Game Freak is best known for the merchandising powerhouse that is Pokémon, so the studio has spent decades focused on that series, with only the occasional smaller project like Pocket Card Jockey or Tembo the Badass Elephant. It's been a long time since it has spread its wings beyond cute collectible creatures. Beast of Reincarnation marks its first larger-budget game outside that mold in years. It's a fascinating experiment that also reveals the challenges of stepping into an entirely new genre.

Beast of Reincarnation is set thousands of years in the future, after a blight has transformed the world into a wasteland of grotesque fusions of flesh and plant life. Humanity struggles to survive under the rule of the Golems, former humans who abandoned their physical bodies to escape the blight's corruption. Players take on the role of Emma, a young woman who is herself blight-touched, granting her incredible abilities at the cost of slowly losing herself to the infection. After her village is attacked, Emma becomes entangled with Koo, a wolf suffering from the same curse. Together they're tasked with hunting the Nushi, the most powerful blight-infected creatures, before ultimately confronting the immortal Beast of Reincarnation, believed to be the source of the blight itself.

It's a compelling premise, but the storytelling doesn't do it many favors. The game opens with a flash-forward before return to the present, only to repeatedly interrupt itself with flashbacks to Emma's childhood. A nonlinear opening isn't inherently a problem, but constantly bouncing between three different points in the timeline makes the first few hours feel unnecessarily convoluted. It's especially awkward because the flashbacks include tutorials for mechanics that the game has already covered. In several cases, the flashbacks introduce the mechanics more naturally than the main campaign does. Even after the timeline settles down, the story spends too much time on lengthy cut scenes of characters vaguely discussing mysterious plans instead of advancing the plot.

Emma is the story's biggest stumbling block. Her emotional detachment is an intentional part of her character, but for much of the game, it makes her feel bland. Unfortunately, much of the supporting cast shares that same subdued energy, leaving the story short on memorable personalities. I was genuinely relieved when the flirtatious Kunai joined the cast because she injected some much-needed life into the proceedings. I understand what the writers were aiming for with Emma, but a deliberately reserved protagonist needs stronger personalities around her to keep the narrative engaging.

At its core, Beast of Reincarnation is an action-RPG. You control Emma directly while Koo fights alongside you as an AI companion. Emma wields a sword backed up by ranged weapons like a bow and crossbow, and while combat initially appears straightforward, it hides more depth than first impressions suggest. Most attacks stem from a single basic combo, but contextual inputs add variety. Attack from the air, and Emma crashes down with a powerful Helm Splitter, while briefly delaying after a swing lets her sheathe her blade before unleashing a lightning-fast iaido slash straight out of Vergil's playbook.

One of Beast of Reincarnation's coolest ideas is that Emma's blight powers influence everything she does, including movement. Holding the jump button instantly grows a towering pillar of vines beneath her, giving you immediate access to high ground almost anywhere. Pressing R2 creates a vine bridge on demand, even across empty air. These abilities make exploration far more dynamic, but they're just as valuable in combat, letting you rapidly close the distance to enemies or create elevated platforms for stealth attacks. Emma can also grapple to plants throughout the environment, including vines she grows with certain abilities, giving traversal a freedom that's rare for the genre.

The centerpiece of combat, however, is its Sekiro-style parry system. Mechanically, it's simple: tap block just before an attack lands to negate the damage with a perfect parry. Many enemies unleash lengthy attack strings that reward precise timing on every hit, while red-flashing attacks require a dodge, with perfectly timed evasions providing additional benefits. It's a familiar mechanic on paper, but Beast of Reincarnation builds nearly all of its combat systems around mastering it.

Perfect parries fill Emma's entanglement gauge, while simply blocking causes it to drain. That gauge fuels her blight abilities, which are devastating special attacks that can shred enemies or briefly slow time to create huge openings. Successful parries also activate temporary weapon effects, ranging from health regeneration to elemental enchantments, so the game rewards aggressive, consistent play. Just as importantly, parrying fills Koo's FP meter, allowing him to unleash powerful Bloom Arts. Activating one briefly slows combat, much like using abilities in Final Fantasy VII Remake, giving you time to select one of Koo's attacks before finishing with a quick QTE that can restore some of Emma's health.

The result is a combat system almost entirely built around parrying. Play aggressively, and you'll constantly chain together perfect deflections, devastating blight abilities, and Koo's Bloom Arts in a satisfying rhythm. Ignore the mechanic, however, and you'll quickly be starved for resources. Accessories offer alternative ways to build FP and entanglement, such as rewarding perfect dodges, but they're clearly intended to complement the parry system rather than replace it.

That emphasis on parrying also makes Beast of Reincarnation feel like a game of rocket tag. Enemies hit incredibly hard, and Emma can easily go down in just a couple of mistakes, especially if you neglect Vitality. On the other hand, skilled play lets you dish out absolutely absurd amounts of damage, to the point where many bosses simply melt under sustained pressure. Most encounters have very little middle ground, so you're either completely dominating or getting overwhelmed. Even the ranged weapons hit surprisingly hard, and I wouldn't be surprised if fully ranged builds are entirely viable.

For all the comparisons to Souls, though, Beast of Reincarnation really isn't a Souls-like. It borrows the genre's checkpoints, limited healing, and punishing enemies, but moment-to-moment combat feels much closer to a character action game. There's no stamina meter restricting your offense, movement is fast and fluid, and the game constantly rewards aggression. If anything, it feels more like a pre-Souls action game with a modern checkpoint system than another attempt to imitate Dark Souls.

Where Beast of Reincarnation stumbles isn't in its combat, but in its level design. The environments between boss fights are largely forgettable, with enemies scattered around without much thought. Traversal is genuinely fun thanks to Emma's vine abilities, but invisible walls and awkward collision frequently interrupt that freedom, forcing the game to reset you back onto solid ground. At its best, movement is exhilarating; at its worst, it feels like the developers perfected the boss fights before figuring out everything in between.

That lack of polish ultimately becomes the game's biggest weakness. The combat is consistently enjoyable, but many of the surrounding systems feel half-finished. The food mechanic feels like a stripped-down version of something more ambitious, side quests are often unmarked and rarely memorable, and the friendship system promises meaningful investment before quietly maxing itself out simply by talking to characters every so often. None of these issues are major on their own, but together they give the impression of a game overflowing with ideas that never had enough time to fully come together. Even the pacing feels uneven, with some regions lingering for hours while others rush by before they've had a chance to leave an impression.

The presentation reinforces that feeling. Even in Performance Mode, I encountered frequent frame-rate drops, particularly in the larger open areas, and the visuals aren't impressive enough to justify the inconsistent performance. The art direction does most of the heavy lifting, while the graphics are fairly modest, and the cut scenes often feel more ambitious than the budget can support. The soundtrack is excellent, with haunting compositions that established the atmosphere and were reminiscent of NieR. Voice acting is available exclusively in Japanese, which can be frustrating when important exposition is delivered during hectic combat encounters.

Beast of Reincarnation is an ambitious game, and that's ultimately both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. It's refreshing to see Game Freak step so far outside Pokémon's shadow, and the result is packed with inventive ideas and genuinely excellent combat. Unfortunately, uneven level design, rough presentation, and a general lack of polish keep those ideas from reaching their full potential. Even so, I had a good time with the game. If you're willing to overlook the title's rough edges and meet it on its own terms, there's a lot to enjoy. More than anything, Beast of Reincarnation feels like the foundation for something truly special, and I hope Game Freak gets the chance to build on it with a sequel.

Score: 7.5/10