Scarlet Nexus (2021)

Scarlet Nexus The Game That’s Just As Strange As The Game Itself

To start off this review I was familiar with the Anime before the actual game and I think I finished it halfway before dropping it, The reason why is because the story and characters weren’t intriguing to me, Felt bland.

Funny enough years later I try the game… I wasn’t able to have fun 😂 The controls are so awkward 😐 there’s nothing unique gameplay wise.

The visuals are well.. decent ? It isn’t like Naruto Storm 4 like graphics but the coveral character design is awful and very bland, your typical anime npcs and stereotypes there’s nothing to the character you feel like yeah we are going to be good friends from now on when I will play this game. 🥲

The soundtrack is oddly enough well… I guess good ? I wasn’t bobbing my head to anything at the start tho.

I will come back later to this 👆but the composer is Hironori Anazori. And this dude is pretty much nonexistent never heard of him but go figure he barely has any works. So I had to search up some random osts from scarlet nexus.

I listened to some soundtracks and they are great, Might be lucky on what I clicked but he seems to be getting the vibe well.

Thing I wanted to explain right now as to why I quit the game and that’s because I played the game for like 1 hour and some minutes and stopped🚨

Disclaimer : To make this a fair review I used my previous experience of watching the anime, read reviews and watched end game gameplay mechanics to conclude a fair conclusion. ✅

I don’t like non open minded half baked reviews neither 😂**

The controls are so bad and the usage of it is so horrible it doesn’t really feel like playing the game but more focus on the story. 🖥️

All you really do is throw objects into enemies , blocking an enemy move is pretty much nonexistent all you do is dash and you got to time it perfectly. Flashy moves doesn’t equal fun when using them.🕹️

But yeah about story I can’t really go into detail because one spoilers and secondly I haven’t finished the entire thing to give a fair answer to it.📜

Just here to ”Warn” as this game was like a underdog or must play it or whatever, but it doesn’t live up to its expectations a good game is the moment you enter the first 5 minutes… That’s how I at least see it.☺️

There’s a reason games like super smash bros, or Zelda titles perform so well in that regard, And are liked by the fans but of course to each it’s own 🥸

CollectApk 30 May 2025 18:00

I have beaten Yuito's story and was ready to give it a four-star. It had some flaws such as rather basic battle mechanics, weak final boss, several unanswered question but it was an enjoyable experience. I had a lot of fun with it...until I played half way through Kasane's campaign.

I have to claim that it might be a more personal issue. But I just hate Kasane as a character. The two protagonists' stories are mostly the same story told in different viewpoints. Some of Kasane's motives are not fully explained in Yuito's campaign and this is actually a good thing to me. Because after seeing her blindly believed in something that might not even be true and caused a lot of confusion, anger, and distrust to her teammates, I just couldn't stand her anymore.

What's more depressing to me is that after developing some love to all characters, Kasane has to start it all over again. And it was a bumpy ride. Especially seeing her straight up enraged Hanabi by asking her to betray Yuito and insisting Hanabi to think for herself more. Sorry, It's too much for me...

This game is supremely dumb. The story is complete nonsense, characters act like no human has never act before, and the presentation (using still images) is terrible and impossible to follow.

But gameplay is great. It manages a good rhythm between weapon attacks, powers and support with a more or less interesting status system. Although some enemies are only defeatable using a very specific combination of powers, which detracts from the need for experimentation; when you see one of those, you know exactly how to kill them and are forced to do that.

In the end, I quit before finishing it as I encountered a boss fight that was overly long and filled with boring and annoying nuisance enemies.

Unfortunately, the whole package of Scarlet Nexus is simply not good enough. It had one or two very good aspects while the others range from average to just outright terrible. It's a game that could have been better than what it was but was brought down by terrible writing and some very weird design choices that brings the whole experience down.

