With Beast of Reincarnation finally out in the wild, we have now had some time to play through the game and see whether it lives up to the hype. There is a lot of good stuff, from the worldbuilding to the combat, but on the whole, I would argue that the experience is certainly below the standards we would have expected, and that discounts a lot of the more glaring issues related to performance and the shoddy pacing of the story. So for a lot of people, they may feel let down by the game but are still on the lookout for a similar ARPG that can fill the gap, and as it turns out, there is an ideal title to satiate that need for action that is actually very comparable to Beast of Reincarnation.
Stellar Blade, launched back in 2024, with the PC release dropping just over a year later, is currently sitting at 95% overwhelmingly positive on Steam compared to Beast of Reincarnation’s mixed reviews. The game quickly drew in millions of fans across the globe who praised its stylish combat style and the dedication to enjoyment that is infused into every minute of the game. It might not have the most groundbreaking story, and it does struggle with repetitiveness towards the final third, but I would argue that the 30 or so hours you get from that first playthrough are some of the best in the entire genre. In a lot of ways, Beast of Reincarnation plays like a Stellar Blade spin-off, taking a lot of the same concepts just in a slightly different setting, and if, like me, you were a bit disheartened by Game Freak’s attempt at an RPG, then you should for sure give Shift Up’s latest sci-fi adventure a go.
Stellar Blade Is the Perfect Substitute for Beast of Reincarnation
From the moment you start up Beast of Reincarnation, it is clear there is a lot of potential. You are thrown straight into the action and given a nice big open zone to explore full of creatures and golems of all shapes and sizes, and you and Koo can begin dispatching them with some pretty satisfying combos without needing to learn any complex mechanics. The combat really is the standout, because you have so many different abilities and can complete almost turn-based actions to complement the real-time fights; you end up in a nice flow where blades fly, and you have a lot of control over exactly how even tougher engagements play out. However, as time goes on, and the enemy variety starts to cap off, there are only so many times you can repeat the same set of parries and swings before it gets a bit tiring, and the story that keeps everything together isn’t exactly an emotionally taxing roller coaster that will keep you invested through dialogue alone.
That’s exactly where Stellar Blade has the upper hand, as not only is the story a bit more cohesive albeit a bit abstract, but the combat and enemy variety is far more diverse and enjoyable to play with. The best way of describing your gameplay progression through the world is by thinking about each major section as an upgrade to your overall power. You start out with just a few skill trees, focusing on different combos and stats like survivability and damage, but as time goes on, you unlock a couple more which fundamentally change how you engage with enemies, and because of how many different nodes there are, you can actually start specializing in very tailored builds that can make you better or worse at dealing with specific enemy types.
Then there are the enemies you fight, which are mostly known as Naytiba, mutated creatures that can range from small ground-dwellers to giant monstrosities with dozens of teeth layers ready to bite straight through Eve. The game introduces these enemies at a very moderate pace, showing off some Barnacles and Lurkers, before pressuring you into an intense battle against a Dozer, before moving on to the next set of foes. By constantly changing what you’re up against, even when you are exploring fairly simple areas like the Great Desert, it always feels as though there are more things to see, and as a result, you have a genuine reason to keep playing. Beast of Reincarnation on the other hand, really struggles with enemy variety, presenting you with the same or at least very similar golems and animals from start to finish, so after gathering dozens of skill points and raising your power level exponentially, it is a bit odd to waste that strength on something you have been fighting for the last 20 hours.
Stellar Blade’s World and Story Give It Another Edge
It is also worth talking about the worlds and the narratives of the two games, as, while they are very obviously different and the plot points don’t cross over so much, the basic premise and your place in the world are pretty similar. Stellar Blade puts you in the shoes of an android soldier in the midst of an apocalyptic Earth, and your goal is to uncover the truth behind humanity’s downfall, and Beast of Reincarnation casts you as Emma, an infected individual known as a Purifer who must journey across the world to uncover the mysteries behind a disease that has plagued the world. Both are female-led, both are apocalypse scenarios, and they even both put you against alien-like creatures, with one being more grotesque and the other a bit more spiritual. However, when it comes down to pure execution, I think Stellar Blade takes the crown, as the entire narrative and environment are slightly more cohesive and interesting, though it is still the weak point of the game.
To cap it all off, perhaps the most important factor for many people is the fact that Stellar Blade is actually optimized well and Beast of Reincarnation isn’t. The game makes better use of modern tech like DLSS and frame generation, and actually looks a lot better overall even at lower graphics settings. Art style and direction aside, it is hard to make a claim that Beast of Reincarnation is a more aesthetically pleasing game, especially when you have to fiddle with the settings just to get a playable frame rate, and that assumes you haven’t needed to add on any additional mods just for it to work. Console players may have a more reliable experience than PC ones, but in my tests and game time, as someone on a midrange rig with four-year-old hardware, I was consistently getting better performance in high-action scenes in Stellar Blade than I was from idle ones in Beast of Reincarnation.
At the end of the day, Beast of Reincarnation is far from a bad game. It is a decent ARPG that had its issues, but I still had an absolute blast with it, though I did say several times throughout my playthrough that I wished I was just playing Stellar Blade. On the improvements and patches side of things, they have already confirmed several fixes and changes to help combat a lot of the player base’s issues like performance and story pacing, so hopefully they should bring the game closer to the original vision that we would have expected at launch. Plus, there are only so many times you can play through Stellar Blade, which means that if you are on the lookout for a similar game or just finished Beast of Reincarnation and are wanting more ARPG goodness, then in both cases I would highly recommend checking the other out and giving it a chance.
Stellar Blade
9/10
- Released
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April 26, 2024
- ESRB
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M for Mature
- Developer(s)
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Shift Up
- Publisher(s)
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Sony Interactive Entertainment
