Game Freak’s enduring legacy is being the developer of the Pokémon franchise alongside Nintendo. While that certainly has its perks like keeping the office lights on, it shouldn’t be surprising that Game Freak wants to branch out. It’s been done so over the years with smaller games like Giga Wrecker Alt, Little Town Hero, and Tembo the Badass Elephant.
Now, Game Freak is back with the action-adventure game Beast of Reincarnation. It’s the studio’s biggest game yet, but is it big enough to step out from Pokémon’s massive shadow?
The combat is sublime, along with its breathtaking art direction and intriguing open-world zones. However, Beast of Reincarnation is muzzled by its confusing story pacing and dull cast of characters.
Not Nier enough
Credit: Game Freak / Screenshot by George Yang
Beast of Reincarnation follows a young girl named Emma as she travels through a post-apocalyptic Japan to stop the titular monster from rising again and spreading a corruption called Blight. Much like Stellar Blade, Beast of Reincarnation attempts to emulate the profound themes of existentialism, artificial intelligence, sentience, and humanity found in the excellent Nier: Automata. But they fail to understand what made Yoko Taro’s masterpiece so compelling: the characters.
Emma isn’t exactly a riveting character up until the last few moments of the story. At that point, there’s a giant exposition dump explaining about how the world came to be. Characters that you met halfway through the story suddenly come back towards the end, and they somehow have some crucial involvement. The jarring pacing doesn’t really allow for much personal development of the side characters, let alone Emma’s.
It also doesn’t help that the English voice acting isn’t the best. It’s understandable that Emma is supposed to be an emotionless individual, given that she was an outcast due to her sickness. But Emma, and the rest of the cast, for that matter, sound incredibly bored throughout the entire journey. How can I get immersed if the characters themselves sound like they don’t even want to be there?
The subtitles are also astronomically tiny, with no options to make them bigger. This made it harder to follow the story, especially if you chose the Japanese voice acting instead.
A beautiful apocalypse
Credit: Game Freak
Despite the underwhelming story, I enjoyed my time traveling through post-apocalyptic Japan in between cutscenes. While Beast of Reincarnation isn’t a true open-world, there’s plenty of places to explore. There are 12 distinct zones that you can travel between, with different environments showing off rustic forests, giant craters, and flooded dilapidated city ruins.
But what impressed me more was Beast of Reincarnation’s verticality. Since Emma is immune to the Blight, she’s able to manifest her plant-like powers through her hair to reach towering heights. I had a lot of fun scaling tall structures and creating ledges over the top of enemies so I could take them out unaware, Assassin’s Creed-style.
Emma’s canine companion, Koo, can also sniff out items and collectibles as they pass by, marking them. While some players might see this as cheapening the exploration, I found it to be really convenient and respectful of my time. In particular, I appreciated Koo’s sleuthing when it came to finding Dragon Shrines all across the different maps. When you accumulate enough, Emma is rewarded with extra stims to heal herself during battle.
Credit: Game Freak / Screenshot by George Yang
The game’s visuals are gorgeous, too. The realistic art direction is a departure from the cartoony and cute creatures we’ve seen Game Freak create for Pokémon. Sure, humanity has died out, but the hostile golems and blight-inflicted malefacts consisting of giant bears, birds, and deer still make the world feel lively. The emphasis on plant life also makes the environments feel hopeful, like a Studio Ghibli movie, rather than the catastrophic dread of a game like The Last of Us.
However, I wish boss battles were more unique. Many of them are against giant creatures called Nushi, but they all have almost the same attack patterns and even designs. I got tired of fighting the nearly identical huge four-legged creatures after the third time.
More bite than bark
Credit: Game Freak / Screenshot by George Yang
Thankfully, the combat gives Beast of Reincarnation the much-needed claws, sinking into you and keeping you entertained. Though it might initially feel like a Soulslike at first because of the sharp difficulty curve, the game eventually provides you with more skills, opening the combat up to feel more like a straightforward action game.
There’s a heavy emphasis on parrying, similar to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Every time Emma successfully parries, her Entanglement meter fills up, which allows her to unleash devastating attacks with her hair. And when breaking an enemy’s stamina, she can perform flashy finishers. The flow of battle feels very satisfying, fast-paced, and fun.
Upon successfully parrying attacks, you activate the special abilities of Emma’s various katanas. There’s one where she recovers a portion of her health for a few seconds upon a successful parry, which was immensely helpful, especially during boss fights. My personal favorite katana was a late-game one that dealt additional poison and electric damage. I loved watching the crackling purple lightning strikes crash down whenever I swung my sword.
Credit: Game Freak / Screenshot by George Yang
While Koo fights autonomously, you can pull up a menu that slows down time and issue direct commands to him to use his own special attacks, such as summoning vines to immobilize enemies for Emma to unleash fury on, or conjuring a flowerbed that gradually restores her HP. It’s very similar to Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy’s “Classic” combat mode. It’s a beneficial feature that lets you have more control over Koo’s actions, and thematically strengthens the camaraderie between them.
At $60, Beast of Reincarnation is a good value for a 25-30 hour experience. By thoroughly exploring the world, you can get even more mileage out of it. It’s also available on Xbox Game Pass via the Ultimate tier.
You can play the game on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
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