Story was mostly pretty bad, with all anime cliches you can imagine and tries way too hard to be something deep. I like anime, I watch a lot of anime, but this one is a low tier Shounen or at best average one. Most of the dialogue was pretty awful and the characters were anime tropes, not badly written but nothing interesting. Story does improve a little bit by the end but overall, it's not the reason why you'll be playing this game. Yuito is also a pretty lame protagonist. Just a typical Shounen protagonist who's Mr.Perfect and all that.

Story isn't helped by the way it's told either. Telling the story via still pictures and portraits talking was a pretty weird decision that left me mostly uninterested in what is told in front of me. Please don't mention Persona, because in it you can at least see character models moving on the screen, while here it's all still pictures after still pictures. This honestly screams either lack of budget or laziness more than art direction. This game has an unnecessary anime released at the same time, so why couldn't they make full 3D cutscenes ? really ? Could have used that anime budget to make cutscenes in this game.

Combat is why you'll be playing this game though, and why it's worth any money. With ton of movement, powers, attacks and allies, there're ton of fun to have here, and a lot of ways to change your style and try new things and different combinations all the time. There're 9 powers in total that you can use and they're all fun and can be combined together for great combos. Enemies variety is also nice, and many of them require certain tactics or usage of certain powers to be defeated.

The only problem the combat suffers from is that the game is very easy even on hard. I played the entire game on hard and I only suffered in very, very few fights, and nothing more. With the amount of powers, skills and abilities you keep getting as you progress, it's hard not to become overpowered in this game. Not to mention the healing items are abundant and very easy to get/buy. However, this doesn't hurt the fun you'll get from the hack and slash gameplay. I would have liked it if I can switch to other characters but it's not a big deal.

Progression is mostly linear, you can buy weapons or upgrade them in between every chapter. You can deepen your bond with your allies via bond episodes (similar to social links/confidents in Persona to be honest) which gives their powers a boost. These are all nice, but the RPG elements in the game overall is shallow and not that deep. The combat itself is deep, with ton of options and powers, but when it comes to building your character, skill trees and relationships, it's light on this area.

Environmental design is mostly solid and very good to look at, but it's very linear. Exploration is pretty limited and the game is mostly you moving from one combat scenario to the next. A little more open areas would have been nice. With that it's basically linear action game. Side quests are just your typical terrible fetish quests that JRPGs never seem to think of anything creative beyond it.

English voice acting was pretty meh. Not terrible, but I felt most of them were phoning it. Some did well but for the majority I really felt they weren't interested in this at all and just in it for the money, either that or they're not that experienced. A lot of dialogue came out pretty lifeless as if who's saying it is a robot and not a human. Don't know anything about the Japanese voice acting.

The graphics and character models are all superb which is a shame how it's wasted in still pictures rather than 3D cutscenes. The few cutscenes in the game were very good, but they're pretty rare as I said above.

Overall, this game might be worse for some fun with its combat or if you like anime JRPGs in general, but definitely not at full price. Get it for 20-30 dollars or something and you'll be able to forgive most of its faults. Anything more than that and you'll probably be disappointed with the whole package. Yes the combat is great, but there's more to a game than just that. I don't think you're missing anything by not playing this for example. It's a game that could have been a lot better than what it's if not for some pretty weird gaming design choices and awful writing.

Story : 3/10.

Gameplay : 7/10.

Graphics : 8/10.

Voice acting : 5/10.

Overall : 5/10.

If it were possible I would give this game a rating between "recommended" and "meh".

The graphics look great even on a low end pc. I absolutely loved the SAS, but the enemies were too easy so the SAS felt it was OP all the time. The story is catching and it was the main aspect of the game which kept me coming back to finish the game (at least Kasane's story line).

The big downer of the game was how its combat was implemented in the game. The enemies felt lifeless, boring and not at all intimidating. Game-play has lots of cool moves and nice variations of combos to perform along with the SAS. Psychokinesis attacks though, whenever I executed a PK attack (RT) it felt like its breaking the combat's rhythm, and it kinda sucked the fun out of it.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed my time playing the game very much. I tried playing Yuito's story-line but I couldn't go on because of the combat game-play and boring and repetitive enemies.

