// KOTAKU — GAMING
Beast of Reincarnation: The Kotaku Review
Beast of Reincarnation is a classic example of a game with strong ambitions and good ideas that nonetheless struggles to stay consistently compelling from start to finish. Game Freak, known primarily for the Pokémon RPGs, has never created a game of this scale before. But with the help of support studios, it’s made Beast of Reincarnation a pretty solid Soulslike that has both enough originality to make it a fresh spin on a genre that’s grown oversaturated over the past decade, as well as a less intimidating, more accessible approach to difficulty than many of its genre peers. It’s still an exceptionally difficult game, but Beast of Reincarnation’s punishing, post-apocalyptic world gives you tools to navigate it in a way that suits different playstyles. Still, at a certain point it feels like Game Freak’s fantastical, nature-loving vision of a Soulslike runs out of ideas when it still has a lot of runway to walk.
At its core, the Soulslike genre is defined by enemies that hit hard, demand precise reaction timing, and can quickly overwhelm you if you’re not careful. Beast of Reincarnation delivers this in spades as its nature-reclaimed world pits you against both blight-ridden wildlife and the decaying remains of human technology, sometimes at the same time. Emma, a young woman who has been essentially raised in a box by one of the remaining human colonies in 4026 Japan, is one of the only people who is able to absorb the blight that has overtaken animals and killed almost all the human beings in this world. As such, the locals have effectively wielded her as a weapon to defeat giant, plant-like creatures called malefacts, while also ostracizing her for her “blight-stained” nature.
The creatures that have survived in Beast of Reincarnation are, much like Emma, covered in overgrowth that has killed off most other life on Earth, and while there are only a handful of enemy types, Game Freak’s decades of experience in creature design shines through in how well it manages to merge plant life with the skeletal structures of animals. The giant creatures that inhabit the desolate remains of Japanese cities have become so overgrown by vegetation that they look like they could have stepped right out of the thick layers of growth that cover buildings and other human structures, as if they’d been stuck inside for centuries, waiting to finally reemerge. The animals that adapted to the blight come in many shapes and sizes, and each offer their own distinct challenges, like the birds that peck and claw at you from the sky and the giant bears that lunge at you with ferocity. Pepper in a few crazed robots from humanity’s last fleeting attempts at self-preservation, and you’ve got enough enemy variety and challenge that even high-level players will have to be careful about freely running around the world.
Getting cornered for just a split second gives even Beast of Reincarnation’s weakest enemies a big enough window to overwhelm you. At first, the best way to handle any enemy is through timed parries whose window for execution is always shorter than you feel like it’s supposed to be, as Emma’s sidestep dodge barely gets her out of the way until you upgrade far enough into the skill tree to get a dodge roll that actually moves her to safety. In a way, that forced reliance on parrying is helpful as a teaching tool, because dodge rolls aren’t going to be enough to give you the upper hand on the game’s incredible bosses. Those you can really only defeat if you’ve mastered Beast of Reincarnation’s parry system. It’s endlessly satisfying to hear the loud “clank” of Emma’s sword in rhythmic succession as a giant horse-like monster or fowl brings down its might upon you and you effortlessly deflect it. Beast of Reincarnation’s powerful foes give you a lot of reason to approach fights with caution, and that makes the moments when you enter a flow state of dancing with an enemy all the more rewarding.
Emma’s ability to absorb the blight in her oppone