Gotta slay ’em all
Known around the world for the mega franchise Pokémon, developer Game Freak is ready to show that they can do more with the releases of Beasts of Reincarnation. With its mix of real-time and turn-based combat, absolutely beautiful graphics and the environmental storytelling that’s reminiscent of Princess Mononoke, BoR sounds like it should be a no brainer for GOTY but does the team who has had us ‘catching ‘em all’ for the better part of a decade manage to find success with something totally different, well I am about to tell you.
Beast of Reincarnation is set 2000 years into the future and in the year 4026 things are not great. The world has been devastated by a corruption known as the Blight, this caused animals and humans to transform in various ways. Our hero Emma is a blight-stained and hunter of these mutated monsters known as Nishi. The blight-stained are looked down on as less than in the society because of course in the future there is a caste system. Look, I am not going to lie to you guys, this game is very story heavy and for me to really talk about it would spoil things. So, the high-level kind of overview is much like Dracula from Castlevania the titular Beast of Reincarnation, comes back every 100 years. Why this really had to be explained is funny because you know, reincarnation is in the name, but I digress. Emma is tasked by the Overseer of the village of non-blighted to go kill it. So, she and her canine-like buddy Koo head out to save the world.
MSRP: $59.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $59.99
Over the course of the next 30-40 hours players will meet new characters, most of which are more interesting than Emma (more on that in a moment), fight some beautifully designed monstrosities and experience a narrative that touches on themes like prejudice, isolation and survival. While I ended up enjoying the story once I finished it up, I really wasn’t sold on it until the third act. Maybe it’s because I played the game in English (it defaults to Japanese vocals) but Emma was such a boring character. Now I understand why this is and if you play the game so will you, but I mean good lord… I felt like I was reading Twilight again. The joke being that I think Bella is also an extremely boring protagonist. But Emma’s vocals are all just very flat… again, I get it, but it makes things worse when the main people in her group are also just as dry. Like I’m not kidding, I hated when I had to come back to the walker to have a conversation with either one of them. But, boring protagonist aside, the game is more than just Emma and the story actually ends up being really touching in the end and I’m glad I pushed through; even if some of the twists I had already figured out.
Much has been said about the combat in BoR and let me put you at ease if you are like me, this isn’t a soulslike game. Indeed, there is the ability to play on normal or story difficulty which is always great to see. The post-apocalyptic version of Japan isn’t an open-world but instead has semi-open zones that are packed with enemies, secrets and side missions for players to discover. Emma is able control her hair due to being a blight-stained, with it she can summon long vines that can form bridges or be used in combat to bind enemies. I can tell you I did the first waaaaay more often than I was able to do the second. Emma can also use her hair to raise herself straight up in the air, which is going to come in handy for exploration as she can’t double jump. But the nice thing is that all of these traversal type techniques are super handy in combat.
Emma’s main weapon is going to be her sword, and over the course of the game players will find lots of various types that have a different elemental buff, like fire, poison, etc. She is also able to use a bow and a bowgun that players will find early on. I really slept on both of these tools early on and looking back they are invaluable. They can be used to weaken opponents before jumping in and players can find recipes to make elemental bolts and arrows. When it’s time to get close and personal the moment to moment of it all is like a faster version of Sekiro. Each enemy has a bar that functions much like the posture bar in that game, once players are able to fill it by strikes, parries and more they can do an execution maneuver on the enemy which leads to a quick cinematic death. I wish that there were was more variation in these animations.
Combat is fast and easy enough to control with strikes being mapped to the LB button and ranged to the LT, players can switch the type of ammo by pressing one of the face buttons. Players will have limited health flasks just as in the Souls type games, but they will be refilled along with all your ammo when the player rests at a campfire. The twist to the combat though is your pal Koo, who is basically a large snow-white Dire Wolf. Anytime during combat players can slow time to a crawl with the press of a button and it brings up Koos attacks, just as in Pokémon players can train Koo with various attacks, most of which he will learn after defeating on of the big bad known as Nishi.
Koo will level up along with Emma and players will be able to spend the attribute points and their skill points to build both to fit the players’ individual playstyle. Koo can learn many types of attacks that will apply debuffs but he can also be used as a healer. However, these techniques can only be used a few times before players will need to rest at a campfire; but his normal attacks that is learned from bosses will be usable as long as players have the action points. These are gained by parrying attacks from enemies, dodging attacks and even vanquishing foes. I will say in all the hustle and bustle that happens during fights I often times would forget about Koo and his attacks, he will run around and use basic attacks as he sees fit. But Koo is EXTREMLY important to gameplay, I was struggling a lot in the early game because I wasn’t using all the tools available to me, so if you don’t take anything else from my rambling about this game… please use Koo whenever you can.
My time with the game wasn’t all flowers and swords though, while there was a lot to love like the beautiful graphics I did have some issues. For one Emma’s transition animations feel very stiff, after doing a jump attack she just sort of falls. It’s hard to explain but when you see it, it is just not as fluid. And that really runs all the way through the gameplay, sword combat is great but the animations at times just felt off. Not in a way that made the gameplay detrimental or anything, just in a visual “huh, that looks a little weird” kind of way. While I ended up enjoying the overall narrative, it really took a while before I was invested. A lot of that is due to the flat VO from some of the early cast, I just had a hard time carrying…until I didn’t; which was great. Beasts of Reincarnation offers a quality and performance mode on console and at the time of this review the performance mode is very muddy and flat. Quality felt better to play but this could change with a day one patch.
While we are talking about visuals, can we just talk about why the Pokémon games haven’t evolved if the studio clearly has the chops for some pretty stellar graphics. I don’t know, I love Pokémon, but I mean I think it’s time we make it a little more detailed than it is; maybe it’s just me. Ok, rant over.
Beasts of Reincarnation is hopefully the start of a new franchise for storied developer Game Freak. The fun and exciting blend of action-RPG and turn-based RPG brings something new to the genre, and it has an absolutely beautiful art style. And while it took me a while to really care about Emma and Koo’s plight, by the time the credits rolled I was cheering on their partnership.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