It's finally review time! [PS4]

Yuito Route: ~55 hours

Story: 3.5/5? It's an okay enough story: kinda twisty, at times dark, some really interesting concepts. My main problem with it is having some questions still unanswered that I shouldn't HAVE to play Kasane's route for. I'm still going to play hers, but these are things that are actually relevant to Yuito's route. Overall, though, the plot was made clear enough by the end. There's rebellion, saving the world, family tensions--bit of everything. I do feel that some events were not addressed adequately, like in a, "Oh, I blame you for this but I haven't actually acted any differently toward you until this scene when it's relevant again" way, but it wasn't any great detriment to the story in general.

The breakdown after the Prologue is Phase 01 --> Standby Phase 01 --> Phase 02 --> Standby Phase 02, and so on for 12 phases. The standby phases are where you interact with your characters in your hideout: do bond episodes, give them gifts, look around at their cute little areas where they display everything. This is also when you can (mostly) freely travel to any areas you've been to to grind or collect materials, grab quests, and...that's about it. Each standby phase unlocks weapon upgrades, new gifts, new costume attachments, new shop availability (like healing items you might have been picking up but couldn't buy/craft yet), and bonding episodes. I would typically give out all of the new gifts and do the bond episodes, and then go through a couple of areas for materials for attachments and gifts. Whenever you're ready to proceed, you go to the coffee table and say you want to rest for a bit.

Characters: I really enjoyed the majority of the cast. There were some characters that showed up for one scene and were never mentioned again, so I really hope there's more to them in Kasane's route because otherwise there was a lot of design effort into one in particular that we saw for three seconds. There were some party members that were just fine, and others that I adored. While there is some repetitive combat dialogue, I think hearing them (even the inactive ones) all the time while you're running around exploring and fighting makes you as the player feel a little closer to them. Luka is complicated but is easily one of my favorites. I love Kyoka. Yuito himself is actually an impressive main character to me in one major way: he advocates for himself. You know that "I'll sacrifice myself!" main character trait that is pretty overplayed? Well, our boy Yuito is the type to be like, "Mm, hey guys, can you help me figure out a way for us to not die?" When asshole Shiden is giving him shit, he's like, "Hey, you're being insulting. I'm outta here." Good boy, Yuito. In general, he reminds me a lot of Sorey from Tales of Zestiria. It's probably his appearance, too.

Environments: This is one thing that kind of lost points with me. The environments in the game are all really cool, innovative, interesting to explore, etc. I will give them that. Most are run-down roads/buildings with some overgrowth, a lot of debris for throwing, and monsters. Some are super futuristic and clean. But there was never really a full-on natural area (other than a mountain but that's all just snow) and that made me sad. It makes sense with the story, so I get why there never was, but I really love forests and such in games and thought one would be really beautiful in this game in particular.

Combat: Ah, the thing that can kill a gaming experience for me. There were ABSOLUTELY some frustrating parts with this game, namely some recurring Others (the monsters) that had ridiculous requirements to be able to damage, and some boss fights that I wouldn't actually call difficult at all, just kind of tedious and annoying. That being said, 95% of the time, I actually enjoyed fighting, and it didn't grow old. The combat isn't just "okay, this is an RPG, so there's got to be fighting"; it's a huge part of how the characters interact and grow close to one another, as they connect their powers and bond through their journey. It's plot-relevant in that way, so the game is quite combat heavy. Through your Brain Map (like the FFX sphere grid or something similar tamed way down) and bonding with allies, new combat abilities become available over time, so there's almost always something new to try out. Also, after playing through 3/4 of the game with your party of 5, it suddenly doubles, so it was a bit crazy trying out everything new at that point.

