Beast of Reincarnation Review: Game Freak Finally Bites

For thirty years the question has hung over Game Freak like weather: what happens when the Pokemon studio actually tries something else? Beast of Reincarnation, out August 4 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC (and on Game Pass from day one), is the answer - and it's a far better one than I expected.

You play Emma the Sealer, an 18-year-old wandering a post-apocalyptic Japan in the year 4026, a world blighted by a creature that has poisoned nature itself. At her side is Koo, a stray dog who fights with her. The "one girl, one dog" setup sounds like a marketing line, but it's the mechanical heart of the game: Koo isn't a pet, he's a second weapon, and directing him mid-fight is where the combat opens up.

The combat is the real deal

This is a parry-centric action RPG that clearly studied Sekiro, and for long stretches it earns the comparison. Deflections feel crisp, boss fights have real rhythm, and Emma's plant-manipulation powers add just enough weirdness to keep encounters from blurring together. When a fight clicks - you parrying, Koo flanking, the arena falling apart around you - this is genuinely one of the better action games of the year.

The atmosphere carries the rest. Blighted forests, drowned shrines, a Ghibli-adjacent melancholy hanging over everything. Game Freak's art team has been waiting decades to make something this mournful and it shows.

Where it stumbles

The world between the fights is the problem. Exploration is thinner than the semi-open structure promises, side content repeats itself, and the story wobbles between striking imagery and dialogue that explains too much. Performance at launch is also rough around the edges - frame rate dips that a patch should fix, but that a 60-dollar game shouldn't ship with. Critics are split for a reason: the Metacritic average sits in the low 70s, and I understand both the people calling it great and the ones calling it hollow.

Verdict

Beast of Reincarnation is a flawed, sincere, occasionally brilliant action RPG - the best thing Game Freak has made outside its money-printing franchise. If you're on Game Pass, this is an easy recommendation right now; it's included at no extra cost, which matters when the standard price is $59.99. Everyone else: it's worth it for the combat alone, but waiting for the first performance patch is the smart play.

Score: 7/10

Image: Basile Morin / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bamboo_Forest,_Arashiyama,_Kyoto,_Japan.jpg