Game Freak’s upcoming action RPG Beast of Reincarnation is a little under a month away, and the Pokémon developer had a handful of press play an early section of the game to get a sense of how its sci-fi fantasy future begins to unfold. Broadly speaking, people seem to really dig what they played, but a common sentiment was that this is a game you’ll want to sit with, learning how to move and fight through it, rather than rushing through it on a time constraint as is often required during pre-release play sessions.
Beast of Reincarnation‘s story might be a little confusing at first
The preview started at the very beginning of Beast of Reincarnation, and while we have an official plot synopsis and descriptions of what the game is about, it sounds like the beginning of the game is a bit minimalistic and cryptic when it comes to telling its fantastical post-apocalyptic story. As GameSpot puts it:
One thing I’ll say first is that I don’t fully understand what’s happening with the story. My best grasp is that [main characters] Emma and Koo are a certain type of being that can take down these infected creatures and store them in herself or something like that. It seems like her position in this world is basically to quell it of these malefics or these evil blighted creatures.”
This isn’t going to be a FromSoftware-level challenge, but it is tough
GameSpot’s preview makes some comparisons to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice by Dark Souls developer FromSoftware. It sounds like Beast of Reincarnation is a pretty challenging game, but may not be quite as punishing as the Soulslikes that came before it, and gives players more options to determine their playstyle through its magic systems and through abilities you can execute while the action is paused.
For some context, I love Sekiro. It is one of my favorite games of all time. I’ve played it, god, countless times and this felt right at home to me. I will say it’s definitely a little easier. I would say that the parry window is a little longer, so you don’t need to be as precise, at least from what I can remember. There’s way more wiggle room. I think with Sekiro, you’re kind of forced into playing a specific style, and] I think that’s one of that game’s strengths. With this, there’s more tactical options.
You might want to take your time to learn the systems before venturing into the unknown
Those who attended the preview event played the first 90 minutes of the game, and it sounds like some of the challenges of that early section came from not being able to sit with the systems before moving forward into some of the demo’s harder challenges. Polygon notes that Beast of Reincarnation’s early mechanical explanations were “too minimal” and that it wasn’t until players reached one of the game’s savepoint camp fires that they realized the game has an in-game tutorial codex that can teach you the ins and outs of its RPG systems. The details are there but you have to go looking for them, and that’s a lot easier to do when you’re not pressed for time at a preview event.
[B]y the time I got to the first serious boss fight, a Nushi in the form of a towering stag, I didn’t have a grasp on half the skills the game expected me to be fluent with. Part of me expected that this fight would be a good occasion for the game to explain more advanced combat mechanics, like finishers and the two bars charging for Emma at the bottom of the screen, but nope! I assumed the bars triggered something akin to Kratos’s Spartan Rage in the God of War series, but whenever I activated it, a reticule popped up, I mashed some buttons, and I left myself open to a massive wallop. I still don’t know what it actually does!
Koo is a good boy
While Beast of Reincarnation is a far cry from the family-friendly world of Pokémon, it does carry the series’ environmental themes and its central concept of cooperation between humans and animals. Emma’s canine companion Koo helps you in combat, but according to Game Informer, the wolf is also helpful in sniffing out secrets and solutions.
Koo also helps in exploration by barking to alert you of nearby enemies and items. The enemy alerts are specific, usually having some additional UI indicator, but the item notifications are more subtle: ranging from Koo grabbing the item for you to just telling you there’s something nearby. This level of variability makes exploration and combat feel natural. “We didn’t want Koo to become this autonomous tool that basically became just another weapon for the player,” [Director Kota] Furushima says, “nor did we want to create a situation where the player had to be very attentive to [Koo].” Koo can be downed, but thankfully that never happens in my time playing. I die long before Koo did, and I prefer it that way.
Beast of Reincarnation is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on August 4.
