If you’ve ever had a dog or cat who is attached to your hip, you’ve likely had moments when they, as if by some magical force, appeared by your side just in time to get stepped on, trip you up, or in some cases scare the heck out of you. Beast of Reincarnation, a game about a girl named Emma and her wolf companion Koo, does a surprisingly good job of capturing the sensation of a pet sneaking up on you and making you jump slightly, and it happens so often that you’d think my nervous system would have stopped activating every time Koo suddenly appeared beside me. It didn’t.
Koo is not just a regular wolf. He’s able to absorb a force called the “blight,” which grants him elemental powers and covers his tail in vines and foliage like he’s sprouted up from the ground of Beast of Reincarnation’s post-apocalyptic world. Though he and Emma meet under less than ideal circumstances which pit them against one another, the pair warms up to each other and unites under a common goal of defeating violent creatures called malefacts and absorbing their power to become stronger.
One of the abilities Koo has as part of this transformation is that he can teleport, and he does so to keep up with Emma if she runs off too far. He does this with some theatricality, appearing from a puff of smoke like he’s showing Emma a cool magic trick he learned, and while, yes, that’s very impressive of you, my baby boy who has never done anything wrong, it’s also so sudden and just loud enough to repeatedly make me momentarily scared that I am under attack.
Beast of Reincarnation is a pretty mellow game by and large. Its fights are tough and its enemies vicious, but the world feels almost like a still-life painting when enemies aren’t around. The music is lovely, but the world itself is pretty quiet. Civilization is dying out and nature has reclaimed even the biggest metropolises, and walking around can feel almost serene much of the time. That is, until your big-ass wolf puppy comes galavanting in like he’s dropped a smoke grenade as he makes his grand entrance into the function.
I played Beast of Reincarnation for around 24 hours, and every time Koo instantly transmissioned by my side, even a dozen chapters in, I felt myself jolt as if some monster was about to descend upon me and drain my health with a few hits. Maybe Beast of Reincarnation’s difficulty just had me on edge, ready to parry or dodge anything that moved. Unfortunately, Koo doesn’t realize how overstimulated I am, and he wants to play.