[00:08] This time bringing you my review after 100% for Beast of Reincarnation, which gives us a rare glimpse at Game Freak doing something besides Pokémon, which it's been a while. Before we dive into all of that, to get my usual stuff out
[00:22] all the time to set me apart from other reviewers on the platform. And while also includes a lot more than that. There's a video linked below that covers profile is public and linked down below as well. And in the case of Beast of
[00:36] Reincarnation, you are seeing this shortly after the game itself released. Technically, due to time zones, it released last night, which is also when the actual review embargo lifted, but that time didn't really work for me. I'm
[00:48] able to, of course, do this because I received a review key from a PR company working on behalf of Game Freak as a 100% experience. Honestly, pretty straightforward. You'll have to do two runs of it because of some new game plus
[01:01] that, relatively straightforward if you've played these types of games the guides and stuff will be up for it pretty much immediately because again, I've had this in my hands for roughly the past 10 days or so. And thus, let's
[01:17] a bit of an interesting experience for a variety of reasons. For starters, it was interesting just to see Game Freak do some non- Pokemon stuff. Yes. And in that sense, like specifically about that, I do think the more you play this,
[01:30] Game Freak's design philosophy shine through in that regard. Like, there's stuff with your pet or companion coup that definitely feels very Pokémonesque. the game itself released, but it turned out to be pretty on point. And while the
[01:44] game does, I feel like, have enjoyable combat and traversal, it unfortunately also has a fair few problems. I'm going to detail a significant issue I had with the game crashing. But even beyond that, I think there's issues with like the
[01:58] same enemies just over and over and over again. That repetition also bleeds really not a lot of diversity in the areas you will be wandering through and exploring. And while the story gets interesting, it takes a pretty long time
[02:12] to get there. And all told, I would mostly say this game was fine. Seems during the winter sale. But from there, let's dig a little deeper into it. Starting with the technical state. So, I mentioned I had an issue with crashing.
[02:25] specific. I had an issue with this game crashing during cutscenes. It ran great otherwise, but you know, once we would get to a story cut scene, there was a actually play and the game would crash and I'd have to, you know, try to
[02:38] happen, the game would have trouble restarting for some reason, like it would just black screen on me. And while I was never able to fix this completely, the uh cinematics themselves do have two options. An unlimited frame rate that
[02:51] matches your hardware and then a cinematic option for the cutscenes, cinematic option for the cutscenes, which are then kind of locked to 24 fps. Turning that on helped with this issue, like it crashed less, but it did not
[03:03] stop it entirely. And that was by far the most annoying issue. It crashed a counting after a certain point, but it was too much. Otherwise though, playing this on PC, it was mostly okay. I was able to rebind a couple of odd keys here
[03:17] and there, but the crashing was really the big issue. Next, let's move on to difficulty and new game. Plus, so this game is, I would say, verging on being a there, but you can kind of definitely see the DNA from those games present.
[03:31] I'm kind of on the fence about actually calling it one myself. But as a result of that, difficulty is going to be a bit of a hot button issue, but like a lot of beginning. And you do actually have some difficulty options regardless, which are
[03:44] essentially at first easy, normal, and hard. Now, the main thing these seem to do is decide how much damage you take from enemies. And on normal, when you insignificant amount of damage. However, you do get to a point where you kind of
[03:59] just get past that and then the game becomes much much easier. Even when new game plus rolls around and you unlock reincarnation difficulty, this is your new game plus difficulty that starts scaling up enemy attack as you move
[04:11] enemies themselves don't like level up or get stronger outside of that still have like the same amount of health and you will have gotten drastically stronger. And so it's not that bad to run through the game once,
[04:24] through New Game Plus, which is technically harder. But because you unlock some just incredible abilities by beating the game once, I was able to without much of a challenge at all, despite it being a harder difficulty.
