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How the Break System and Combat Weaknesses Work in Aniimo
Breaking an opponent, and knowing which opponents you can even touch, decides most fights in Aniimo. Here is what the beta footage shows about break meters, control states, and elemental matchups.
The short version
- An enemy's break bar is the gray bar directly under the red health bar. Empty it and the enemy is staggered.
- Control states make enemies easier to break with skills, and grappling both pulls an enemy in and applies a control state.
- Break is a base stat alongside HP, Attack, Physical Defense, Regen and Magic Defense.
- At an elemental disadvantage an Aniimo takes double damage from incoming attacks.
- Flying Aniimo are weak to ranged attacks. Tunneling Aniimo are immune to them and fall to Tremor skills instead.
Combat in Aniimo runs on two questions you should be asking every fight. Can I break this thing, and am I being hit for double.
The first is about the break meter and the control states that feed into it. The second is about elements, where the penalty for a bad matchup is steep enough to change how a fight goes. On top of both sits a third layer: where the enemy actually is. Ground, air and underground each behave differently, and one of them shuts off ranged attacks entirely.
Everything below comes from pre-launch beta footage, so treat it as a snapshot of that build.
The gray bar under the red one
Every enemy shows two bars. The red one is health. The gray one sitting directly underneath it is the break meter, and that is the one worth watching.
Deplete the break meter and the enemy enters a staggered state. That is the payoff. Break is not an incidental mechanic bolted onto damage, either. It sits in the base stat line alongside HP, Attack, Physical Defense, Regen and Magic Defense, which tells you the game treats an Aniimo's ability to break things as a core attribute rather than a bonus.
Control states are the setup, not the finish
An enemy under a control state is easier to break using skills. So control is the opener. You apply it, then you spend skills into the gray bar while it is cheap.
Grappling is the clean way in. It pulls the enemy toward you and inflicts a control state at the same time, which solves two problems at once. The target is now close, and it is now in the window where your skills do the most work on its break meter. Grapple, then skill, then stagger. That is the loop.
Elements decide how hard you get hit
Elements have advantages and disadvantages against each other, and the effect on combat performance is significant rather than marginal.
Here is the number that matters. An Aniimo at an elemental disadvantage takes double damage from incoming attacks. Not slightly more. Double. That makes team selection a defensive decision before it is an offensive one, and it means bringing the wrong element into a fight can cost you more than bringing a weaker attacker would.
Double
Damage taken at an elemental disadvantage
Ground, air and underground are three different fights
Ground-based and airborne Aniimo behave differently in combat, so one approach will not serve for both.
Flying Aniimo are weak against ranged attacks. Straightforward enough. If it is in the air, shoot it.
Tunneling Aniimo invert that completely. Minespine, Geodeback and Pebbling burrow underground, and while they are down there they are immune to ranged attacks. Your ranged answer becomes no answer at all. What works instead is Tremor skills, which hit tunneled enemies and can knock them out. Worth sorting out before you meet one, because without a Tremor option you are standing there with a weapon that does nothing.
Flying Aniimo
- Weak against ranged attacks.
- Airborne Aniimo display different combat behaviors from ground based ones.
Aniimo tunneled underground
- Immune to ranged attacks.
- Vulnerable to Tremor skills, which can knock them out.
- Includes Minespine, Geodeback and Pebbling.
Where to start
Watch the gray bar, grapple before you commit skills, and check the elemental matchup before the fight starts rather than after you have taken double damage. Keep a Tremor skill available for the burrowers.
Questions this answers
Each of these is answered on its own page, with the sources behind it.
Built from 10 facts gathered before launch, each checked against the sources it came from. How we know this, and who we learned it from.