NieR:Automata is a top contender for my favorite video game of all time, so I am of two minds when I see some of these more recent games that are so clearly inspired and influenced by it. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with taking a cue or two from the greats who came before you, and Yoko Taro himself is the first to dismiss his own works as being derivative and indebted to his own influences. That said, even when I can look past things, games that are clearly trying to evoke NieR's stylistic and narrative hallmarks, there's still the basic fact that a masterpiece is so much more than the sum of its parts. Any game can mix atmospheric music, hack-and-slash combat focused on a badass female protagonist who explores a melancholy post-apocalypse, and dark themes that interrogate the relationship between mankind, the machine, and the inscrutable nature of the soul. The real question is whether or not that game can still carve an identity of its own under the weight of all that legacy.

Despite whatever reservations I may have had, though, I was immediately determined to get my hands on Beast of Reincarnation from the moment I caught that reveal trailer back in 2025. My enthusiasm went beyond the fact that I am, at the end of the day, simply a sucker for “NieR-likes.” This was the first time that GAME FREAK, the legendary developers of the Pokémon franchise, were stepping into the ring with what looked like a proper AAA epic. Plus, there's no way I am ever going to pass up an opportunity to play a game where you make best friends with a giant magical dog who helps you rip-and-tear through all of the bad guys. From the get-go, Beast of Reincarnation looked like what would happen if you threw NieR, Bayonetta, and Princess Mononoke into a blender, and that unique combination of ingredients was enough to convince me that GAME FREAK were not going to simply follow in same footsteps of what has come before.

I want to talk about the game's story and presentation first, because that is where most of the obvious parallels to games like NieR:Automata are impossible to avoid, even if Beast of Reincarnation does eventually prove that it's doing its own thing with the familiar elements. The dreamy, ethereal music that accompanies you throughout the game is quite excellent, for example, but I would be lying if I said that the contributions from composers like Kow Otani, Yasuaki Iwata, and Go Ichinose didn't sometimes sound suspiciously like what you might expect to hear from a Keiichi Okabe tribute album. Then there is our protagonist, Emma, who is another stoic heroine with stunted emotions who must learn to discover her capacity for human connections while uncovering the secrets of the post-apocalyptic wasteland she has been charged with saving. It isn't even like GAME FREAK is being subtle about this, either, since Emma's Japanese voice actor is Yui Ishikawa. I'll give you one guess as to who she is famous for portraying in a certain beloved Square-Enix title that debuted in 2017.

That said, it's all of the ways that Beast of Reincarnation's story stands apart from the forbears that make it worth experiencing. While Emma herself is just a bit too much of a walking homage to Yokō Tarō's works to carry the game on her own, the supporting cast that she interacts with does a great job of injecting the game with its own identity. Kagura is the emotional young child who befriends Emma and shows her how to enjoy the simple pleasures of home-cooked meals and a place to call home. The mysterious Brad, who acts as Emma's handler, has some fascinating connections to the larger story that you uncover through the game. There are some key characters, like Mikoto and Kunia, who definitely feel like they could use more development by the time the game's 30-40 hour story wraps up, but they still make enough of an impression to keep the story interesting.

Of course, I cannot talk about what sets the world and story of Beast of Reincarnation apart without giving Koo his magical, super-power-enhancing flowers. Koo is, to cut to the chase, a very good boy. He may just end up ranking amongst the all-time great video-game companions, and you can absolutely see the work that GAME FREAK did to flex their game-design muscles here. It may not be surprising that the industry kings of crafting virtual pets have outdone themselves, but I cannot stress enough how vital Koo is to the success of Beast of Reincarnation. Alone, Emma is not quite the heroine that the game needs to chart its own path in the choppy waters of an uncertain industry. As an inseparable duo, however, Emma and Koo are almost unstoppable.

What makes Koo such an invaluable addition to this game goes beyond the fact that he is indescribably cute and also a useful helper when it comes to exploration and combat. Koo is just as much of a main character as Emma is, even if you only ever control him by slowing down combat to activate his repertoire of elemental attacks. Koo has his own ability stats to manage and a tree of dozens upon dozens of passive and active abilities to upgrade. Koo's impact on the game's combat is bolstered ever further by a wealth of equipment and skill enhancements that you will unlock by exploring the dozen or so of the game's small but dense zone maps. His presence adds depth and variety to all of the gameplay systems that make the feel of Beast of Reincarnation entirely its own, even when the look and sound of the game might be evoking a sense of déjà vu.