[04:37] And if that wasn't enough, I noticed a place late in the game where you could actually grind really, really quickly. Just a good spot to rest and respawn enemies, kill everything, rest, respawn, etc. So that's also an option. But long
[04:50] in the beginning, but once you get over that sort of initial difficulty bump, the rest of it honestly wasn't that bad. Which then brings me to the story and my thoughts on it. So, broadly, I will say that the story gets good, but it takes a
[05:05] long time to get there, and there's a lot of incredibly long unskippable crashing issue that I mentioned. And so, it can just be a bit of a slog to get to the good parts. But by the end of the story, I was finally invested. but it
[05:18] admittedly just takes way too long to get there. Now, I don't want to spoil this game. It has barely released and so I'm obviously going to try to avoid the basic setup. So, the game is set in a post-apocalyptic Japan. Humanity's
[05:32] only hope is our main character, Emma. She has been shunned by what is left of society because she is what is known as blight stained. The post-apocalypse was seemingly caused by this blight, which turns living things into monstrosities
[05:45] known as malifacts. The blight stained, like Emma here, are used to fight the Malifax because they seem to be immune to the actual effects of the blight, at bit of a head when it turns out the beast of reincarnation is coming, which
[05:59] seems to be an entity that resurrects every hundred years or so, no matter how many times it's killed, which then goes on to continue spreading the blight and causing this greater problem at large. And so our job as Emma is to travel
[06:12] through a whole bunch of different zones via our sort of mobile home base that has blues and walks around as we try to seek out and destroy the larger malifax known as Nushi and absorb all of their blight to make ourselves stronger to
[06:25] face the beast of reincarnation. As you would probably expect, yes, there is think the story starts really getting good until you get towards the end of there. And I think the game is going to lose most people long before it gets
[06:39] good. And even with that in mind, mostly I just think the story's okay. It's not revolutionary, but it's all right. That then brings us to progression systems. What does that look like for this game? Not too bad overall. So, you and your
[06:54] animal companion, Coup, are going to be leveling up, earning skill points, using some equipment in the form of like various abilities in the case of Coup, and then also actual equipment for you. But let's take it one thing at a time.
[07:06] experience. You can spend that experience on increasing your attributes. There are three of them. This will increase, of course, secondary stats to make you stronger, which is all well and good. Um, as you kill enemies
[07:18] in particular, you gain skill points. That is to say, every time you kill an enemy, you gain a skill point. You can then spend those skill points on the skill trees for both Emma and Coup, increasing their overall effectiveness
[07:31] and giving them new moves to use in combat via arts and finishers, as well as a whole bunch of passive effects like turning your ranged weaponry into just monstrosities of piercing, tracking, almost chain lightning projectiles that
[07:45] just destroy everything. Or making coup useful in combat to aid you, that kind of stuff. Now, I mentioned there was some equipment. So for Emma, this a crossbow and a bow. Those have a bunch of different ammunition types. You also
[07:58] have a very linear, I would say, gear progression where you can put on different armor sets that increase your defense and everything, but that was change your appearance or anything like that. It just increases your stats as
[08:11] you go and find them. Coup on the other hand has some different stuff. So as you defeat like elite enemies and things, you can get extra skills. K can uh permanently and then you can equip those on to K coup. These will be like just
[08:25] passive things he does on his own. And then in addition to that, you can also assign him a bunch of like finishers and stuff to use from a menu sort of Pokemon and the way that works is where I feel like the game kind of shows off some of
[08:39] Game Freak's Pokemon origins in some ways. Beyond that, uh, Emma also gets will have a variety of different effects or just stat increases that you can slot onto her. And Coup gets like charm bracelet things he can wear to give you
[08:52] bits of progression, however, come from cooking as well as progressing your hub. So, cooking is something your uh friend who accompanies you on the journey, Kagura, will be doing for you throughout the journey. And the first time you eat
[09:07] bonuses to your stats if you actually make an attempt to do all of this. So but not least, you can upgrade your mobile base. This is done by finding the upgrade parts by exploring the world and
[09:20] you'll be able to upgrade the facilities on the mobile base, which gives you access to a ton of resources, including the ability to properly upgrade your blades. So one of the things Emma can equip is a bunch of different swords.
[09:34] Each of those swords has a different effect that is activated by doing a damage as well as the effect of that ability by of course upgrading the weaponry itself, which is also true for technically your ranged weaponry like
[09:49] your bolts and stuff. You can make those stronger as well via that same method. at progression wise. Although I do want to mention one last thing here before we move on, which is that the vast majority of that is done via amber, which is what
[10:02] you'll pick up by defeating enemies. But the thing is, you don't lose that when you have it with that grinding spot that I mentioned that I found. I was able to of this, which is important because another thing is that the research for
[10:17] both the recipes you can cook as well as K's research on his items advance by you killing enemies. like each time you kill an enemy, that time advances on those things. And so grinding resources not only gives you the resources and the
[10:29] level ups, etc., but it also increases the time on that research, which makes it go by faster as well. So there's a lot of like little bits of progression super complicated, which brings us then to the gameplay and world section. So
[10:43] this is honestly where I was uh the most excited and the most let down by the struck me about this game ahead of its release was its art direction. A lot of it has like this incredibly wild untamed wilderness beset by like ruins and
[10:57] stuff. And clearly it's been a long time since the fall of civilization. And while that works for the first couple of areas, yes, the bummer is that once you've seen those first couple of areas, you've seen most of the environments.
