The Studio Behind Pokémon Struggles to Find Its Voice in Beast of Reincarnation

Beast of Reincarnation review - Pokémon studio Game Freak's action RPG riffs on Monster Hunter and Sekiro with mixed results

Game Freak borrows liberally from the genre's biggest hits. And while its messy and muddled, it's salvaged by exhilarating combat and traversal, and a surprising amount of soul.

Beast of Reincarnation review: "The Pokemon dev knocks it out the park with a stunningly confident sci-fi action RPG"

With a name like Beast of Reincarnation you might expect this to be a game full of aggressive enemies and intense combat. And it is. Yet it's not long before you start to discover that there are layers to this world, and the people who live in it. Layers that make this a strong and deep experience rather than a fun but shallow action game. Don't get me wrong; there is a lot of fighting. That's almost exclusively what you'll be doing, and in fact…

The studio behind Pokémon struggles to find its voice in Beast of Reincarnation

You have to imagine that the team at Game Freak is bursting with ideas. The studio puts out new mainline Pokémon adventures with a machinelike precision. But every so often it launches a curious experiment, whether it's an action title about a militarized elephant or turning horse races into a card game, showing that it's capable of more than the latest generation of pocket monsters. That's part of what makes the idea of Beast of Reincarnation s…

Beast of Reincarnation review

You ever encounter a game mechanic that just makes you go, “whoa”? It arrests with its creativity, distracting you from whatever pressing mission at hand to play with this shiny new toy. Such were Beast of Reincarnation’s plant powers: its protagonist in the swordswoman Emma can extend vines at will, springing off the ground with towering growths or forming makeshift bridges with her flora-infused hair. I marvel at my newfound control, giddily s…