I’ve Played These Games Before: Another Soulslike?

It’s rare in the modern age of gaming that I am both intrigued and terrified of playing a game in the same instance. Like most of you out there who actually enjoy this hobby instead of hating it through whatever social media platform tickles your fancy, I am always open to trying things that look like they would fall into my ballpark as far as my interests. RPGs, Survival Horror, and even Strategy games have made their way into my gaming library in the past few years, but I think there’s one that stands out amongst the rest – soulslikes. The truth is I’m a huge sucker for them. There’s just something about getting your face caved in that pulls at my heartstrings in the best way possible. Whether it’s pure stubbornness or the thrill of knowing I was able to conquer something created to cause you pain is up for debate, and honestly, I don’t know why I enjoy them as much as I do. But let’s put the car back in 1st gear for a minute. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The soulslike genre is one that has been heavily saturated with newcomers since the early 2020s. Every couple of months we get a new game trailer that promises us the same level of polish as our reigning Lord FromSoftware, only for most of them to falter in not only executing the formula to perfection but also making themselves look like nothing more than trend chasers. Have I played most of these soulslikes regardless of how they compare to the greats like Elden Ring? Absolutely, and that’s why I think I fell into today’s trap – Beast of Reincarnation. Let’s get into it.

The Premise: A Post-Apocalyptic Japan

Now I should start off this review by saying that I think Beast of Reincarnation is a game that is teeming with a level of ambition that I haven’t seen from a studio like Game Freak in a long time. I mean, let’s be honest with each other for a second: Pokémon isn’t exactly struggling to make money as an IP from a video game perspective. Even I, as someone who hasn’t played a mainline Pokémon game in decades at this point, am still tempted to buy every new entry in the series, and I’m not even the main demographic they’re targeting. But therein lies my question: Is it possible to evolve past the thing you’ve known and done well for so long? Well… I guess what I’m trying to say here is that Beast of Reincarnation is a little too bold for a company that has been manufacturing the same type of game for nearly thirty years now at this point, and it shows.

The premise of Beast of Reincarnation is interesting enough on paper that I was intrigued just based on what the description read on the Game Pass storefront. You play as Emma, an outcast afflicted by the Blight, a strange parasitic corruption that has started to consume what havens of humanity are left in a futuristic version of Japan. Emma is what’s known as a Sealer in this world, a person who is able to absorb the Blight, and most of your mission as you progress through the story is to hunt Blighted creatures to prevent the spread of Blight in the area. In the early stages of your journey, you pair up with a blighted wolf named Koo, who serves as your main companion and battle buddy until the end of the game, when you eventually face down the titular Beast of Reincarnation.

Now if you’re like me, you’re probably thinking that the premise sounds interesting from a story perspective, and while I mostly agree that it sounds like a stellar backdrop for a soulslike game, it mostly falls flat. The game has this weird pacing issue where the characters and cutscenes seem to progress as if someone has set the playback speed to 0.75, which is even more awkward as you can’t interact with anything around you while any type of dialogue is playing. It led to more than a few situations where I was simply twiddling my thumbs waiting for the exposition to end while the characters ranted about the troubles of the world. The dozens of characters scattered around the world are monotonous, and as eager to talk to you as a visit to the dentist after a weekend at Disney World (and to be fair, it ties into the lore of the world, as Emma is more or less an undesirable with her affliction), and though the Japanese dubs are more than serviceable in most cases, I have heard that the English ones are awful.

Back to the premise itself, the game has you trekking across an overgrown version of Japan in search of these alpha creatures to prevent the spread of Blight into the few remaining human settlements scattered across the horizon. If there’s anything they did do right, it’s the beauty of the world itself. Seeing the dilapidated ruins and the overall look of the world since it’s been reclaimed by nature was honestly the highlight of the entire experience, and what’s even better is that most of the areas you get to visit are chock full of random loot and other interesting items for you to find while you explore.

