Beast of Reincarnation Review

Even though Game Freak will forever be known as the Pokemon studio, it has occasionally pursued other ventures. Game Freak’s non-Pokemon projects tend to be smaller-scale games, but Beast of Reincarnation is an exception. An ambitious and challenging action-RPG with Sekiro-style parrying, Beast of Reincarnation is something completely new for Game Freak, and that may be why everything doesn’t click quite as it should.

Beast of Reincarnation is set in post-apocalyptic Japan, years after a mysterious blight destroyed civilization. Most of humanity is gone, and the wilderness has reclaimed most of the land. Robotic “golems” and blight-infused monsters roam the countryside. Players take on the role of Emma, a warrior who is infected with the blight herself. Emma’s blight infliction grants her supernatural control over plants, which plays a role in both combat and exploration.

Using her blight powers, Emma can get a massive boost by lifting herself up with vines, and she can also create vine bridges to get across large gaps. The vines also effectively function as a grappling hook, which makes climbing tall structures and getting around the game world much faster. In combat, Emma can use her vines to entangle enemies and unleash powerful attacks that work in tandem with her sword.

Beast of Reincarnation Has Serious Sekiro Vibes

Beast of Reincarnation combat is like a more forgiving take on FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Emma can hack and slash at her opponents, but the key to victory is perfectly-timed parries that fill enemy stagger meters and allow Emma to utilize her dog Koo’s special abilities, known as Bloom Arts. Bloom Arts slow the action down considerably, giving players the chance to pick what attack they want from a menu as though they were playing a turn-based RPG, and then follow up with a timed button press to get the most out of it. Beast of Reincarnation combat is challenging and satisfying, and the addition of Bloom Arts helps it stand out from its inspirations.

Between combat and exploration, Beast of Reincarnation‘s core gameplay is solid and has a lot to offer. Sadly, the adventure built around these mechanics is a slog. While perfectly parrying enemy attacks never gets old, there isn’t enough enemy variety in Beast of Reincarnation to keep things fully engaging from start to finish. The boss fights in the game are especially disappointing, and stand out as Beast of Reincarnation‘s biggest missed opportunity.

Game Freak is known for its creative monster designs, but there are only a couple in Beast of Reincarnation that leave much of an impression. Most of the enemies look fairly generic. The bosses are almost all simply giant animals with foliage on them, and the fights against them are too repetitive. The way Beast of Reincarnation is laid out, Emma and Koo have to fight most of the bosses at least three times. There’s the initial fight with the boss, then the fight at the boss’s lair, and then the second phase of the latter fight. The bosses get visual tweaks and some new attacks in each phase, but not enough to make fighting them repeatedly all that fun. It doesn’t help that many bosses have similar attack patterns, and then there’s the fact that some bosses are straight-up repeated. All things considered, it’s hard not to come away disappointed with the boss lineup in Beast of Reincarnation.

Beast of Reincarnation boss fights can sometimes be even more frustrating thanks to unresponsive controls. There were times when I was standing completely still as Emma and spamming the heal button, only for her to do nothing and then get hit again. Sometimes Emma won’t latch on to grapple points, and I also had difficulty getting the Entanglement Overdrive ability (a move that slows down time) to trigger. While the controls aren’t a consistent enough issue to totally derail things, Beast of Reincarnation still doesn’t feel tight enough to make every hit or death feel totally fair.

Beast of Reincarnation Isn’t a Soulslike, But It’s Inspired by Them

From its combat system to the campfires dotted around the map to the high-level of difficulty, it’s clear that Beast of Reincarnation is inspired by FromSoftware’s games. The controls are one way that Beast of Reincarnation lacks the polish of its inspirations, but there are other issues. Whereas FromSoftware’s game worlds evoke a sense of wonder and discovery, Beast of Reincarnation‘s world does not. Everywhere looks samey and the blah green-and-brown color palette leaves a lot to be desired. Texture pop-in and muddy textures are also present enough to be distracting.

FromSoftware games and Soulslikes in general are not usually known for their mind-bending stories, but even by genre standards, Beast of Reincarnation falls way short of expectations. Beast of Reincarnation is stuffed full of boring dialogue delivered in a weirdly breathy way, with overlong cutscenes and drawn-out exposition dumps. Characters stare at each other with dead eyes while they talk, and the game fails to make any member of the cast memorable.

There are some interesting lore drops late-game, but Beast of Reincarnation‘s biggest swings don’t connect the way they should, and that comes down largely due to the execution. One particularly egregious section forces players to listen to a seemingly endless stream of exposition, giving Emma nothing to do but stand around in front of the next lever she needs to pull to go into the next room for more waiting and listening. This agonizing exposition dump happens near the end of the game and brings the story’s momentum to a screeching halt. If there were more space between the levers, perhaps with platforming or combat encounters to fill the gaps, it would be more tolerable, but the way it’s executed in the game is a borderline offensive waste of time.

Beast of Reincarnation‘s story gets in the way of the game way too much and is told so poorly that its best ideas can’t really flourish. The most interesting story beats are suffocated by dull exposition, lackluster character interactions, and soulless writing. Ignoring the story and exploring Beast of Reincarnation‘s expansive areas at one’s leisure is a far more compelling way to experience the game.

Beating Beast of Reincarnation on normal difficulty and sticking mostly to the main path takes about 20-25 hours.

The world itself may not be particularly interesting, but Beast of Reincarnation‘s combat and exploration are fun enough that going off the beaten path is a worthwhile endeavor. Even after rolling credits, I found myself going back to the game to kill some robots, find new swords, and explore areas that I missed on my initial playthrough. The core gameplay is solid, even with the control issues, and on these side quests, I can see the vision for Beast of Reincarnation and what it could have been. It’s a shame the execution of that vision isn’t there.