Beast of Reincarnation played: I haven’t been this excited to see the Game Freak logo on my screen in 15 years

MyMMO editor Lydia has played the new soulslike from the creators of Pokémon. This is Beast of Reincarnation.

I found little as exciting as starting a new Pokémon game for the first time as a child. The feeling of having a new world to explore was uplifting every time. One of the first things I saw was of course the logo of Game Freak.

How much I associate this logo with the feeling of digital adventure only became clear to me when I saw it again during the reveal of Beast of Reincarnation. It was a bit like seeing an old friend again after having drifted apart years ago. Plus a touch of “Princess Mononoke” – yes, please!

With the realistic graphics and dark tone, the action RPG differs significantly from everything Game Freak has made for Nintendo so far, and of course, I wanted to know: Can this work? The short answer: “Yes, but…”

Beast of Reincarnation is a fun action RPG with a slight identity crisis that proves there is more to Game Freak than Pokémon, but it doesn’t dare to let the player off the hook.

The Good, the Meh and the Ugly

Here’s the gist: In Beast of Reincarnation, a plague has wiped out a large part of humanity. What’s left is now threatened by the return of the titular Beast of Reincarnation.

The protagonist Emma was born with the plague and has the ability to seal the powers of the infected creatures within herself. Accompanied by the Cleanser Brad, the girl Kagura, and the also infected Koo, she heads towards the capital to stop the beast. Along the way, she must defeat the powerful Nushi to absorb their abilities – and grapple with what it means to be human in the meantime.

The campaign is set for 30 to 40 hours. However, if you scour the map thoroughly like I did, it might quickly turn into more. After about 25 hours, I still don’t feel like I’m nearing the end.

A few words on performance beforehand: I had no issues with my 4060 and was getting 50 to 70 FPS even at high graphics settings. However, weaker systems will have to make compromises. It may not be a technical marvel, and there are a few bugs lurking, but at least it’s better than many feared.

The Walker is our mobile base. As you can see, I have a weakness for the design.

Dogs, Hair, Executions

The first thing that positively surprised me is our four-legged companion Koo. Because he is not just a gimmick, but plays a really active role. Although I should have guessed that the studio, which has provided generations of children with starters, can develop a decent animal companion.

Koo has a range of active and passive abilities. He fights by our side and can autonomously use equipped items and abilities. You can use him offensively, or have him heal you in battle. I found the ability “Taunt”, which draws enemy aggro onto Koo, particularly useful, giving me the opportunity to boost my health bar with a stimpack.

In principle, he somewhat reminded me of Rabatzi, the phase energy cat from Borderlands 4.

Over time, Koo can even take out standard enemies easily on his own: By the time I figured out where I was being shot at with arrows, he had partially dematerialized the shooter.

Moreover, Koo is also the quasi-turn-based element of the game. By pressing a button, we can almost pause time in the action-heavy battles and let the four-legged friend carry out a series of attacks. However, we first have to earn the required action points with some clean parries.

That brings us to Combat, the heart of every soulslike. Here I particularly liked the many ways I could take out enemies around the corner. Since there are usually more enemies, and even typically weak creatures can quickly become a problem, it’s advisable to first snuff out a few of them. This can be done by sneaking up from behind or dropping onto them from above. These “assassinations” have their own, surprisingly brutal animation and it’s actually enough to make my little murder-hobo brain chuckle with satisfaction.

The ongoing battle runs in typical souls manner: cleverly parry until the opportunity for a counterattack presents itself. We can use special attacks via key combinations, but since they all consist of the same 2 buttons, it quickly turns into button-mashing. Nevertheless: If you thoroughly beat up the enemy, you’re given the chance to execute a finisher. That also has its own mini-cutscene and feels quite satisfying.

The enemies can indeed hit hard, and if you’re not careful, you can be staggered quickly. However, when you die, Beast of Reincarnation is significantly more merciful than similar titles, as you simply awaken at the last visited rest area and can try again – no corpse run needed.

One of the game’s greatest strengths is the movement. Our protagonist Emma has the ability to grow her hair like vines. This allows us to catapult ourselves into the air, use it as a grappling hook, or grow a kind of bridge. It’s really a lot of fun and gives Beast of Reincarnation a strong vertical exploration element. Often I’ve seen a structure and wondered if I could get up there – and the answer was surprisingly often: “Yes!” Usually, I was rewarded with loot or a collectible up there.

