| Beast of Reincarnation | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Beast of Reincarnation is an action RPG where you fight to save humanity from a blight that will destroy the world. Learn more about the game’s plot, gameplay, release date, our first impressions about the game, and more.
Overview
What is Beast of Reincarnation?
Beast of Reincarnation is an upcoming action-RPG developed by Game Freak and published by Fictions, scheduled for release on August 4, 2026 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S. This title is Game Freak's first major AAA project outside its Pokémon franchise. Before being officially unveiled at the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2025, the game was initially revealed in 2023 under the working title Project Bloom.
In the year 4026, Earth is ravaged by a parasitic phenomenon known as the Blight, which transforms living organisms into monsters called Malefacts and causes forests to erupt instantly across the landscape. As Emma the Sealer—an outcast cursed as a Blighted One—accompanied by her dog Koo, players must seek to confront the Beast of Reincarnation, believed to be the source of the Blight.
Gameplay is defined by its one-person, one-dog
system. While controlling Emma, players strike enemies and parry attacks. Successfully defending in this way builds resources that allow the player to access a command menu for Koo; opening this menu slows down time and allows Koo to perform support skills or Blooming Arts.
Beast of Reincarnation features:
⚫︎ Post-Apocalyptic Future Setting
⚫︎ Emotional Narrative
⚫︎ Unique Action RPG Gameplay
⚫︎ Straightforward Progression
⚫︎ 13 Chapters
⚫︎ New Game+
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Beast of Reincarnation’s gameplay and story.
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| $59.99 | ||||||||
Beast of Reincarnation Review: Maybe in Another Life It Would've Been Perfect
GameFreak Should Keep Making New Games
When you see the GameFreak logo, chances are, it’s probably because of a new Pokémon title. After being used to seeing them develop and push out titles from the same franchise since the 90s, it was natural to expect it after being exposed to them for so long. So much so that I can confidently say that no one, and I mean no one, saw it coming that they were developing Beast of Reincarnation when it was first revealed back in June 2025.
Beast of Reincarnation is GameFreak’s first new action title outside of Pokémon Legends, where calling it an action title is definitely pushing it. With its mechanics, it’s a cross between many popular action game titles, with stuff like Sekiro’s rhythmic parry system and Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s dynamic action command mechanics, just to name a few.
Its combat is a familiar combination of action-game elements in a slower environment, creating engaging moments through deliberate decisions with its mechanics. Its visuals have a great art direction and aesthetic that fully supports the world it creates with its grand narrative. And despite its glacial pacing, the narrative has some of the better worldbuilding and lore compared to most other games.
But it also shows its weaknesses the moment you press "New Game" on the title screen and until you see the credits. It has a clunky gameplay loop, not-so-compelling dialogue and animated cutscenes, and the common performance issues we’ve unfortunately come to expect from new game releases these days. To top it all off, its narrative doesn’t really take off until you get more than halfway through.
Clearly, it’s quite a flawed game. However, there is no doubt that this is an attempt to prove that GameFreak has what it takes to develop new titles with genres outside their comfort zone.
All in all, Beast of Reincarnation is not a perfect game, and maybe in another life it would’ve been one of 2026’s better, if not best, games had it addressed some of its weaknesses. But it remains a title that’s worth its salt, especially with how it manages to make the world so compelling that you’d want to keep going. You just have to endure its weird pacing.
Strong Worldbuilding Brought Down By Abrupt Pacing
The world in Beast of Reincarnation is something we’ve seen before. A tech-meets-nature aesthetic with feudal-era weapons mixed with a little bit of magic? Yeah, that sounds like the NieR and Horizon franchises to me. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not a compelling world to explore and learn about.
In simple terms, Beast of Reincarnation takes place in a post-apocalyptic future, where the titular monster has infected the world with a Blight that wiped out almost all of humanity. You play as Emma, a blight-infected Purifier, accompanied by her trusty canine companion, Koo, who’s duty-bound to defeat the beast residing in the Capital and save humanity from a seemingly unstoppable infection.
The premise, though basic, serves as a device to create a world that makes you ask questions. Where did the Beast come from? Why is the Blight being depicted as an overgrowth of flora and fauna? More importantly, why do you die when you look up at the moon up in the sky? And sure enough, these questions do get addressed, resulting in a world that’s interesting to learn about.
Unfortunately, it’s how these details are slowly laid out and how quickly everything comes together at the very end that is the main problem.
What feels like snail-like pacing is actually the game prioritizing building up the little details of its setting, environment, and all the events that build up the world instead of the main plot. This is especially true since you don’t really see much progress to the actual plot up until the eighth chapter of the game. You get little bits and pieces, sure, but it also ends up being one of the reasons why the game doesn’t catch your immediate attention.