Bonding: I loved the bonding aspect of the game, and the fact that it's very clear as to what level your bond is with your party members. There's no guessing at who likes you most or how that will affect a scene or anything. It ties into combat, as I've stated, which is a good way to keep such a combat-heavy game from getting tedious or old. The shop, which is at every save point (and save points are placed quite generously--and heal you fully), offers new gift options at every new standby phase. It shows which character will accept which gift. If their portrait is lit up, they'll accept it; if it has a small pink heart, they like it; if it has a big red heart, they really like it. It also puts a check mark on their portrait if you have given them that gift. There's no guesswork, which was really nice. You can give repeat gifts with no consequence, too. The bond episodes themselves can be simple conversations between your character and the party member, or they could ask you to accompany them to an area where you'll have to do some combat. Sometimes it's a bit of both. Eventually a party bond level was also introduced and there were a few full-party bond episodes.

Costumes/Attachments: Okay, this was another aspect, like the environments, that lost some points. EVERYTHING IS RED. I know the game is called Scarlet Nexus but come onnnn. Everyone starts in the standard OSF black-with-some-red uniforms with their varying personalizations. I got the red version for everyone as part of the Digital Deluxe, and the "Audio" ones as a pre-order bonus. That has some browns and like rock-band style fur type shit but is still mostly red and black. The white version unlocks with the team bond level, but it's still got a lot of red. I really love skins/costumes/attachments, so this lack of variety was a huge bummer. All of the attachments were also red, black, and white. Eventually there's also a "luminous" version of everything that's like NEON PINK and BRIGHT YELLOW but it DOESN'T MATCH ANYTHING SO WHY WOULD I WANT IT. I kept waiting for more costumes and was disappointed. One of Luka's costumes has him in a yellow shirt under all of the black, so I ended up putting the luminous wings, feathery leg guards, and oni horn on him to make him my luminous eagle boy. It barely matched that and literally matched nothing else, and that's super annoying.

Quests: These are...mostly pointless. One of the trophies is to complete 30 quests (across both playthroughs) and I did like 20/34 of Yuito's so I'll just do some of Kasane's to get that and be done with it. You either get garbo items (there aren't a lot of items in the game to begin with), or attachments which aren't unique, and which you probably already made three Phases before that quest opened up. Some are simple item fetch quests, like, "I need two of these healing items that you can't craft/buy yet." Easy. Most of them have tedious requirements like "defeat this monster using a combo with this party member" meaning, the finishing blow. 90% of the time they were monsters that were already annoying to fight, because you can't hit them unless you teleport with Luka and get in a swipe before they hide away in a box that makes them invulnerable. Then you have to make sure you whittle their health down enough to finish them off with the required move/combo/finisher/whatever, and hope that your party members who spent the whole fight standing in one place getting blasted by oil didn't suddenly recover enough to steal the goddamn kill. Yeah, so, I can be a completionist about quests, but they're almost entirely useless in this game, so just do 15 in each route to get the trophy if you care about that, or just don't bother. You turn them in via the quest menu, so at least you don't have to go back to the quest-giver.

Other stuff: Save points being frequent was great. They completely heal you, as well. Every save point is also a shop. You can craft or buy at any time (you just can't give gifts unless you're in a standby phase). Never sell anything; there's no point and you don't really ever need the money. Craft everything. Most of the stuff can't even be bought. There's like one version of every attachment available to buy but you'll have to craft all of the other varieties. Every character has a new weapon available each standby phase, and that uses their previous weapon and a couple of other crafting materials, so you're not buying weapons and comparing stats and stuff. Everything is quite linear and streamlined so that you can focus on battling and story.

Trophy completion is currently around 60%. I should actually be able to platinum this just running through Kasane's route without doing anything special, as everything left is bonding stuff/quest completion in her route. I've only ever platinumed visual novels before, so that's cool, haha.

Overall experience with this was quite positive. I think it might be too linear for some, but it was kind of welcome and worked quite well with this concept. I hope Kasane's route fills in some gaps.

I'm going to do Kasane's as my New Game +. I wasn't going to originally, but I don't want to spend so much time crafting accessories and stuff. It will carry over my level and points to spend on the Brain Map, as well as items and everything. I already went through the challenge of the game once so I just want to see her story and the diverging events without all of the extra time on side stuff.

