Image via Game Freak, Fictions

Game Freak is known as the developer behind the mainline Pokemon series, the studio on odd occasions released a titles outside of the popular monster-collecting franchise. Beast of Reincarnation is the studio’s biggest departure yet. With this new game, it demonstrated its team is capable of very interesting exploration and combat, while also showing the developer is far from maturing in the storytelling department.

Beast of Reincarnation is set in the year 4026 and follows Emma the sealer, a woman suffering from a feared disease known as the Blight. Emma is shunned and seen as less than human, a physically and spiritually corrupt being derided for her condition. Her job is to dispose of beasts known as malefacts that threaten the colonies inhabited by the remnants of humanity. During the game’s early hours, she’s tasked with making her way to the Capital, defeating various Nushi (powerful malefacts), absorbing their powers, and defeating the titular Beast of Reincarnation.

Emma is aided in her quest by her loyal and benign malefact dog Koo, the young indentured servant Kagura, and Brad, a man that serves as an older mentor figure. There’s also Violet, a mysterious ghost-like figure that only Emma can talk to and see. At the outset, the game shifts between exploration and exposition, setting up the characters and their dynamics. The story is serviceable, if messy at times. For most of the runtime, the focus lies in Emma’s blossoming relationship with Kagura and Koo. She is cold, naïve, and emotionally inexperienced, which is far from a novel trope, but it works for the character.

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Other characters also exist, but their involvement in Beast of Reincarnation (alongside Brad’s) feels so detached from the main emotional focus and only appear as eleventh hour lore exposition to give you a bunch of proper nouns. The climax of the story would have felt less clunky if Game Freak opted to forego trying to explain and cram in as much as possible, instead focusing on Emma’s emotional journey and her relationship with Kagura and Koo.

In stark contrast to the story, I absolutely loved exploring the world of Beast of Reincarnation. For most of its 42-hours, it focused on the journey to the Capital, exploration, and combat, which is where the game shines brightest. As a blightborn, Emma can grow branches out of her hair to create platforms and gain height, giving her freedom to explore and sequence break in ways that I found genuinely creative.

Something else that I loved from beginning to end was Beast of Reincarnation’s combat. Emma’s controlled in standard action-RPG fashion, with a heavy emphasis on performing generous parries that fill up Koo’s gauge. At any moment, you can open Koo’s command menu to slow down time and select an attack from a list of customizable abilities. I loved this system. At times I fully played it like a character action game, with Koo acting as my trusty NPC support, whereas others moments I focused on using Koo’s commands by perfecting my parry timing and having Emma play more defensively using her projectiles.

You can also unlock various automatic attacks, support abilities, and mods for Koo’s commands that add special effects and increase the cost of abilities. Some mods allow for ridiculously fun combos, like afflicting enemies with status effects and recovering most of my action points with the same move by pairing the appropriate mod or activating Emma’s sword’s unique ability with a cheap skill and then going all-in.

While performance on PC wasn’t the best, the environments and the variety of open zones in Beast of Reincarnation are gorgeous. There’s a special focus on verticality that paired well with Emma’s traversal abilities. I was also very impressed by the blighted rain making trees grow all of a sudden in the environment, leaving me appropriately disoriented. All of this was accompanied by a wonderfully dreamy soundtrack by Michiru Oshima that, at times, left me wondering if Monaca of NieR fame was involved.

Despite Game Freak’s messy storytelling, I loved the exploration and combat in Beast of Reincarnation. It helps that the design makes its best elements shine and the messy parts only appear as a footnote at the end before delivering a fitting enough climax. While I would’ve liked the story to be less preoccupied with the world’s lore, I was more than satisfied by every single other element. Fittingly, Beast of Reincarnation cares more about the journey than its destination.

Beast of Reincarnation will come to the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam on August 4, 2026.