The protagonist of Beast of Reincarnation is a synthetic human being named Emma. She does not have a soul, but she thinks she wants one. It’s lamentably fitting, then, that Beast of Reincarnation feels soulless. Emma, perhaps appropriately, is stiff and lifeless, but so are her companions and just about every other character in this post-post-apocalyptic Japan. Even the world around them – a network of wide corridors made up of concrete reminders of what was, blanketed in familiar vines, shrubs, and greenery – is stiff. The explorable setting is unchanging and placed within gameplay uninterested in the mystery the setting otherwise evokes. Everything funnels you forward to the next fight, rushing you to advance in an effort to obscure the literal and metaphorical cracks in each zone. Fortunately, that next fight is the best part of Beast of Reincarnation, courtesy of a satisfying combat system filled with experimentation and tense fun. If only the rest of Game Freak’s venture into the action space matched it.
Emma, a mysterious old man named Brad, a young girl named Kagura, and your trusty wolf companion Koo travel throughout Japanese colonies in a Cleanse Walker mech. Emma, a purifier, is tasked with, well, purifying beasts overtaken by a blight en route to the Capitol, where she must defeat the Beast of Reincarnation to save mankind.
These characters talk directly to Beast of Reincarnation’s transparent themes, taking a blunt approach and leaving little for the player to dissect or work through. The importance of friendship, family, having a soul, fighting to save people, and more are discussed ad nauseum in overly long cutscenes void of life. These characters are paper-thin, and the story, which features predictable arcs, lackluster villains, and plot beats about Koo you’ve seen in dozens of other dog-related stories, does little to inspire me as the controller of Emma. But her blade picks up the slack.
Game Freak blends Emma’s Sekiro- and Stellar Blade-style swordplay, which relies on parrying, dodging, and stagger bars, with Koo’s QTE elemental abilities that are reminiscent of last year’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to create an excellent combat system. So excellent, in fact, that sitting through 10-plus-minute cutscenes after each milestone of progression is doubly excruciating. For a game that demonstrates such confidence in its combat, Game Freak is determined to pull you away from it with yet another exposition dump.
While clearly pulling from the aforementioned inspirations, Beast of Reincarnation’s combat is easier. Bosses and more elite enemies still pose a great challenge, but generous HP recovery, powerful attacks that are easy to pull off, and large parry and dodge windows will help the less experienced feel capable and seasoned players feel untouchable.
Initially, boss fights are tense arenas for learning and mastering the combat. However, they, too, become repetitive, with recurring bosses appearing far too much, especially for what are meant to be Beast of Reincarnation’s end-of-stage setpiece moments. Pay attention too closely, and you’ll find that enemies share many animations, removing the enigma of duels and bouts. It doesn’t help that Beast of Reincarnation takes a formulaic approach to each stage, either: The big boss of the area appears for a quick fight at the start, runs off when you’ve hurt it enough, and then waits in its lair while you fight through the stage until you reach it for a proper fight. But still, fighting a boss, whether a repeat or not, means engaging in the game’s combat, and doing so is congenial throughout.
Challenge aside, which comes in three difficulty settings, the combat is rewarding and highly reflexive to one’s strengths. I stuck to an elemental build where I’d begin each fight with Koo’s lightning Javelin equipped with a 2x status build-up mod, allowing my lightning-imbued katana to inflict the “Shock” effect in just seconds. That creates a window of paralysis that lets Emma’s various combo moves and finishers inflict heavy damage and stagger, if not outright kill.
And that’s just one of the many builds I experimented with in Beast of Reincarnation. There’s room for ranged, stealth, fire, poison builds, and more. Through an expansive skill tree that continues to grow, even after the game’s final (and anticlimactic) fight, there’s no world where two players’ Emmas work the same. Generous attribute points used for raising attack, defense, and the usual standard RPG stats make the act of doing so feel inconsequential, and I rarely paid attention to my progression here. But the subsequent skill points I’d unlock, which let me power up specific abilities and moves in Emma and Koo’s kit, came in the dozens, and working through the associated skill tree was a gluttonous climb of power.
There’s a unique double jump in the form of a vine that Emma can use to push herself higher, and she can use those vines to whip to high-up perches and locations, but Game Freak is uninterested in how this might affect locomotion outside of battle. Utilizing these vines to get some air and slam down into enemies below with my Helm-Splitter ability is a treat – whipping up to a boring hallway littered with boring enemies to open a boring chest with boring rewards inside is not.
You will open the same type of chest to receive the same types of resources countless times, and the “take all” button is your best friend because what these items do matters little. There are crops to grow from seedlings collected for Kagura to cook up stat-boosting meals, but these bonuses are negligible. There are skulls to collect to power up your Cleanse Walker, but I had maxed out this mech before the game’s halfway point. There are books (you can’t read) to collect, rations for a hunger system that matters little, and currency you will never struggle to accumulate. Seeking out these resources is as rote as the resources themselves.
The final act of Beast of Reincarnation, with its telegraphed revelations and color-by-numbers moments, left me feeling… nothing. But the ensuing New Game+ notification stopped me from uninstalling the game after the credits rolled. I don’t know if I’ll return to play more, but if I do, it won’t be because of Emma, but rather, what Emma’s sword can do.