The one dumb thing is that, after finishing Yuito's route and the ending scenes and such, it has you create a clear save file. Okay, normal, but... You can then load that to open up the last several available quests and what looks like a final weapon upgrade for everyone, but you have to do those quests for a special material for each, and they're all those tedious specific monster-finisher quests, but with 2-3 each of TWO different Others. No thanks. Anything I do on that loaded save won't carry over unless I fight the final boss again and create a new clear save. It opened up a few new things in the shop to craft, too. This morning, I started Kasane's route from the clear save and when I got to the shop in the prologue, I did see some of the stuff, but I don't have crafting yet, so I don't know if ALL of that unlocked with the clear save. I don't want to play too far and find that it didn't and then have to go back and do more in Yuito's route, fight the boss again, and create a new clear save to carry it all over.

Final thoughts: Probably a 3.5/5. It's not perfect and I had some nitpicky complaints about it, but I really enjoyed my time with this game overall.

Edit to add more thoughts since finishing Kasane's route [7.13.2021]

Kasane's Route-Specific Stuff:

-The story was messy, way messier than Yuito's. I knew to expect "big reveal" stuff sooner, but the overall presentation of the story was nooootttt great, missing great chunks of storytelling that was present in Yuito's route, and just overall not a full story. The story is this game already has problems, but it was just terribly executed with her route, and makes it obvious that Yuito is the true protagonist. Definitely do not recommend playing her route first for this reason alone, but also because...

-Playing as Kasane was, for me, mostly miserable. She uses SIX KNIVES CONTROLLED BY HER PSYCHOKINESIS and she STILL MISSES CONSTANTLY. She's more suited for aerial combat for whatever reason (apparently) but fighting flying enemies was a pain in the ass because she missed constantly. Howwwww? I would be right on them doing nothinggg. Her movements are way more fluid and graceful than Yuito, but I hate that her strong attack is a backstep. She's weaker and has less defense, so even though I had already played through the game once at this point and knew how to fight everything, knew which powers were effective, knew how to use combo visions, etc., she was still getting WRECKED by monsters FORTY LEVELS LOWER in the early game (since this was NG+ and I started at level 60), and was barely doing damage to them. It was insanely frustrating. I'm sure there's more of a learning curve with her, and yeah I got more used to using her as I progressed, but it was never as fun or effective as fighting with Yuito. Maybe I just suck, and I admittedly don't play games with this sort of combat often, but honestly, I know I'm not that bad.

If I had chosen to play as Kasane first and had tried to struggle through this game without being overleveled...? I probably would have never finished this game.

Now for all of the questions that I still have because the story did not do a good job of answering them, or just created stupid plot points. I'm just going to put them all in spoiler tags:

1. Why the fuck is Karen--not quite the main antagonist, but eventually kind of is--doing all of this to save Alice, who was FUBUKI'S FIANCE, while Fubuki is like ENTIRELY UNBOTHERED BY IT ALL? This bothered me endlessly through both playthroughs. FUBUKI lost his fiancé, not stupid-ass Karen with his stupid-ass name, and yet Karen is the one off time-traveling a billion times and then erasing himself completely to "save" Alice. This makes no sense and I almost feel like it was a translation error. Sure, he can love his best friend's fiance, I guess, but Fubuki is always otherwise shown as a decent, kind man, and he somehow never acknowledges like any of this situation.

2. Karen "sacrificing himself" by erasing his existence is what brings Alice back, and everyone else in the world forgets him except the main party and Fubuki because they were there and attached via SAS for the time-travelling. This is just so stupid. It makes no sense. Why would that even need to be what has to happen? Why were all of his attempts to save her even failures? How hard was it to go back to the mission she got turned into an Other on, NOT do that mission, and be fucking done with it? Fuck. Bamco is becoming obsessed with someone sacrificing themselves for no reason and that's becoming one of the weakest parts about Tales games. I'm getting sick of those endings.

3. The endings. They're basically the same, which is fine. Kasane wants to go to the moon to help the people there now that the Extinction Belt is gone, and see how they've been faring for the past 2000 years. This is true in both endings. In Yuito's ending, he's going to retire soon because he's "going to lose his powers eventually." This goes against everything Yuito. It makes no sense. Also, Yuito 50 years in the future still had powers, so why the hell is he even stressing? In Kasane's route, he does NOT mention retiring; he just says he thinks he'll stick around the OSF for a while since he plans to straighten out the world while she works on the moon.

