Beast of Reincarnation Review
Where Companionship and Calamity Meet
Released on August 3rd, 2026, Beast of Reincarnation was highly anticipated not because of the game itself, but the developers behind it. It is developed by Game Freak, creators behind nearly all of the Pokémon games on Nintendo platforms. This simple fact means that Game Freak is the most successful studio ever, the Pokémon game franchise is the third highest grossing video game franchise, right behind Mario and Tetris. As a whole, the Pokémon franchise is the most successful merchandise line ever, generating over $150 billion worldwide to date and only getting popular every year. With all this success behind Game Freak, Beast of Reincarnation was expected to be great considering the near infinite development resources at its disposal. Long story short, it did not meet expectations.
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We reviewed our copy of Beast of Reincarnation on PC via Steam. Beast of Reincarnation is also available on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Game Pass.Beast of Reincarnation is Game Freak’s first real game that branches out from its Pokémon roots. It is a story focused souls-like role-playing game (RPG) that combines elements of extremely popular recently released games, like Elden Ring, Black Myth: Wukong, and Clair Obsur: Expedition 33. As I played through the game, the similarities were undeniable except for one thing – despite the similarities, Beast of Reincarnation does not hold a candle to any of the aforementioned games. Put simply, all the similarities were done worse than in the games the inspirations were taken from. That said, the game is decent and a promising first step away from Pokémon for Game Freak. A few more games like this that continually get improved upon and Game Freak could create a game that does compete with the greatest RPGs, but Beast of Reincarnation is definitely not that game.
Lackluster Storytelling
A malefacts; the type of monster you’ll be fighting
Beast of Reincarnation’s story is the weakest part of the game. Considering it is a story focused RPG, a bad story automatically makes the game average at best. The story is set in the year 4026 in Japan. Humanity seems to be on the brink of extinction, only able to live in small colonies scattered across the land. Outside of these colonies are blight infested lands, where life is corrupted and grows at extremely fast rates. Humans and animals alike that breathe in the blight either get sick and die or become malefacts. Becoming a malefact causes life to go insane and grow plants in and on their body. All the blight stems from the Beast of Reincarnation (the Beast). The Beast essentially grants eternal life to all the creatures within its sphere of influence. However, this life is only granted to souls while bodies still decay. To circumvent the decay, humanity developed machines that can be possessed by souls. These soul-possessed machines are called golems and retain all the memories of the original body but can still be corrupted by the blight. A far rarer way of circumventing the decay is with man-made clones called vessels that souls can possess.
The entire campaign takes between 10 and 20 hours to complete and brings the character’s level up to between 60 and 70, which is an important break point to be able to enter the end game. Despite The Beast being revived, there is never a point where the character gets to fight it. Instead, the end game is all about preparing for The Beast fight, which is presumably going to be available on the POE2 full release scheduled for the end of 2026. Essentially, the entire campaign allows the player to learn how to build and play their character while the end game teaches the player about the rest of the game mechanics, of which there are many.
End Game Progression
The combat and map traversal mechanics carry Beast of Reincarnation to its “decent” status as a game. The combat has all the bells and whistles of a souls-like style, with parrying, dodging, blocking, and a wide variety of attacks that both Emma and Koo can use. Map traverse is tied to the story in that Emma can move vertically and horizontally around a zone with her blight power, allowing her to grow branches out of her body to volt up to high places or cross valleys. Pairing these two mechanics together creates some unique and fun interactions, like pogo-sticking up to dodge attacks then lunging down for a powerful attack. There are also ranged attacks with a bow and hand crossbow that allow players to effectively avoid difficult encounters at range.
Koo’s abilities are pretty one dimensional but paired with Emma’s attacks become fun and unique. When choosing Koo’s abilities in combat, time slows to allow the player to carefully dictate the most effective move. Upon use, the player is prompted with a short timing minigame that, if successful, makes Koo’s ability more powerful. Koo’s abilities cannot be used freely though; the player must parry enemy abilities to build up Koo’s skill points for any ability. The more powerful Koo’s ability is, the more skill points required to use it. All of this builds up the enemy’s stagger bar. At full stagger bar, the enemy is stunned for a few seconds, allowing Emma and Koo to deal massive damage and execute with some cool finisher animations.
As the player progresses through the different maps, Emma and Koo gain new attacks and abilities, whichpower them up, and gain mods to further augment everything. All of the new attacks and abilities are inspired by the Nushi that Emma and Koo have defeated and absorbed. These new attacks are then added to their massive and ever-growing skill tree, which is literally a tree that grows as more blight are absorbed. The skill tree is so big that it cannot possibly be unlocked completely in one full play through, effectively encouraging a new game plus play through.
While the skill tree is really good, it does lead to my one major complaint about the combat mechanics – attacks, abilities, and gear are far too time consuming to unlock and upgrade everything. If the story were better, I would consider playing new game plus to use all of the different abilities, attacks, and gear, but that is not the case. Basically, the combat and traversal mechanics are good enough for me to want to finish the game, but not to replay the story to experience all the mechanics I missed.
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Final Thoughts
Hopefully I have already made my thoughts clear on Beast of Reincarnation, but I do still have some critique that I will mention very quickly. The hunger and food system is not well thought out and it should not be power locked behind it. The calendar system is pointless, and I wish Game Freak had spent more time on the story rather than implementing this. The in-game currencies, Amber and Skill Points for upgrading gear and abilities/attacks respectively, are constantly bottlenecked and need to be changed. The rapport system with Koo and Kagura are completed way too quickly. Exploring the world outside of the main objective does not feel worthwhile because it only very marginally increases Emma and Koo’s power. The music is bad. Making the beginning of the story linear rather than jumping around from flashbacks and forwards would have improved the story at least a bit. Other than that and the mediocre story, the game looks good, performs fine, and plays well, which are important aspects, but not enough to change its rating in my eyes.
Beast of Reincarnation’s bad story combined with its good combat and traversal mechanics average out to make it a decently average story focused souls-like RPG game. While it is a good first step for Game Freak outside of Pokémon, it is not good enough for me to recommend to you, especially at its $60 price point. It just crumbles before its competition in the RPG genre. The only type of person I would recommend Beast of Reincarnation to are avid souls-like players, i.e. people who enjoy somewhat challenging gameplay mechanics while not caring about the story. I am not saying the combat is as good as Elden Ring, Black Myth: Wukong, or other Souls games, but it is somewhat comparable. However, if you are looking for good story-based RPG like I was, Beast of Reincarnation is not for you.
Matt
New video game, movie, or TV show? Matt probably has it on his radar, and he might even be in the middle of reviewing it. This digital entertainment enjoying dude is a Content Writer during work hours, then plays games, watches movies, binges shows, and writes about all of it in his free time.