Beast of Reincarnation - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
REVIEWSAUTHOR - SPAWN2026
Spawn
8/14/20267 min read
Introduction
Beast of Reincarnation is a third-person action RPG developed by Game Freak (Devs of Pokémon) and published by Fictions. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Japan in the year 4026, the world has been ravaged by corrupting blight. You play as Emma and Koo, a blighted stray dog. The goal of the game is to get rid of Beast of Reincarnation.
As for me, I enjoy Action RPG and Soulslike game and I've played Beast of Reincarnation on Xbox for 28 hours and in Hard difficulty and here is my The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of it.
2. Excellent Soundtracks
The game's soundtracks took me immediately back to the memories of Stellar Blade, it had a similar vibe and the soundtracks felt just right for the situation of the game all the time.
3. Good Visuals and Character Designs
The game looks aesthetically very pleasing especially in fidelity mode and the world design was on point with the theme of a post-apocalyptic game. Travelling across Japan and seeing the sights of Mount Yotei or huge mountains was a sight to behold.
The characters deign including the enemies is what stood out for me. They were all inspired by nature I felt. Things like Emma's hair or Koo's tail or be it boss's overall design - It all felt very unique and for once we saw golems that were not made of stone!
4. Overall Story
This game revealed it's story very slowly over time and it turned out to be a good one. While at a larger level the story is about chasing the Beast it's the why of the story that I found to be very good. The only complain here it would be that it duped out all the lore only at the very end.
5. Gameplay
Rhythmic parrying while syncing with Koo to defeat enemies was satisfying. And so was new mechanics of traversal where you can use Emma's hair as a grapple point to travel faster or to get a stealth hit on enemies. These things were designed around the concept of grace site from souls games where when you reach site/shrine , you can rest to recover but the downside to it is that the enemies would respawn too. Unlike souls game though, you would loose any souls if you died - that's a good or a bad thing depending on who you ask.
Game's skill tree was also a sweet design, it was literally a tree! As you fight bosses, you unlock more skills and you use the points that you gather from fighting enemies to upgrade a given skill. I though the skill tree was executed well for both Emma and Koo.
The Bad
1. Repetitive enemy types
While I love the combat design of the game, the enemy type repetition completely spoiled the mood. In the first 6 chapters you are basically fighting same 3-4 types of enemies and one each zone you fight the boss twice, that was still acceptable but chapter 7 onwards same bosses appearing again and again and it got really annoying. It was like extending the game for the sake of just making it longer.
2. Exploration was not appetizing
At first I was very excited about my upgrading everything, especially my camp - A giant 2 legged walking robot that looks like a waling box - but I was able to upgrade it by chapter 6 and there was no reason for me to go out exploring because I had already unlocked the max levels of weapons by chapter 6. I was cheesing through the enemies with my swords irrespective of the elemental affinity and I had lost any appetite to explore for the rest of the game - the game has 13 chapters by the way.
3. Combat Difficulty
While the feel of the combat was good, the difficulty of it was very easy, even in Hard. Repeating enemy types didn't help because I already knew all their patterns. I wanted more from such a good combat system but it was a big disappointment because of the difficulty and enemy type.
The Ugly
1. Game Direction
I thought a lot about it, how can a game have all the good elements like gameplay, combat, story design and still make you tear your hair apart. And after a while it clicked, the direction of the game itself was very poor, to a point where the Director had to come forward and apologize.
If the gam's direction was better and the game was shorter - this could be 10/10 game because what's the point of having good combat but repeating enemies, what's the point of good traversal and level design if you are all levelled up mid game, or what's the point of a good story if it isn't told right.
2. Boss fights
As I said earlier, even the bosses started to reappear and not just once or twice but multiple times and it got very frustrating to see them again and again, you could easily tell that they are trying to stretch the game unnecessarily. And when the bosses were different they felt like re-skin of other bosses, not always but they did. In short, while it was fun in the beginning, the bosses became boring until that last couple of fights in the game.
3. Narration
It killed me honestly. The story of the game through it's lore or cinematics was told in a very weird way. Each character took a 3-4 second pause before their dialogue and the shot was always a panning camera shot. It just annoyed me to the core and what added to the wound was inability to skip scenes as a whole. Yes, you could skip dialogues but not the whole scene at ones. It was so badly narrated that I wanted to skip the scenes. The only scenes you could skip is the boss pre or mid fight animations and thanks god for that
There is a scene where Emma closes her eye and opens it for a week in game and I almost threw my controller at that point because I couldn't skip it.
4. Game Length
While I have already made this point earlier but this game would have been very good for 12-15 hour experience. It was very evident that the game was stretched out and not in a meaningful way because repeating enemies and unappetizing exploration is something nobody desires.
The Good
Let's start with The Good - Shall we! Beast of Reincarnation has a few things that's done right, starting with the combat.
1. Combat
Think Sekiro, think god of war - that's how smooth the game's combat feels. Every hit you land feels incredibly satisfying and every attack you parry takes you back to Sekiro days.
As you can tell the combat in the game is primarily centered around melee combat and it does have range options too with the Bow and Arrow and also a Crossbow. Another ranged option is Koo - your furry companion but he needs to recharge after a couple of uses - more on that later.
The game's combat is designed around element affinity. Each enemy has a weakness which is displayed on the left of their health bar, weaknesses like fire, corrosion etc. and in order to take advantage of those weaknesses, you need to equip a sword that does damage of that particular kind. I found this mechanic to be a good take on combat and I enjoyed collecting different kinds of swords.
Now apart from Emma's close combat abilities, you can also use Koo's ability to damage enemies - that was a good new addition in the game. Overall the combat was one of the most satisfying aspect of the game.
Verdict
Beast of Reincarnation is a game that has a lot of promise and potential but it ultimately let me down through it's direction and narration. While it was fun to play first 6 chapters for the smooth and fluid combat it has, it all got repetitive very fast and the reason for the exploration died pretty quick because I was packed up mid game and game was way too easy to go looking for items that would improve your abilities. If this game was directed well we could be talking about this game for all the good things it has but unfortunately that's not the case.
Devs has shared that they are trying to improve the pacing of the game but only time will tell how much it's going to help. IT's a game that you don't wanna spend $60 on and it's worth checking out if you have Gamepass or I'd recommend waiting for a sale if you are looking to own this game.
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