Game Freak might be known for being the main developer behind all of the mainline Pokémon games, as well as a chunk of their spinoffs, but there’s one thing people usually forget about: Game Freak is NOT owned by Nintendo, and not forced to make games exclusively for their systems. It is still a third party developer, so whenever they find some extra time and resources to make a game not featuring Pikachu’s face on the cover, they do so. The thing is, they rarely tried to make something with a bigger budget or with graphics surpassing the already Jurassic style of modern Pokémon games. That is, until Beast of Reincarnation showed up.

I wonder if Game Freak based their enemy designs on existing pokémon? This dude reminded me of Clodsire…

This might actually be the most ambitious title ever made by Game Freak, considering the company’s most recent track record. The last few generations of Pokémon were games limited by hardware limitations, glitches, and poor performance. Beast of Reincarnation is an action RPG with Souls-esque elements not hampered by these hardware and budgetary limitations. It is available on modern platforms, it’s powered by Unreal, and it is a brand new, completely original IP, with a more mature theming, full (Japanese) voice acting, cutscenes, complex combat mechanics, and so on. But at the end of the day, it is still a Game Freak joint. And that means that a game with great ideas is still marred by shoddy execution.

Meet Emma. She can control plants. She also has the emotional range of a plant.

First things first, what is Beast of Reincarnation even about? Not trying to spoil anything about the story per se (especially since it’s not actually THAT interesting, to be honest), you play as an emotionally recluse warrior named Emma, a girl with particular powers that allow her to control plants in bizarre ways. Flowers grow wherever she steps on, she can create flower-shaped platforms, conjure vines to use them as grappling hooks, between other abilities. As seen earlier on in the story, flowers even grow from her hair. Despite being powerful, as well as one of the few people able to defeat the titular Beast of Reincarnation which is ruining the world with blight, she is an outcast, shunned from what remains of human society because of her very powers.

Emma has a few companions, but her main ally throughout the game is Koo, a gigantic (and equally magical) dog that feels like it was taken straight from Princess Mononoke. As a surprise to literally no one who has or will play this game, Studio Ghibli’s masterpiece was one of Beast of Reincarnation‘s main influences. More than just an ally in battle, one that can be summoned every now and then to perform Final Fantasy VII Remake-esque attacks, Koo is the one solace of love and comfort in a world that couldn’t care less about Emma and her quest. To be fair, that’s also because she has the level of charisma of a beetroot, but I digress.

One of the many, many, MANY instances in which the game refused to load its textures properly.

The story isn’t very interesting, and won’t be the reason you’ll keep on playing this game. Beast of Reincarnation has two big selling factors, one of them being its setting. It’s set two thousand years in the future, in a post-apocalyptic Japan completely covered by nature having taken over what little was left of civilization. Magical beasts, warmongering robots and the remnants of humanity all coexist in this desolate, but artistically breathtaking world.

The other main selling point is the gameplay. It is, without a doubt, unique, creative and very interesting. It’s hard to properly compare it to other action RPGs, in fact: the foundation is based on a typical hack n’ slash game by Platinum, but with the level structure of a Soulslike (tough enemies, limited recovery items, a dodge function when you lock onto a foe, “bonfires”), the aforementioned “real-time-with-pause” system where you can summon Koo to perform an attack at times, and a lot taken from Sekiro, namely the constant usage of grappling hooks and a parrying system. This weird concoction sounds confusing in theory, but it works surprisingly well.

It looks great, but it’s probably running at around 18 frames per second.

It works well… when the game DECIDES to work well, may I add. Here’s the thing: Beast of Reincarnation lives and dies by its actually addictive and visually spectacular combat system. You constantly want to hunt down magical beasts and robots just to be able to mow them down with your sword. But that comes at a painful cost: the more havoc you decide to wreak, the more particles will fill up the screen, the more effects will be triggered, and with that, the framerate will go down the drain.

This was a great reminder that this is still the same company that delivered Pokémon Scarlet and Violet in such a disgusting state at launch. Beast of Reincarnation‘s framerate is terrible. Even on performance mode, which should have warranted a higher and more stable framerate, things would fluctuate from 60 to, I dunno, mid-10s at the absolute worst. The inconsistent framerate also resulted in the combat feeling disjointed and devoid of responsiveness, especially during boss battles. This is the moment where the game is supposed to feel tight, polished, and immediate to your commands. But that also means a ginormous mutated deer is covering half of the screen, obliterating Beast of Reincarnation‘s overall performance.

You got a friend in Koo.

And that’s not all. Sure, Beast of Reincarnation might feature a striking art style, but it is hampered by many visual issues. Textures can occasionally take forever to load, giving the game that very typical “running on a low-end PC vibe” when entering a new area. There are instances in which these textures won’t even bother to show up, in fact. The assets will just look PS1-esque in their polygonal shape, and they will be covered in a texture that looks cheaper and muddier than a stretched Nintendo 64 JPEG. Add in the performance issues, and the result is what I can only describe as a test. A test on how long you’ll be able to put up with this crap before deciding to reload a savefile to see if things will stabilize, or just quit playing altogether.

Fill up an enemy’s posture gauge in order to perform a flashy finisher.

This should have been fantastic. The signs of a great game are easy to spot throughout Beast of Reincarnation. I loved its striking art direction and genuinely addictive combat system. The combat is so satisfying that you’ll actively go looking for enemies to slaughter simply because fighting them is too fun. On the other hand, its story is bland, its visuals can look surprisingly muddy, and the framerate seemingly refuses to behave like it belongs in a normal video game. Much like some of Game Freak’s more recent projects, Beast of Reincarnation is packed with great ideas and strong core concepts, only to have much of that potential undermined by some seriously shoddy execution.

Beast of Reincarnation is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC.

Reviewed on Xbox Series S.