Of course, while the world is perfectly built up, the result is the main plot playing second fiddle to it. To make matters worse, the plot is resolved quickly without actual buildup or any lingering feelings, where some of these chapters, specifically the last two, are packaged into one. And if you were wondering whether it was because the plot was a little too high-brow to understand? No, it’s just way too slow early on, then too fast in how it ends things.
Now, is the core narrative strong enough to stand its pacing issues? I would personally argue that it does, even if it’s quite tropey. The details and main plot are concluded and resolved in a cohesive way, with few plot holes to address. Honestly speaking, it is one of the more impressive video game worlds that I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing for a long time, especially one that’s from a completely new IP.
Emma and Koo’s Bizarre Adventure
Similarly, the story behind its protagonist, Emma, is just as interesting. Her development as a character who becomes more and more human is typical, especially when they use the same plotlines such as being shunned by society because she’s blight-born, emotionless, and an amnesiac (it happens twice, even, once at the start and another mid-way through). But just because it’s expected or one-dimensional doesn’t mean it’s immediately bad.
You gradually see Emma start to question things besides the way she’s lived her life so far. She becomes curious about things like why certain people are motivated to do things, why things work the way they do, and ultimately, what emotions are. The way it uses its world as a base to teach its protagonist how society and civilization used to be is quite compelling in its own right. Her various interactions with the game’s supporting characters gave the story the novelty that it sorely needed.
Her being emotionless is an important detail of the whole narrative, so it’s quite regrettable to see that most of the supporting cast is almost as listless as she is. To the point that it becomes a detriment to the narrative that the supporting cast doesn’t show that much expression to add contrast to Emma’s blank character.
The line delivery and lack of expressions make every other character feel robotic, which in turn makes all of the interactions robotic because the main character doesn’t show much emotion either. To throw salt in the wound, the animations in the cinematics were also lackluster, which made the climactic cutscenes hit less hard, both visually and emotionally.
Hell, even Koo, who acts Emma’s "guide dog" so to speak, was more expressive than more than half of the cast, in both visuals and in delivery.
And it’s not like they couldn’t have done it either, as two of the other major characters that are involved in the main plot, Violet and Kagura, fulfill their roles well. The former acts as Emma’s emotional outlet during dialogue and her "imaginary friend" that helps her from time to time. The latter is her first actual friend, helping her do the chores in their mobile base and actually becoming a core part of Emma’s convictions to keep fighting.
We could’ve gotten an infinitely better story if they established most of the characters a bit more, especially when it comes to the other major players in the story like Brad, Kunai, and even Shidou. If their backstories were spread out much more, you’d feel more invested in them, especially since they are pivotal characters to Emma’s development. Instead, the narrative makes it look like they come and go.
To be clear, it’s not that they’re written badly, even if to some extent their underuse is a form of bad writing. It’s more that their backstories and details should have been explored earlier so they add more context to the world, reinforce its details early on, and add even more stakes as more of the core characters’ motivations and goals clash.
For what it’s worth, though, it concludes in a satisfying way, addressing many plot points and tying everything together in a cohesive manner that makes the investment worth it. Additionally, its worldbuilding is still, for the most part, something that should be emulated. It manages to vividly create a setting that’s easily identifiable and relatable, even if it’s supposed to be set several millennia ahead.
Impressive Hybrid Combat System That Invites Skill Expression
From the trailers and the reveals, Beast of Reincarnation’s combat and gameplay loop is an amalgamation of a lot of things. In the easiest way I can describe it, the game manages to combine a bit of the NieR franchise’s movement, Sekiro’s parry mechanics, with a bit of Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s dynamic command-based battle system. Yet, even if I did mention Sekiro as an inspiration to the game’s gameplay design, calling it a Soulslike is inaccurate, even if it feels like one.
It uses its slower pace and unique battle system to create engaging gameplay, especially since actions have an intended weight to them. This, in turn, makes sure that your decisions are deliberate, since Emma is as fragile as she looks when it comes to dealing with enemy hits. But that slower pace doesn’t mean that it’s just a "wait-for-an-opening" type of game.
Attacks are structured a bit like Dynasty Warriors, where it’s a combo string system with unique sequences tied to when you choose to finish the combo. Combined with its aforementioned weightiness, means that you have to be aware of your less-committal attack strings and high-damage ones.
There are also other abilities that are unlocked through its simple progression that allow you to use unique attacks in specific conditions. Examples include the Helm Breaker, where it looks exactly like how you’d imagine it from other games, and Iaido, where a momentary pause during an attack sequence allows her to sheathe her katana for a stronger attack.
