Beast of Reincarnation Review

It’s very funny to see the name “Game Freak” at the beginning of Beast of Reincarnation. Not because it’s a non-Pokémon game, they’ve done plenty of those. Rather, because it’s so unlike anything else they’ve ever put out. You can look at Pulseman, Drill Dozer, Pocket Card Jockey, or even Tembo the Badass Elephant and say “Okay, yeah, I can see this being from the people who brought us Pikachu”. They’re all colorful, fantastical, and high-energy cartoonish games.

Beast of Reincarnation, on the other hand, is a swing in the exact opposite direction for the studio.

It’s a bloody, realistic-looking, melancholic action game. It is also heavily inspired by Nier: Automata and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, among others. Wearing inspirations on their sleeves is nothing new for the developers at Game Freak. Hell, go all the way back to Pokémon Red & Blue, the argument could be made that it’s just “Dragon Quest V for kids”. What’s different with Beast is that it’s attempting to ape the best elements from games that aren’t just frontrunners in their respective genres, they’re often considered to be among the greatest games of all time. If you’re going to put your spin on the best of the best, you need to at least match their quality, let alone exceed it. Beast of Reincarnation rarely does either.

The biggest letdown for me is in the presentation. The story is a simple hero's journey: A great evil has awakened yet again, and you must acquire the MacGuffins that will make main character Emma powerful enough to stand against it. Emma’s final design and characterization comes across as the end result of a game of telephone. Nier’s insanely popular robotic tsundere, 2B, led us to the misguided design of Stellar Blade’s Eve, and I can’t help but feel that Game Freak was looking in both of those directions to give us the long-ponytailed and canonically emotionless anime swordswoman we have here for a protagonist. At least they gave her a cute wolf for a companion, and Koo brings an endearing dynamic to the table by teaching Emma how to feel more human through the simple act of owning a pet. Sadly, they’re the highlights of the cast and their surrounding world, and the little they bring to the table can’t lift up the rest of the cookie cutter crew.

Every other character you will meet in Beast of Reincarnation is either an extremely straightforward trope or, well, heavily “inspired” by someone you’ve seen before. Brad’s the most basic “man in the chair” assistant possible, coming in the Grumpy Old Man variety. Kagura is a timid young girl who slowly learns confidence by spending time with a walking murder machine and her dog. Mysterious rival Kunai can best be summed up with “Don’t call her A2”, and nearly every character beyond that is just a cartoon robot with the lightest touch of personality. Maybe there’s a specific movie or anime I’m unaware of that has spurred multiple development teams to have extremely similar casts of characters, or maybe it really is just that decade-long game of telephone stemming from the mind of Yoko Taro. Either way, this bland cast leading a predictable story of survivors on a post-apocalyptic Earth that’s controlled by robots and reclaimed by nature kept giving me an unmistakable feeling of déjà vu.

While the story and characters are underwhelming at best, Beast of Reincarnation brings things back around with its gameplay. At least, eventually. Before release, a lot of us who were paying attention to the game wondered what the breakdown would be between it feeling like a character action game, a Souls-like, and an action RPG. I learned during my playthrough that it takes a very interesting approach of starting slow, deliberate, and punishing like a FromSoftware game, but gradually becomes fast-paced and stylish, like my beloved Devil May Cry. That’s not the divide or order of evolution I was expecting, but it certainly conveys an empowering journey.

The core of combat is the Entanglement Gauge. It’s a unique implementation of a stagger meter. It starts with a small amount at the beginning of encounters, and rewards you with more through successful parries. Said meter can be held onto to guard against incoming attacks, or spent on a variety of special moves, such as the bullet time slow-mo Entanglement Overdrive or a concealing field of flowers to assist with stealth approaches. The parrying itself is a very Sekiro-style setup. Holding L1 has Emma guard attacks and will drain the Entanglement Gauge with each hit, while tapping L1 will have her parry instead, gradually filling the gauge and providing points for commanding Koo to use attacks that deal damage and heal Emma if a successful quick time event is performed. An early focus on these core aspects of combat made for a slower start than I’d like, but things pick up quickly as you level up through defeating enemies and earn points to spend on abilities.

