Game Freak steps away from Pokémon with an action RPG whose good ideas get lost amid clunky parries, repetitive enemies, and nearly indistinguishable areas.
Learning that Game Freak was working on a project of this scale outside Pokémon was exciting, although the short gap between its formal reveal and release immediately raised my suspicions. The premise sold itself: a mystical swordswoman named Emma, a post-apocalyptic Japan consumed by nature, and a giant wolf companion. The studio presents Beast of Reincarnation as a "one-person, one-dog" action RPG, blending Emma's real-time combat with Koo's command-based abilities.
In theory, it has personality; in practice, almost everything falls somewhere between failure and mediocrity. Calling it swordslop does not mean that using a sword, a parry system, and ideas borrowed from Soulslikes is inherently bad. The problem is adopting that vocabulary without the precision, pacing, or variety of its inspirations. It wants to evoke Sekiro and Stellar Blade, but often just reminds us that we could be playing either of them instead.
The Parry Fights You, but Koo Has Your Back
Combat places the parry at the center of nearly every encounter. A successful parry prevents damage and builds resources for Koo's techniques, but the controls rarely deliver the precision the game demands. On Normal difficulty, three or four hits can end a fight. More than once, I found myself trapped in a combo, hammering the parry and dodge buttons to no avail. Once the first hit landed, the rest could turn into a stun-lock that was impossible to break.
I am not the best player in the world, but I know the difference between an exciting challenge and a battle against the underlying systems. Elden Ring can crush you while still making it clear what you did wrong. Here, the solution is to parry earlier than the animation suggests. You can adjust, but memorizing a visual offset is not the same as learning an attack pattern. A game built around precise defensive windows should not leave me constantly wondering whether I failed or the controls did.
The best part of the combat is not the katana, but Koo. Soulslikes tend to fill our inventories with items that we save for an emergency that never arrives. Here, the wolf manages them intelligently: if Emma loses health, Koo provides something to restore it; if she is poisoned, an antidote appears. Koo's commands also slow down the action, letting you select techniques without breaking the rhythm. It is ironic that the best idea in Game Freak's new non-Pokémon game is trusting a companion creature with our survival.
Movement Is Fun Until a Platform Shows Up
Emma's plant-like hair acts as a grappling hook, creates bridges, and factors into combat. It adds agility until its restrictions appear: being too far from an anchor prevents you from using it, but so does standing too close. This creates an embarrassing ritual of jumping, discovering that the hook prompt has not appeared, backing up, and trying again. It is not a difficulty problem, but a set of rules that fails to communicate where and when the tool will work.
A Gray-and-Green World Where Everything Repeats
Concrete settings overrun by vegetation have never been my thing. Their combination of gray and green can produce striking images, but nearly every area looks the same here. The terrain and a few decorative elements change, yet never enough to give each place its own identity. Moving forward stops feeling like discovering somewhere new and starts resembling another lap through the same rearranged ruin.
The large red and blue flowers look like visual cues for interactive elements, except that many of them do nothing. The game grabs your attention and then punishes you for paying it. A formation can look like a path leading to a secret and turn out to be simple scenery. Maybe the reward is a few tomatoes; perhaps Emma ends up stuck between some rocks while we try to determine whether we found a route or wandered somewhere we were never meant to enter.
The bestiary repeats the problem: almost every enemy is either a robot or a mutated animal. The species, size, or a few details may change, but the overall impression barely does. Combined with environments that fail to distinguish themselves, this makes the journey feel much smaller. Combat already revolves around the parry; if the enemies lack a distinct identity as well, each encounter feels like another version of the previous one before the first blow is even exchanged.
The music is atrocious, especially that one song that follows the player between areas regardless of what is happening. It does not complement exploration or bring any intensity to combat. Its natural home would be over an anime's end credits; here, it sounds as though someone left the ending theme playing throughout the entire episode. First it becomes background noise, and then it becomes irritating.
The Golems Have More Personality Than the Humans
The story is painfully generic, which might be forgivable if the characters were endearing. Emma has no memories or emotions; the world explains why, but that does not make her blankness compelling. Stoicism needs a counterweight: Geralt projects coldness in The Witcher, while his choices and companions reveal what exists underneath. Emma receives no such help. Brad says very little, and Kagura shares the same rigidity.
Kagura constantly calls to discuss dishes and ingredients, but her performance is so flat that even enthusiasm feels like an obligation. She sounds as though she is about to cry, although it is difficult to believe that any of these characters could. The golems behave more like human beings than the main trio, and they are the actual robots.
Cutscenes, flashbacks, conversations, and moments spent bathing Koo interrupt the cycle of exploration, combat, and progression. Bathing a giant wolf should be a charming break, but if the story and characters are boring, every interruption becomes another chore before the game lets us play again.
Verdict: 5/10 (It Could Rise to 6/10 With a Few Patches)
Beast of Reincarnation has ideas that deserve a better game. Koo is well integrated, and Emma's hair provides a solid foundation for traversal, but those strengths are surrounded by unreliable combat, interchangeable areas, repetitive enemies, exhausting music, and characters unable to bring a familiar story to life.
In its current state, it deserves a 5/10. With patches addressing combat responsiveness, parry timing, stun-locks, and movement, it could rise to a 6/10. Even then, it would not fix the generic story or the feeling that the game had all the ingredients needed to surprise us but never learned how to combine them.