I look up. I see a high ledge calling to my RPG instincts; surely, there’s a good item up there. First I leap up to a lower ledge, then I use my hair to make a bridge across to another platform. From there I make a leap of faith, barely making it one ledge higher, where I use my hookshot to move ever further upwards. Eventually, after three more clever uses of Beast of Reincarnation‘s really interesting platforming mechanics, I reach the top. I finally made it!
But there’s nothing there.
No item, no enemy. Just a big fat zero.
This wasn’t the first, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, time Beast of Reincarnation fooled me. At first blush, this is a game that should absolutely sing to me, bringing together some beautiful musical tracks and environments, plus parry-heavy combat with turn-based moments tossed in to reward engagement with its core mechanics (because I love those, too). Not to mention a story premise that seems like NieR: Automata meets Hayao Miyazaki? Sign me up.
Alas, like those cool platforming ideas which should reward careful exploration and thoughtfulness, Beast of Reincarnation is a set of empty promises and derivative ideas, and while there are things I recommend, the game never lives up to how great it looks on paper.
Of all those promising aspects, Beast of Reincarnation‘s combat is what spoke to me the most, especially after watching the slick combat overview trailer. Everything shown there holds true mechanically. Basically, parry or die. Almost every attack can (and should) be parried, and as you parry, two things happen. First, the stagger gauge builds up, allowing you to kill a regular enemy immediately or to stagger a boss. Parries feel fair too, even if the timing was a bit early for my liking. Nonetheless, it is consistent, which is most important. Plus, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before if you’ve played Sekiro or Lies of P.
But with every parry, you also fill up your FP (“Florescence Points”), which allows you to slow down time and select a special move for your canine companion Koo to use. This, on the surface, seems fresh. Unfortunately, using Koo’s skills is maddeningly repetitive because the most effective way to utilize them is alternating between two to quickly inflict status effects. Any other method just doesn’t work as well.
All of this, combined with a shocking lack of enemy variety and fighting each boss a minimum of three times (and sometimes six!), makes things really monotonous. As such, the difficulty curve of the Beast of Reincarnation is way off, getting much easier as you progress and figure out how things work, and it just doesn’t change. Sure, there are other systems like food, level gains, and a skill tree, but none of that really matters in the face of parrying and everything that comes with it.
The prevalence of parrying impacts Beast of Reincarnation‘s exploration, too. There are about a dozen zones, and some of them are genuinely beautiful. I’ll admit that every area is full of items, Elite enemies, and a few engaging platforming challenges. But most of them are too linear, all of them are filled with the same few enemy types, and like the rest of the game, the items don’t matter much because of how parrying overwhelms every other system. The myriad invisible walls in places that make absolutely no sense don’t help, either. Unfortunately, everything else feels like useless repetition.
One of the ways I found this most disappointing is the music. Honestly, going into Beast of Reincarnation, I thought for sure the OST came from MONACA, of Nier and Stellar Blade fame. They like the same soft choral arrangements and ethereal vibe. I quickly realized that must not be true because, par for the course, there just isn’t much variety, with every track evoking the same melancholic mood. And hell, I really like that stuff! But for a game that is going to run you a minimum of 25 hours, I need a change every once in a while no matter how pretty it is.
Speaking of pretty, the game does look pretty good, which is saying something given the body horror Game Freak put on my TV recently. Beast of Reincarnation‘s zones are full of crumbling buildings and environments that range from wide-open greenery to enticing mountains and caves, but they ultimately get a little stale as time goes. Battle and kill animations are very cool. Everything is crisp, especially the character and boss models. Maybe most importantly, it held a mostly stable frame rate throughout, which is pretty important given how significant timing in combat is. I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to wow you here, but the visuals do the job.
Beast of Reincarnation‘s story almost bucks this disappointing trend, but despite actually having an engaging plot, it’s presented so poorly and awkwardly that it fails to hit the emotional highs it goes for. The game starts in medias res with a quick tutorial and area to run through, and then we flash back to find out that the world collapsed 1000 years ago after people decided to eliminate emotions, where the “Blight” infects the souls of the people.
All the while, the ever-present threat of the titular Beast of Reincarnation that threatens the world every 100 years hangs over everyone. Emma, our protagonist, is a “Purifier” who lacks feeling, but she has the unique ability to take on the Blight and continue forward. As a result, she is chosen to pursue the freshly returned Beast of Reincarnation.
At least I think that’s what they tell you early on? Honestly, the lore is confusing and weirdly withheld throughout, partially because it is told through flashforwards and flashbacks. It’s a classic case of poor narrative design drowning out any potential the story itself might have. Even once we find out what’s going on at the very end—through heavy exposition that happens while you are in combat (a sin Beast of Reincarnation likes to commit a lot)—the story is doing nothing different. In fact, it is so derivative of the games that obviously inspired it that it borders on plagiarism.
The writers want to make a moody character piece. They want us to focus on the growth of the characters as Emma (obviously) starts to develop feelings, a soul. But it takes so long to launch that my boredom made me ignore the story almost entirely, so I didn’t care about the characters, their fates, or even their resolutions. The relatively flat voice acting, both in English and Japanese, does nothing to alleviate these problems.
You’ve likely already looked at the score at the bottom here. It might seem high for a game I’ve spent most of this review ripping apart. The truth is I still had a relatively fun time playing Beast of Reincarnation. After all, even if executed poorly, I love so many of the ideas. It’s by no means a bad game. But ultimately it’s a stale set of broken promises and wasted potential. Like the ledge, I might have had some fun getting to the end point, but there’s no real reward.