The (literal) skill tree starts with three branches of abilities each for Emma and Koo, and every victory over a major boss grows a flower on the tree that blossoms into a new branch. These abilities are crucial for speeding up combat, making fights more forgiving with enhanced healing and defenses, and generally resulting in the game being more fun. That said, it takes a bit too long for everything to gel (I had the “A-ha!” moment around hour 10 of my 23-hour playthrough), and some basic abilities are awkwardly locked pretty far into the skill tree (unless I missed something, Emma can’t quickly return to the ground from the air until she unlocks a ground slam halfway down a branch). But once you decide on the powers you want to spec into, you can start working towards builds that suit your specific play style.

I chose to spec into a really long Entanglement Gauge that provided a lengthy Entanglement Overdrive, which allowed me to tackle fights in the specific way and order I wanted to. Ideally, here’s how it would go down: I’d observe a group of enemies from afar, decide which one I wanted to stealth kill to eliminate from the battle, pick off any flying/floating enemies with arrows, and parry all the hits of the jobber baddies so I could spend 10 seconds or more wailing on the higher-HP "boss" of the encounter. I distinctly remember a fight playing out exactly according to this plan, and just as the big bad was about to fire a giant laser at Emma, I took it down thanks to extra hits from the last bit of slow-mo. I had fought off a crowd of six enemies damageless, and expressed my relief and satisfaction with an audible "WHOA yeah."

I really grew to enjoy Beast’s combat, but it’s the first action game I've played in... perhaps ever that gets significantly easier as it goes on. Not because of the difficulty of opponents decreasing (boss fights will always kick your ass if you're not careful), but due to some of the skills Emma gains if you choose to spend all the points you’ve accumulated. While most simply add another attack that will be good against certain enemies thanks to elemental typing or similar factors, some radically change how encounters work. Execution Assist, for example, is an ability near the end of the skill tree that I obtained about halfway through the game that causes Koo to instantly kill an additional enemy if Emma staggers and executes one herself.

Eventually, Koo can heal Emma over time, provide her with armor, and even hold a replenishable item that instantly revives her if she falls. This all leads to an extremely satisfying feeling of progression, reflecting Emma's growth as a swordswoman and would feel right at home in a character action game or more traditional action RPG. Here, however, they’re the type of oddities that just make me tilt my head and say “Huh” about a game that starts as a decently punishing Souls-like. I’m certainly not complaining about that fact, as the power fantasy approach to an action game is much more my speed.

As satisfying as the combat ends up feeling thanks to the great animations, camerawork, and sound effects combining with the more interesting skills, it’s held back a bit by a lack of enemy variety. About halfway through the game, when I started really getting into it, is when I felt like I had seen every type of encounter Beast has to offer. Basic mobs of enemies blur together after a while as either ground-based or flying, with little distinction once Emma starts slicing through them all like butter. The Nushi (the major bosses) have appealing “animal taken over by plantlife” designs that show off Game Freak’s monster-designing chops, but look fairly similar. Eventually, they all just became flower-covered blobs charging at me, which isn’t helped by the parrying patterns between them feeling the same.

Beyond combat, Emma’s movement abilities are very fun to play around with. Instead of a double jump, she has a “hover” jump using her hair vines. In practice, it feels like a callback to FLUDD’s Hover Nozzle in Super Mario Sunshine (one of my personal favorite video game maneuvers), and lets her easily climb structures or stall out an enemy’s powerful attack in battle. Said vines can also be extended to create bridges Emma can use to cross gaps or stealthily hang over groups of enemies as well as grapple points she can use to zip across environments or away from danger. Stringing together the various movement options to fly around levels is the one truly exhilarating part of the game that never got old.

Unfortunately, a noticeable lack of polish brought me back down to earth a bit after riding the high of satisfying gameplay. Emma constantly trips over things. She will attempt to climb small objects during combat, locking her into the mantling animation. Sliding down the smallest slope will cause her to exit ranged weapon aiming, extending a vine bridge instead of shooting an arrow since R2 is bound to both. One foot of water can "drown" Emma if she slides through it.

Perhaps the most annoying example is that crouching is bound to the B button, but dodging is done by pressing a direction plus B. Way too often, I found myself doing one when I was trying to do the other. It’s one thing to have this quirk blow my cover in stealth sequences, but it’s another to have it kill me during a boss fight. Sometimes the little things will make or break a game, and this game frequently leans towards the latter.

I ended up enjoying Beast of Reincarnation more than I thought I would from the game’s initial slow, basic impression, but it never truly sunk its claws into me. This feels like the result of Game Freak’s designers having something to say (or at least wishing they did), but constantly struggling to find the right words. It eventually becomes a very fun action RPG to play, but stumbles many, many times on the path of getting there.