Speaking of the game's mechanics, the combat and exploration systems are what caused me to completely forgive any slight deficiencies I might have been irked by in its story and presentation. For one, when it comes to simply moving about the world and exploring its nooks and crannies, Beast of Reincarnation is simply a joy to play. Like the eponymous protagonist of Bayonetta, Emma has magical hair that she can use both in combat and as a means of whipping and launching herself about the ruined buildings and forested landscapes of 4046 Japan. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that we're dealing with a level of fluid movement perfection like what we have in Insomniac's Spider-Man games, we're damned close. My favorite ability is the way Emma can use her hair brambles to create an extended ledge that functions as both a grappling point and an on-demand footpath. I literally never once got tired of using my endless supply of hair-bridges to rain death from above on my unsuspecting Golem and Malefact enemies.

The maps also give Beast of Reincarnation a lot of its personality and charm. While the game sometimes struggles with the ghosting and asset-streaming quirks that have come to define Unreal Engine 5, the Beast of Reincarnation, by and large, looked gorgeous on my base PS5. I played mostly in Quality Mode to preserve the shadows and textures of the game's dense foliage, and some of my favorite hours with the game came simply from flying across the broken landscapes of the zone maps and uncovering all of the goodies and lore morsels that I could. Whenever the limited animation of the game's human models and the sometimes stilted cutscene direction of the campaign threatened to undermine Beast of Reincarnation's story, its quality world design and art direction always came around to remind me of what made the game feel truly captivating in its best moments.

Equally enthralling is the game's combat, which is astounding in almost every aspect. As I mentioned before, Emma and Koo are positively overloaded with choices for dispatching the many enemies and bosses that stand between our heroes and the Beast of Reincarnation. While the game is playing within an action-RPG sandbox that will be familiar to anyone who has played a FromSoftware title in the last fifteen years, Beast of Reincarnation makes many strides in developing a flashy and fun combat system that stands out amongst the competition. In addition to the many useful skills that Koo can deploy by slowing down gameplay with the press of a button, Emma unlocks many different combos and contextual abilities that she can unleash by mixing up her attacks, her finishing moves, and the stamina points that are refreshed by parrying and dodging enemy attacks.

If my use of the “P-word” up there just triggered your fight-or-flight response, hear me out before you run for the hills. Beast of Reincarnation's parry window is actually one of the most generous that I've encountered in recent years, and the enemy animations are very clear in telegraphing the timing of attacks. I rarely felt like a fight went wrong because I missed a single frame or two in the middle of a heated battle. While the game is plenty challenging on its Normal difficulty settings, it's a very fair degree of challenge that is almost always fun, and not frustrating. If you are genuinely not inclined to grit your teeth against the clashing blades and gnashing teeth of Emma and Koo's foes, though, worry not. There is a Story Mode option that means almost everyone who wants to experience Beast of Reincarnation will be able to do so.

Just about the only complaints I can make about the game so far as mechanics go are minor. The UI could be more intuitive when it comes to managing the hundreds of items, trinkets, dog-collars, and other upgrades you will be switching between. I wouldn't have minded the option to swap between at least a couple of different swords on the fly to mix and match my combat approaches. Some gameplay elements, like the hunger gauges that you manage by feeding Emma and Koo snacks, don't feel terribly critical to the overall experience, but they don't drag the gameplay down with their presence, either. If the marriage of exploration, combat, and character building stops fully short of ARPG perfection in Beast of Reincarnation, it still ends up being a consistently thrilling and rewarding time.

I talked before about the dangers of trying to stick too close to the formula established by the bona fide masterpieces of a medium. While Beast of Reincarnation doesn't quite reach the heights of its truly brilliant inspirations, it still accomplishes more than enough to prove itself as a genuinely excellent game in its own right. The story may not ultimately pack the emotional punches or shocking surprises that it aspires to, but there is still so much worth experiencing about Emma and Koo's journey. If nothing else, Koo deserves to be known around the world as one of the goodest of gaming's Good Boys. With its fantastic level design, moody visuals, and rock-solid gameplay, Beast of Reincarnation stands as a testament to what GAME FREAK and their partners are capable of when they're allowed to cut loose and hone their skills by developing a (mostly) original vision.