[11:09] there biomewise. Like there's one area that is like a wasteland and then through towards the very end. But beyond that, it all just kind of looks the same, and that was a real bummer as far as the actual world itself is concerned.
[11:23] Looking beyond that, however, uh each chapter of the game, more or less, is divided up into an explorable zone. And when you uh kill the boss of a given area, you will then advance to the next zone, and you can travel back and forth
[11:35] between them via fast travel, usually going to a various campsite around the way. So, campsites are where you're going to do your standard stuff in games respawns your enemies, as well as do all your leveling up, etc. It'll also give
[11:49] should head back to your mobile base, which ends the day, so you'll cook, eat, and then the new day starts. And that'll also give you opportunities to have conversations with uh Coup as well as Kagura and the other people with you
[12:02] along for the ride, which gives you an opportunity to increase your rapport bonuses, usually tied to progression. Beyond that basic setup, it's really just kind of you going through fighting all the enemies in your way, gathering
[12:15] up resources, finding campsites, documents, uh progression, just like pulling up the manuals for various things, which lets you craft and refresh them every time you rest, for example, doing the occasional bit of side quest,
[12:28] fighting the elite enemies, finding gear, just just various ways to reward your exploration, and exploring the given areas you find yourself in. Now, better than others, frankly. Some of them are more explorable, like the first
[12:41] a big area you get dumped into and can explore outside of the main objective, whereas others are much, much more linear. Now, in order to facilitate some of that exploration, you do have a variety of ways to get around, which uh
[12:54] is actually going to use Emma's hair technically. So, you get like what is in you to jump around, but it's Emma's is allowing you to do this. You can also use those vines to extend like a walkway
[13:07] from an area to give you farther bits of jump. When you jump, if you press and hold it, you'll get not exactly a double jump, but like a little elevator lift the ground. And it takes a little getting used to, but once you do, I
[13:20] worked and kind of moving around to given areas, finding the secrets, that things that kind of grew on me, not unlike those vines throughout the entirety of the experience. Another thing you'll do is occasionally find
[13:33] things like uh lock boxes or seedlings. The seedlings you can take back to your home base and grow your own food for your cooking recipes. The lock boxes are unlocked, some are locked. There is a miniame lock where you just have to
[13:47] directional keys. And then there are code locked ones where you get the code by going and typically killing an elite enemy nearby which then gives you the code. And you can also find dragon shrines. So, we do have a basic healing
[14:01] most games like this. And the dragon shrines are what give you more of it. is tied specifically to exploration because there are 40 of these shrines to find. And for every 10 of them you find, you get an extra charge of your healing.
[14:16] I will say by the end of the game, I was a little underwhelmed with how much healing these provided. And I wound up using primarily abilities typically from who which can be modded a little bit to provide healing as a more effective way
[14:29] of restoring my health. So there was that. Now beyond that stuff there is a everything. For instance, a lot of what we are fighting are actually golems. And these golems are human actually. So golems are one of the ways it seems they
[14:44] tried to escape the apocalypse. They would take human souls and transfer them into these golems. But the bummer there is that devoid of their body, this could eventually turn them crazy and they become corrupted and just kind of
[14:56] have to fight your way through on top of all the malifaxs. So if you want to dig things, find some notes, there's a little bit of that, but it doesn't go too crazy. Most of that is tied up in the actual main story. That then brings
[15:11] us to combat, however, a very big part of a game like this. And while you could, I suppose, easily describe this game as a Soulslike, I don't think it do that because it mixes that formula up
[15:24] in some important ways. But nonetheless, I should probably mention the big focus the gameplay footage as well as me weapon effects. Parrying and perfect parrying in particular is a really big
[15:37] deal here. You can get through the game uh without it, but it would be a worse experience to be honest. And the reason for that is that in lie of a stamina bar, we have this like charge bar at the bottom of the screen during combat.