It’s a damn shame that the overall setting is wasted on such a tedious gameplay loop, as you really do get to fight the same four or five enemies from the first area all the way till the end. Either way, the story has a few moments that genuinely build off the idea that the world outside the walls of these settlements is a vast and inhospitable place, but overall, I just felt disappointed at how often it is copied and pasted as filler to keep the story moving forward. Overall, it just feels as if the experience was originally meant to be 10 or so hours total that they tried to stretch to over double that time. My end play time was 17 hours, and that is way more than I expected when you are fighting the same enemies over and over again with little change in the scenery. It might look good in motion and present itself decently, but the flash is all in the looks rather than the overall feel.

The Gameplay: Sekiro-lite

Now, when we actually get to the gameplay aspects of Beast of Reincarnation, I think Game Freak tried to combine 3 or 4 different games into one package that honestly kind of works after about 10 hours of it. What I mean by that is, what if you took the parrying mechanic of Sekiro, the turn-based aspects of Final Fantasy VII, and the home base aspects of the Death Stranding series and threw them into a blender? You would get Beast of Reincarnation. Now, I should note that the gameplay does hit a certain stride towards the middle of the game, where it does start to feel like a complete experience. Parrying an enemy before pausing the game to cast a Blight ability using Koo was some of the most fun I had in the later section, but the problem is that I firmly believe that most people won’t get to that point. The beginning hours of Beast of Reincarnation are simply a drag, and if I’m honest, I myself put the game down to play Mortal Shell II and other titles that have been released in the past month.

Though the combat can excel in some areas, like the creativity of your move set and what abilities Koo has access to, I am firmly in the camp that the enemy design and lack of any sort of change of pace in the fights you end up in is the reason that I opted to run past most enemies unless they were needed to continue. They just offer such a limited range of attacks and moves that it didn’t make sense to parry the same enemy for the 100th time instead of just making my way to the next campsite. To throw even more fuel on the fire, the bosses unfortunately run into the same issues as the baseline enemies. You might see this hulking monstrosity in front of you, covered in Blight with a bad attitude, but the reality is that these bigger-than-life bosses you face rarely have more than 3 moves to challenge you while fighting them. Yes, you read that right. 3 moves, two of which are usually parryable, and an undodgeable one that is thrown in after the other two moves.

This makes every boss fight a battle of how good you are at recognizing the pattern in front of you. This might be a soulslike classic, but Beast of Reincarnation does it in a way that makes every fight feel the same, no matter what you’re fighting. A giant infected boar and a demonic-looking deer have pretty much the same move sets, and this idea of painful repetition is further reinforced as most of these Blighted Alphas have a second phase that, you guessed it, adds another simple attack or two to dodge that is just a flashier version of what you saw in phase one. The only boss that feels somewhat unique and is remotely a challenge on the base difficulty is the final boss, which has 3 phases and a ton of moves that are hard to deflect and clearly meant to throw off your guard. Given the achievement percentage that popped up at the end of my playthrough for defeating him and finishing the game, around 5.37%, it didn’t look like most people made it that far to begin with, and I’m not surprised given what comes before him.

The rest of the gameplay loop can be summed up as a mix of world traversal very akin to Sekiro, where you can hook yourself onto static placeholders to get vertical or move across the various gaps the game throws at you to explore, and a very random-feeling home base system that feels weirdly ripped from the Death Stranding series. At this mobile base you can rest, shower, chat with other members of your team, and run a de facto farm with chickens and crops that you find out in the world to harvest. This allows you to cook and consume various different recipes that each give you passive bonuses before you leave the safety of the base. And yes. They did think to add the most important option of all in a game like this, which is petting the dog. Koo is honestly the standout here as well. He is the goodest boy and a very solid companion in an otherwise mediocre experience.

Final Thoughts: Too Ambitious For Its Own Good

Beast of Reincarnation sells itself as a twisted amalgamation of some of the best in the business but falls short of feeling like anything more than a game well in over its head. The combat loop with your furry companion is almost enough to save it, but the repetitive nature of it all in motion is a mountain too steep to climb. If you’ve got Game Pass, it’s worth a shot for the price of admission alone, but I’d think twice about picking it up at full price.

Beast of Reincarnation was reviewed on PC.