The studio behind Pokémon struggles to find its voice in Beast of Reincarnation
Game Freak's new action game Beast of Reincarnation has slick combat but leans heavily on ideas from other games, leaving the experience feeling underdeveloped.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
A review of Game Freak's Beast of Reincarnation, an action game set 2,000 years in the future where a samurai named Emma fights mutated monsters using plant-based hair powers. The combat is strong, but the world, story, and design feel derivative of Nier, Monster Hunter, and Death Stranding.
Imagine a famous chef who always makes chocolate cake decides to try baking a strawberry one. The new cake looks great and the icing is delicious, but it kind of tastes like other cakes you've had before, and the recipe doesn't explain what half the ingredients are. The chef clearly has talent, but the new recipe needed more of their own special flavor.
Analysis
A samurai with plant-powered hair
Beast of Reincarnation is the latest experiment from Game Freak, the studio that has spent decades shepherding the Pokémon franchise. The game drops players into a postapocalyptic Japan set 2,000 years in the future, where humans and machine-infused golems coexist alongside mutated wildlife infected by a mysterious blight. The protagonist, Emma, is a wandering mercenary whose signature ability is that vines and plants grow from her hair, letting her build bridges, grapple to high places, and zip across the battlefield in combat. Reviewer Andrew Webster singles out the action as the game's strongest element, calling it "incredibly useful" once the skill set opens up after a few hours. The presence of a giant magical dog companion and a parry-heavy combat loop that gradually evolves into something faster and more freeform shows Game Freak is more than capable of building a responsive action system.
Borrowed blueprints from better games
The trouble, according to the review, is that almost every other layer of Beast feels like a nod to something else. The postapocalyptic framing is described as "a watered-down version of Nier: Automata's heartrending postapocalypse," while boss battles evoke Monster Hunter and its contemporary Wild Hearts, right down to creatures resembling Stranger Things' demodogs. The mobile home base functions much like the one in Death Stranding, complete with a shower. The level design is "incredibly straightforward," platforming sections are "dead-simple," and side mechanics like food growing and weapon upgrades are so thin they're easy to forget. For a studio billing Beast as a break from the Pokémon mold, the borrowed aesthetics undercut the sense of creative risk.
Mystery pushed past the breaking point
Perhaps the most damning critique is that the game hides too much for too long. Webster writes that everything in Beast is mysterious: the landscape, Emma, her two human companions, the dog, the little girl only Emma can see, the other wandering fighters. "I barely understood what I was even doing in Beast until at least a dozen hours into the game," he says, and key explanations are buried in tutorial menus. When the big reveals arrive, the review describes them as "mostly underwhelming." The skill tree is even shaped like a literal tree. For a studio known for mechanical accessibility through Pokémon's gentle onboarding, Beast's opacity feels like a miscalculated swing toward a more auteur-driven register, and the result, per the review, is a game whose most original ideas (plant hair, giant dog, absorb-monster-powers loop) never quite cohere into a memorable whole.
Key points
- Beast of Reincarnation is Game Freak's new action game set 2,000 years in the future in a postapocalyptic Japan blending sci-fi and magic.
- The combat, featuring protagonist Emma's plant-based hair powers and a giant dog companion, is the game's strongest element.
- The story and world-building are described as underdeveloped, with key explanations hidden in tutorial menus and the big reveals landing as underwhelming.
- The game borrows heavily from Nier: Automata, Monster Hunter, and Death Stranding, making it feel derivative to the reviewer.
- The review is mixed but critical overall, framing Beast as a promising experiment that fails to establish a voice distinct from its inspirations.
If Game Freak treats Beast of Reincarnation as a learning exercise, the studio's clear competence at action combat could pair with sharper world-building in a future outing. The plant-hair mechanic and the giant dog companion feel like seeds of an identity that, with more time and a more confident narrative, could give Game Freak a real second franchise.
The lukewarm reception may discourage Game Freak from experimenting outside the Pokémon umbrella, reinforcing its dependence on a single flagship. Because Beast borrows so heavily from higher-profile action RPGs, it may struggle to find an audience that isn't already committed to those template-setters, leaving non-Pokémon Game Freak titles commercially exposed.