Additionally, Emma also has access to two different ranged weapons that function like a traditional third-person shooter, which is surprisingly just as strong or maybe even stronger than the melee combos if you invest enough skill points into them.
Pair these all together with Koo’s command-based gameplay where you use his abilities to influence fights, and you have a dynamic combat loop that tests your deliberate decision-making in a genre that historically lets you do it on the fly.
But the actual beauty of its combat system, one that actually enables it all, is in its parry system. As a mechanic, it’s as basic as it comes, but it’s also the system that makes it a premier action game. I’ve gone on and on about the intended design of making actions feel deliberate, but this goes out the window when you know that you’re able to recover from any "bad" decision with well-timed parries.
This creates skill expression in allowing players to be as aggressive as they want, while conforming them to its deliberate design where you’re infinitely safer if you prioritize attacking on given openings rather than swinging at the smallest slivers of weakness. By the midway point of the game, the combat system is something that I developed an affinity for, especially when I started to embrace its pace and simplicity a lot more.
Personally, I would even go so far as to say that Beast of Reincarnation is one of the games that actually applies the turn-based-plus-action-RPG dynamic the best, maybe even better than Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Mostly because the combat maintains its bite and doesn’t force you to deal meaningless damage at the start before getting to the actual offense. But maybe that’s just me.
Lack of Variety Turns Into Subpar Difficulty
While I’ve gone on long enough about the intricacies of its combat system, the gameplay loop is not without its flaws. It may be common to see an action have a problematic repetitiveness regarding enemy types, but the problem behind it is much deeper than that. The lack of attack patterns, alongside its limited enemy variety, results in a difficulty that’s easier than intended.
Even in its hardest difficulty, the game doesn’t feel as difficult as it should be, as turning it up only increases the damage output and their overall HP without actually addressing the issue.
Because of limited attack patterns, combat encounters tend to feel more repetitive than they should be, and none of the enemies feel threatening after seeing an enemy type once. Sadly, this affects boss fights as well, as some bosses share attack patterns and animations from grunt-level enemies with added swings, and even go so far as to just be a reskin of an enemy you already fought.
The funniest thing about this issue is that they actually had the answer to it; they just didn’t give more of it. This, of course, refers to the last two climactic boss fights in the game. These encounters were very different from what you’re exposed to for most of the game, mostly because they had different attack patterns compared to the 90% of the enemies you fight all throughout.
These fights in particular were definitely the highlights of the game’s combat, mostly because they didn’t have others that shared attack patterns with them. The penultimate boss fight was interesting because both of them had unique attack animations, varied timing, and patterns that you’ve never seen before prior to their boss fight, all packaged in a 2v2 bout.
Similarly, the actual final boss also had its own set of unique attacks, albeit limited and quite easy to parry. What made it interesting was that missing a parry meant that you’re guaranteed to get hit 2-3 more times before you can even attempt to try and parry again. Plus, it had actual attack patterns that were more deceptive than most bosses.
If they were able to create more bosses with a similar design, or maybe even add more exclusive attack patterns to both bosses and enemies, then maybe it would’ve lessened a lot of the repetition it currently has. Then again, this could’ve been the intention, so that the game doesn’t feel too difficult so that players can also enjoy its surprisingly-large-scale exploration. If anything, the only real difficult part of the game is the finicky camera that loves to jump back and forth between enemies.
Is Beast of Reincarnation Worth It?
Wait Till it Fully Blooms
There’s no doubt that Beast of Reincarnation is a flawed game. Even then, this is the type of game that I wish GameFreak would keep trying to develop. Amidst all its flaws, it has enough compelling positives to make it an enjoyable experience, especially with its great worldbuilding chops and dynamic combat. And while you do have to get through its sloth-like pacing and all that, I will argue that the investment of seeing the well-crafted conclusion and its overall world is worth playing through.
I’d recommend it to those who want to try a slower action game, especially if they’re not big fans of games that tend to overwhelm you with mechanics that test your reflexes and want you to play fast. However, with GameFreak already announcing that the game will have a patch to address its story pacing soon, it might be worth waiting for a sale to see how much more they’re willing to change and improve on its weaknesses.
Beast of Reincarnation Related Guides
| Recommended Guides | |
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 Main Quests |
 Tips and Tricks |
 Characters |
 Bosses |
 Weapons |
 Armor |
 Spirit Stones |
 Builds |
 Skills |
 Outfits and Skins |
 Manuals |
 Interactive Map |
 News and Game Info |
 Review |
Beast of Reincarnation FAQ
How Many Chapters Are There in Beast of Reincarnation?
There are a total of 13 chapters in Beast of Reincarnation.
Can You Play as Koo in Beast of Reincarnation?
No. You only play as Emma in the game.
Game8 Reviews