4. Yakumo Sumeragi. Okay, so Karen went back in time, killed Yakumo and took his place. Yakumo is Yuito's ancestor. After the final fight, Yuito thinks, "Does that make Karen my ancestor?" Unlikely, BUT, it does make one wonder, where the fuck was Yakumo's family? He obviously had one to begin the whole Sumeragi line on Earth. There was mention of his "personality changing" which we know is when Karen replaced him, but did his family never see his face again at that point? Was he already old, wife dead, kids grown? Like, how did any of that work out?

5. Karen meeting Yakumo-Karen. That scene still just...what? Shiden said, "None of this makes sense to me." Same.

I think there were other things that I can't remember now, and I think it's safe to say the story was fine overall, but there were definitely unanswered questions that should not be left to the anime (if that's what's happening, because I dunno, I haven't watched any of it) or something else, and could have been addressed organically in the game. It was poorly executed at times and I think they were trying too hard to include some things that did not need to be included, but the ideas themselves were good.

I would play a sequel, but after I go do some grinding to get the last trophy for finishing the Brain Map, I don't think I'll be revisiting this game. There's not really any post game and I don't see any replay value in it.

Playing Kasane's route--and hating playing as her--and seeing how the story was executed even more poorly there and didn't clear anything up made me lower my overall score on this.

STORY: 5/5 GAMEPLAY : 5/5 EXPLORATION: 3/5

This is one of the best JRPG of 2021. The combat and gameplay is fun. Story is also nice. The one that disappointed me was the Exploration. The world is not that big and the side quests are not that rewarding. The bond system was nice you can unlock game changing abilities if you manage to go to level 6. Overall great game. Definitely worth playing

Scarlet Nexus is t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶a̶t̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶y̶p̶e̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶ the latest game by Bandai Namco and produced by Keita Iizuka, known for also being the producer of Code Vein. While these two games are vastly different in what they try to accomplish, I believe Scarlet Nexus manages to be a huge improvement over Code Vein in every single regard, though it is still not without its issues. While I feel Scarlet Nexus absolutely nails its combat system, it falls just short in its messy storytelling. I won’t say anything of its English voice acting as I played with the Japanese voices.

Scarlet Nexus is an Action RPG that places great emphasis on the psionic abilities of its characters and the “Strong Arms System (SAS)”. Every character has a unique psionic ability that can range from pyrokinesis to invisibility. Using SAS, your main character is able to incorporate other character’s psionic abilities into yours. Pyrokinesis will coat your weapon in flames, invisibility will make you… invisible, teleportation will replace your dodge with a teleport and so forth. Using these abilities is crucial to your success in combat as some enemies are of course weak to specific abilities or at least made easier to handle. On top of health, most enemies also have a “Crush” gauge that depletes with damage but greatly depletes when you hit their weak point or topple them through psionic abilities. Depleting this gauge will allow you to use a finisher that will kill the enemy immediately and guarantee an item drop. Apart from SAS, you also have a skill tree to invest points in with upgrades that range from extending your basic combo, mid air dash/combos, base attack increase, etc. If there’s one thing I don’t like about the skill tree is that some of its upgrades are basic QOL that shouldn’t really be locked behind a skill tree, such as recovery or a mid air dash. It’s not a big deal but you also have other things such as an upgrade that skips item usage animation which is a bit… odd and a waste of a slot in the tree in my opinion. Using an item is already really fast so I don’t really get the reasoning behind it. To further add on to the combat, bonds between you and your party members will also unlock new abilities and upgrades such as them blocking a hit for you, calling them in for a powerful attack, and additional effects to their unique psionic ability. While combat is initially slow as you will lack most of these upgrades, eventually you’ll have so much to play with that it can even be overwhelming at times. At one point you’ll have eight psionic abilities to play with and up to four you can activate at the same time. It gets to the point where I even sometimes forgot my character had his own psionic ability that I barely used once I had a full party. When everything comes together, combat becomes so incredibly fun and flashy as you’re constantly switching in and out of psionic abilities, performing finishers, zooming between enemies, and calling your allies for extra attacks. This game gives you so many tools and it lets you and encourages you to use them all as much as possible and this is something I wish so many games would do. The gameplay loop is very simple; Story, dungeons, story, intermission where you get to bond with characters, repeat. Nothing special which is fine as the game really shines with its combat and ideally you get to it as often as possible.