While climbing the mountains, you can definitely feel when the game doesn’t actually want you there, but I’ve rarely encountered truly invisible walls. One small downside: The exploration could be more rewarding. Although almost everywhere there’s a chest, an elite enemy, a document, or decoration for the walker, I miss something like hidden bosses.

Hello, is anyone there?

The world of Beast of Reincarnation is atmospheric and truly beautiful, but upon closer inspection, it often lacks personality. This is evident in the empty game world, where we hardly encounter a soul aside from the enemies. The abandoned buildings and decaying structures offer loot but provide little insight into what the daily life of the inhabitants might have looked like.

Sometimes it even seemed as if the developers themselves didn’t expect anyone to look so closely at their world – because by thoroughly exploring, I felt I leveled up some of the progression systems way too fast, while others hit the brakes repeatedly. Unfortunately, this also means that exploration becomes less and less worthwhile after a few chapters.

This identity problem also affects the boss fights. The overgrown creatures are indeed beautiful to look at – and there are some really cool second phases – but they all play out quite similarly. It doesn’t really matter whether the deer attacks me with its antlers or the salamander snaps at me, because it’s all about parrying when possible and dodging when necessary.

I have not yet felt that I need to change my approach with any boss. Once I understood their attack patterns, it was just a matter of timing.

Even the presentation of the bosses is always the same at the beginning: We enter a new area, quickly have a first encounter with the local Nushi, beat it up until it runs away, and then pursue it to the actual boss battle.

Oh, the story: Here, Beast of Reincarnation certainly raises some intriguing questions. Because some people live there as golems in a robotic body. But the soul was never meant to endure for centuries in this way, and the golems yearn for their lost humanity. This is reflected in Emma’s quest to understand human emotions like love or empathy – because like the golems, she is technically no longer human.

But while I would have liked to explore this issue further, the main plot pulls us in another direction, in which Emma’s invisible companion Violet plays a crucial role – and I’m still not sure if I like it.

It doesn’t help that the characters remain rather superficial.

Please trust me with something

What really bothers me, though, is the constant hand-holding. It seems that Beast of Reincarnation is terrified of letting its players think for even a moment. Everything is highlighted multiple times.

Thus, an objective marker prevents you from ever losing sight of the next stage of the plot. If that’s not enough, we can also follow the blue scent trail, which gently guides us in the right direction. While this would make sense as an activatable ability, I don’t need it permanently.

It’s similar with exploration: As soon as we enter a new section, Koo announces that he has spotted enemies, items, documents, and maybe even the next rest point. If we are close enough, we are directly shown from that moment onwards in which direction everything is located.

Well, knowing roughly where something is doesn’t necessarily tell you how to get there. In fact, there are several places you can only reach by cleverly using Emma’s abilities.

But if I don’t figure out for myself to use my hair bridge (which I’ve regularly used since chapter 1 to cross chasms) to cross the abyss before me, some butterflies flit in a straight line over the chasm in front of me, asking me to collect them.

In these moments, I wonder what kind of player Beast of Reincarnation wants to appeal to. Because honestly, I can hardly imagine that anyone who needs so much support in exploration has much fun with the rather challenging battles. Perhaps a dual difficulty system would have made sense here, where you can separately set how much you want to be challenged in fights and in exploration.

That’s quite ironic considering that this simplification is precisely what many dislike about newer Pokémon games. But at least they have the excuse of targeting children.

Also, elsewhere it seems that the developers couldn’t quite decide. There are a variety of systems, from really cool mechanics to nice gimmicks to elements that are so little used that I wonder why they’re even in the game.

Thus, in our running base, there’s a phone with which Emma can call the characters we have encountered in the world. But I hardly have contacts who don’t really have anything interesting to say. One at least offers me a service, but since I can conveniently make all other improvements myself, there’s really no need for an NPC for that. Honestly: The phone in Pokémon Silver and Gold did a lot more back in the day.

Such features could perhaps have been omitted and others better developed instead.

These weaknesses unfortunately lead to Beast of Reincarnation falling short of its potential. However, even though my initial excitement has waned somewhat over time, it remains a game that is incredibly fun – provided you don’t look too closely under the hood and simply enjoy the journey.

Now it’s your turn: Will you be getting Beast of Reincarnation? Let us know in the comments!

Just before release, the developers revealed more about the backgrounds of Beast of Reincarnation. Where a sci-fi classic came into play, you can find out here on MyMMO: The creators of Beast of Reincarnation admit to having borrowed one thing from Blade Runner