When Beast of Reincarnation came across my desk a couple of weeks ago, I was completely unaware that this game even existed. I went in blind, not even knowing what genre I was getting myself into.
I was surprised to see a Soulslike, and especially one so heavily focused on story and narrative. These types of games usually don’t do direct, traditional storytelling very well and instead rely on the environment to tell it for them, so it was definitely refreshing to see that.
Unfortunately, an overall desire to be everything all at once completely breaks this game’s focus, leading to a lot of jank that taints an otherwise ambitious, high-potential title.
Here’s our full review.
Purify the world
In Beast of Reincarnation, you play as Emma, a Purifier purpose-built to destroy creatures spawned by the world-ending Blight and source, the eponymous Beast. She is emotionless, highly skilled, and lightning-fast, dispatching monsters back into the abyss and protecting what remains of the world.
She does this alongside her trusty big wolf companion Koo, who serves as a sidekick complete with its own abilities and attacks.
Together, Emma and Koo travel the world, Earth in 4026, heading for the Capital to slay the Beast of Reincarnation and stop its onslaught. In the meantime, Emma and Koo, alongside Kagura and Brad, her compatriots, have to purify as many regions as possible by killing their resident Nushi, Blight-spawned creatures of immense power and effect on the environment.
This forms the core gameplay loop: you enter the Brauera, a walker mech, go to a location, explore it and defeat its Nushi, and move on to the next, slowly making your way to the Capital.
There are, of course, many digressions telling us of Emma’s past and her connection to the mysterious Violet, as well as to help foment the relationship between Emma, Koo, Brad, and other characters they come in contact with. But, in essence, this path toward the Capital informs most of the game’s structure, which unfolds in chapters (each chapter dedicated to one of the regions, and some more stuff to boot).
The story in Beast of Reincarnation is one of its strongest suits. The characters, how they relate to each other, and how those relationships develop are good enough to hook you into the narrative despite some of its flaws. On top of that, there are a few layers of mystery surrounding both Emma and the Beast, and I found those intriguing enough to keep going.
A lot of the game’s narrative unfolds in unskippable cutscenes, with which I didn’t find an issue, but would definitely begin to grate on a second play. The cutscenes are painfully inconsistent, though, and vary from barely animated with janky character rigs to some of the coolest I’ve ever seen.
This heavy focus on cutscene storytelling is reminiscent of Kojima’s Death Stranding, and that’s not the only part of the game that bears a resemblance to the auteur’s work.
In fact, you’ll recognize various elements popular in many East Asian games, almost as if the developers were picking things to include in the game at random. It does form a cohesive whole, somehow, but some aspects do stick out like a sore thumb.
For example, the story beat that the golems are actually people who transferred their souls is straight out of Nier, while the huge farming minigame with the incubator and growing pots is a real Korean MMO mechanic that’s cool but really unnecessary.
Still, the combat and the story are genuinely solid, especially the former, which does not help too much once the jank sets in.
Mechanically sound, painfully inconsistent
Beast of Reincarnation is structured as an open-zone game, meaning you do have dedicated levels, but they’re very big and, on paper, very explorable. Going around the world with Koo in tow will help you find a lot of interesting things, from currencies to food to new materials and recipes, but none of those are ever meaningful enough to warrant exploration.
In fact, exploration feels like a chore, since the world is saturated with enemies that quickly become repetitive and artificially difficult (they hit relentlessly, deal too much damage, and come in completely unfair numbers). The issue is that it’s borderline mandatory, since to upgrade your weapons and material production you need to upgrade Bauera. The problem is, you need specific items that can only be found during exploration.
You are thus stuck in a conundrum where you don’t want to explore since it’s simply not fun, boiling down to walking up to every single place you see hoping Koo will spot loot. But then again, you have to go and loot since the game locks so many upgrades behind the Bauera.
It’s frustrating, to say the least, especially when you consider just how much you need to upgrade the walker and how many super rare, hard-to-find resources that’ll cost you.
Furthermore, health potion expansions are locked behind these Dragon Veil Shrines, of which you need literal dozens to get one single HP vial slot. Sure, I loved exploring the world for its own sake since the game’s mechanics make it effortless with an amazing traversal system, but the rewards are just not it. Outside of a few cool weapons and armor I found, most of the currencies and soul stones (charms) were nigh-useless.
I think this could easily be fixed post-launch, but the build I played was just not amazing in terms of exploration, which is a shame since there’s this great exploration tool, Emma’s hair, and I can’t really use it for anything cool outside of merely climbing high surfaces. These sorts of disconnects between the mechanics and the game itself repeat constantly, leading to a great feeling of inconsistency overall.
Some of the best boss fights ever
The combat really is absolutely fantastic. While the movement is already good and, unfortunately, not usually put to great use, the combat is almost completely flawless and based around systems found in Sekiro more so than other Soulslikes. You are encouraged to deflect and parry enemy attacks, and with the game’s generous parry window, its bosses are some of the most fun I’ve ever fought.
This more generous parry window solves Sekiro‘s issue with non-humanoid enemies, meaning Nushi and other massive beasts are pretty much as fun to fight as regular humanoids. Humanoids do tend to have an incredibly artificial difficulty curve in massive HP and poise bars, as well as relentless attacks and gank fights that are, in every sense of the word, simply unfair.
In one-on-one (or two-on-one) boss fights, Beast of Reincarnation is at its peak. The set of attacks you can deploy, as well as countless Blade Arts (special moves), makes each encounter varied and different, since you’re encouraged to explore what works and what doesn’t with specific enemies. Of course, you can tailor the combos to your own playstyle, combining them with myriad different swords that have various effects.
Koo adds an extra layer to the combat since it has its own set of abilities and attacks, some of which Koo uses automatically and some that you have to cast. There are so many different abilities and effects that both Koo and Emma can apply to enemies that I have a feeling every single player will find something worth using here.
It’s a shame how the game’s inconsistent level design and repetitive, inconsistently challenging enemies take away so much from the experience. But I have a feeling the devs will be able to tune and change things post-launch. For now, most of the game remains an utter frustration, and even boss fights can be quite tedious when the boss suddenly starts changing attack patterns.
Some bosses are also very gimmicky, which only breaks the pacing.
Still, this is the game’s strongest side and allows all of its systems to flourish and function as intended, both in terms of movement and actual combat.
Neither here nor there
Beast of Reincarnation is a solid game at heart, but one that’s trying to be Stellar Blade, Death Stranding, Nier, and Nioh at the same time. Without committing to a single core identity, most of its systems end up washed out and mediocre, and despite having a solid structure in its core, its peripherals simply never got the chance to shine.
The story, while solid, suffers greatly from JRPG cliches, bad animations in cutscenes, and painfully vague writing at times. The exploration is forced, the levels are inconsistent in quality and especially size, and enemies populating it tend to be more of a nuisance than fun challenges.
The combat outshines the rest of the game by far, and boss fights are genuinely fun, but there’s simply not enough of anything in here since, as I’ve said, Game Freak tried to go down way too many paths and stopped halfway through most of them.
Still, I think Beast of Reincarnation is worth playing. But I would wait until the devs ironed out all the technicalities and made the game into a more fun, less forced experience.