[15:50] things. And those are really important because you are going to use those to activate your finishers and your bloom arts from your skill tree. However, the way you earn those charges is by attacking enemies. Typically, it will
[16:03] build up. But guarding or getting hit decreases it. However, doing a perfect parry not only gives you a full charge of that meter, but it will also do is activate the effect on your chosen weapon that you are using. So, say
[16:17] kind of thing. And so, ideally, what you want to do is learn enemy move sets, perfectly parry that move set, then use the charges you get from that to activate your big follow-up attacks, which at the same time also charges up
[16:31] coup. So, he can use his abilities at the same time, which can provide other effects. And like the core, I would say focus of the combat system is mixing and matching those in fun ways. And while it can also take a little getting used to,
[16:43] once you master that, it does get really rewarding. I will say personally, I the parrying. And I feel they could stand to loosen that up a little bit. But it's not like the game is so hard, as I mentioned, for it to like be a
[16:56] done that. I just think it would feel a aren't your only options. You can use your range weaponry. You can also uh go into stealth mode. There's some skills that lean into that, but stealth is not
[17:10] like a 100% viable option, but it will allow you to do things like sneak attack to get over that initial difficulty hurdle in the beginning of the game once you get started. Now, really, the mastery of combat is again just weaving
[17:23] all of that stuff together in the moment in a way that can feel really rewarding you've beaten the game once, regardless of the difficulty, you unlock some really really crazy strong skills for new game plus, which combined with the
[17:36] health, it seems like means you can just obliterate stuff. You get these just like massive AoE explosions that are relatively cheap to use and they are incredibly deadly. Like they do so much damage and you can kind of trivialize
[17:49] the game via those, especially if you're willing to grind out some upgrades. But overall, I would say the combat is fun if you're into that type of game. But if parry based stuff, you're probably going to struggle with this one. However,
[18:01] thing I want to talk about, and that was the enemy repetition that I mentioned. enemies as well, the part that really bothers me the most is it extends to bosses a lot of the time as well. They reuse the same boss fight over and over
[18:16] and over again. There's only like three bosses, I think, that you only fight a single time. It gets old. And to top that off, if it wasn't enough, almost every boss has a second phase. They explain that second phase via a
[18:29] narrative device. As these malifacts get weaker, they actually draw more blight the second health bar phase of the fight. And that also gets old. So, not and over again, but every time you do that, for the most part, they then have
[18:43] like that second health bar thing that feels a little overdone because of how much they use it. And when you combine that with a story that takes too long to left with is a game that can feel really, really repetitive not that far
[18:57] into it by like the third or fourth area. So, the combat system itself is enjoyable, but unfortunately due to a lot of that repetition, I don't feel experience because you just keep fighting the same stuff over and over
[19:11] again. Now, that brings me to the Steam Deck and more recently the new Steam of those as well, but that doesn't really matter in the case of this game. This is slightly interesting. Um, my experience was the same on both of those
[19:24] devices, the Steam Deck and the Steam Machine, which is that I couldn't play infinite black loading screen whenever I would try to start the game, and it Interestingly enough, the official rating is unsupported for Steam Deck,
[19:37] but verified for the Steam machine. But again, I couldn't get it to work on either of these devices. I did try a few different versions of Proton and none of them were working for me. But it's possible that someone will mess around
[19:49] works, but I will say like out of the box just trying to start it up and then trying a few different Proton versions. I couldn't get it to work at all. So, I was my experience with it for you. Next up, we got positives, negatives, and
[20:03] the positive side of things, we've got the combat system itself, traversal, and interesting. I was invested by the end of it, but it does take too long to get there. The combat, again, pretty enjoyable overall. I think if they were
[20:17] to take that combat system and honestly just give you more stuff to fight with lot of those abilities, they could be on to something there. But in this specific instance, in this game, I do think the repetition gets to be a bit much. It's
[20:30] also incredibly fun to move around. It's another thing where it kind of grew on fitting given the nature of the vines and everything assisting you with said kind of learning how to do that efficiently got to be a really enjoyable
[20:43] experience for me at the very least. But as you could probably already guess with that I've been harping on both in terms of the enemies as well as the issues with crashing personally and while that wasn't gamebreaking, it got
[20:57] that takes entirely too long to get where it's going, which then brings me to my conclusion. Honestly, uh this one's a buy on sale for me. I didn't pay for it because of the review key, but if I had bought this game, I do not feel
[21:11] like I would have gotten my $60 out of it, as that is in fact the base price of the game, $60 US. There is a deluxe version that is $70. It looks to just have some skins and extra items to help you out with progression by the looks of
[21:24] it, but nothing too crazy. Nothing worth $10 anyway. But mostly, I would just say this game is fine. Like, it's not bad or anything. The crashing was annoying, but is. The rest of it was just okay, though. I enjoyed combat, but it's
[21:38] combat that I've ever played, and that's really the best thing it has going for the game are just all right. They're probably not going to wow you. And with here in about a month or two, I think people are going to have a hard time
[21:52] justifying a full $60 spend on this particular title when for the most part, it's just okay. And so, for that reason, ultimately, I've got to give this one a game people will probably pick up during something like the winter sale here come
[22:06] December and have an enjoyable enough time with. But right as of this moment, asking price, which is why it gets the buy on sale. But as for today, that is been playing this one, since it has technically already released by the time
[22:20] think about it down in the comment section below, which of course means to like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz. But regardless of any of watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing
[22:36] you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.