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During the XBOX Game Showcase a year ago, a new project called, Beast of Reincarnation, was first teased, and the initial reaction was… “Wait, Game Freak is developing this?”
Game Freak, if you’re unfamiliar, are the developers of the Pokémon franchise, and while I enjoyed the most recent titles that they have released, a breath of fresh creative air was needed for them as a studio. As well as not being under the oppressively watchful eye of Nintendo.
Released last month, Aug. 3, you play as Emma, a “Sealer”, born into a post-apocalyptic future thousands of years from now; oppressive plant life and malfunctioning androids are dotted across a beautiful but dangerous, unique interpretation of sci-fi. As a Sealer, your only purpose in society is to defeat massive blight monsters called Nushi and absorb their powers, but you don’t do it alone; you are partnered with Koo, a massive dog with similar plant powers to you.
The story is full of interesting concepts, yet disappointing, with shrill and sometimes offensively bad moments such as character interactions, which have these very long… pauses… between each sentence, that trying to skip between the breaks in dialogue is mandatory. The characters are flat, and very one-note. Emma’s indecisiveness and inhumanity aren’t written like 2B from NieR: Automata, an android, whose stratification towards humanity is rewarding. Rather, Emma is written without agency, and her explanations for emotions are amateurish.
If not found through Emma, agency can be found in the gameplay. This is similar to other titles like NieR: Automata and Stellar Blade; Beasts of Reincarnation is an action-focused title, where quick reactions to parry windows build up gauges and stun the enemy and allow Emma to cut them down. Koo isn’t just a cute gimmicky companion, either, as you can control him, allowing for what Game Freak calls “one-person, one-dog action.”
The sword swings from Emma, and pounces by Koo have strong visual kicks and great sounds; I love it that whenever Emma defeats a boss, a little visual indicator is added onto your character, a flower is added onto your hair and you’re given access to new Malefact abilities.
But the glossy action falls flat when everything in the game will die from basic attacks. I love building my character up in these games, grinding here and there to build up new combos and min-max, but you don’t need to in Beast of Reincarnation. Balancing is a little wonky; elite enemies haphazardly placed around playable spaces are stronger and require more mechanical skill than the end-of-chapter bosses, which just die from basic attacks or spamming ranged weapons.
The game is broken up into “open-zones” rather than an “open-world,” meaning each zone is dense and not strung together. It’s fun to run around, explore, find dying robots that lead to chests, eliminate those elite enemies and go back to base camp to upgrade my stats. And if you miss something after a chapter, you’re able to quickly travel back through the menu. Yet, after a couple of hours into Beasts of Reincarnation, you’ll have seen all the collectables; something increases health, money, food or armor. While it’s fun to explore and organically fall into a side-quest, you aren’t given much—new weapons are fun, but only change visual aspects, as their damage outputs are all the same. Armor passive bonuses are negligible, and you just need to pick ones with the higher number; there isn’t a trade-off for one playstyle over another.
The zones should not be, but are very linear; I did experience some bugs in the beginning zone that cut off certain explorable areas, requiring me to pause any desire to explore the area and continue with the main story for fear that I’ll be punished for trying to explore.
The world, while stylistically impressive and unique for its genre: a lot of post-apocalyptic games use stark plant life and an oppressive amount of metal and man-made architecture; here, there is a balance between nature, which is interesting but is ruined by a myriad of visual problems. The overall game is muddy in fidelity, and distant locations are fuzzy and low quality. Running through a field and seeing the game try to catch up and load grass or lighting is jarring and immersion-breaking. Encounters with bosses play in large and boring spaces.
Characters have high-quality texture work, but clash with backgrounds that aren’t. It doesn’t help that Emma’s fast pace really exacerbates the performance problems too; the game tries to maintain 60 frames per second in combat, a necessity in a fast-paced game like this, but regularly struggles, and a lot of story set-pieces are ruined by low performance.
The camera is also a downside; it’s too close to Emma, which affects combat as you’re not able to see enemies just beyond your limited viewpoint. Later combos that Emma unlocks cause her to jump in the air, causing the fight below to be out of view. Additionally, regarding exploration, sometimes you’ll line up a jump and fall into a lake–an instant death–which you weren’t able to see. There is a lot of verticality in the level design of Beasts of Reincarnation, but the camera hides the path forward—not in a way that rewards exploration, but annoyed at the game itself.
Even with a handful of patches released over the summer and in the current month, a lot of these issues are intrinsic to Beast of Reincarnation’s game design, and not easily patchable. Visuals are still bad, and the camera is problematic.
Game Score: 5. It’s not bad, nor is it great in any way; disappointing for Game Freak’s foray into new franchises other than Pokémon. I’d say pick it up through Game Pass Ultimate, or at a steep sale. I think there is a lot to enjoy, as I have, but go in with low expectations.
Ethan Warble is a second-year English major. 3008457@wcupa.edu.