where the Game Slows Down
The indirect control is the game’s best idea and its biggest risk. When it works, issuing a command and watching your guardians carry it out feels like real authority. When it does not, you are fighting your own interface while golems close in.
The five guardian types help. Protectors, Sentinels, Keepers, Commanders and Summoners give you enough combinations to keep combat arenas from repeating themselves, and the bosses demand that you actually use the roster rather than lean on one favorite.
What Masters of Anima Gets Right
Masters of Anima is a 2018 real-time strategy game with role-playing, simulation, strategy and adventure elements, played solo. That is a lot of labels for a game that is really about one mechanic: summon, select, command, repeat.
The world of Spark is not the draw. The plot is not the draw. The draw is the moment a plan comes together, when the guardians you placed do exactly what you needed them to do. Passtech Games understood that this was the point, and built the levels to deliver it.
The Verdict on Masters of Anima
This is a confident, narrow game. It does not try to be a grand strategy epic or a story-driven RPG, and it should not. Its ambition is smaller and its execution is steady.
The flaws are real. The linear level structure leaves little room to explore on your own terms, and the story never gives Otto or Ana the weight the premise implies. But the shaping magic is a genuine idea, and the five guardian types give it enough depth to carry a full playthrough.
Masters of Anima earns its place as a solid mid-tier strategy game rather than a landmark one. It is worth playing for the control scheme alone, and it is worth finishing because the bosses make you use everything you have learned.
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