Now… the story. I’ve said it numerous times before that story is normally the least of my concerns in most games but the way this game handles its story was actually very annoying for the first eight or so hours of the game. Immediately I want to say that having the story be split up between two selectable protagonists was a terrible mistake. The reason for this is that the game’s story’s events happen and progress in such a way that will constantly leave you confused because you will be lacking information from the other character’s story. Events will start happening and move at such a fast pace without explaining ANYTHING and it honestly made me mad at times. On top of that, the game tries to incorporate a few too many ideas at the start and it feels messy. Each of these ideas could easily be their own story but they're all eventually just dropped.

SPOILERS FOR STORY BELOW SKIP IF YOU DONT WANT SPOILERS

As Yuito, you and your team will have a conflict with Kasane, the second protagonist, and her team but they will not explain why the conflict is happening or why they’re doing the things they are. It honestly gets so ridiculous and even a bit funny when part of the dialogue is Yuito explicitly asking “We literally don’t know anything so why don’t you tell us instead of attacking us on sight every time?” and no one says anything and they just run away. It boggles me when a game calls out its own storytelling like that as if it’ll fix the issue. The first 8-10 hours of the game are like this and just completely nonsensical and dumb. Eventually when Kasane and her team join you the story stabilizes as this is the point where you’ll have both protagonists together and the story isn’t split up anymore. As for the story itself, as I said before, Scarlet Nexus tries to incorporate multiple ideas at once and it comes out a little convoluted, dumb, and with no sense of direction. The game immediately does this thing where it shows how the media portrays the OSF, the organization that specializes in hunting Others, the main enemies of the game, as sport celebrities that are revered by the people. The media’s drones, aptly named the Crows, constantly follows OSF members and broadcast their missions and hunts very persistently, almost comically downplaying the severity of the Others, and more importantly have decided to latch onto Yuito the rookie with high expectations. This plot point goes nowhere and is quickly dropped. The next is the reveal that people can be made into Others through unknown means and one of your team members is made into an Other. However, no one else important will ever become an Other after this which is in my opinion a lot of wasted potential. Next, there is suddenly a rebellion that splits the OSF into two sides and you follow whichever protagonist you picked and this is kinda where it settles for a while. Eventually there is time travel involved, a third faction, and the moon. It’s… messy. Once both protagonists are together things will at least be explained to you and it’ll be pretty straightforward from there. A simple but solid story once it decides to settle on an idea and reaches a satisfying conclusion. God the first ten hours though… absolutely terrible.

SPOILERS END

The last thing I want to talk about is the characters. They’re all about as tropey as anime can get which isn’t really a surprise. You have your super shy girl, the big sister/mom character, the dude who is uptight/snobby and really hates you but will eventually warm up to you, etc. However, I’m generally not concerned about how much a character defines its trope so much as how these characters interact with each other and I feel Scarlet Nexus did well on this point. I personally liked all the characters and their progression throughout the story and during their bonding events. One of my favorite parts of the game is your hideout, the place where your party members hang out and where you can give them gifts and see their bonding episodes during intermissions. While the bonding episodes are nice and some even sweet, what I really love is how each member has their own section in the hideout where they display their stuff and the gifts you give them. Most gifts are unique to each character and will provide unique dialogue which, while small, adds to their character significantly as opposed to just saying “Thanks”. By the end of the game, the hideout will be packed with all the gifts of every character along with extra gifts they themselves will give your character and it adds so much to everyone. Depending on the gift, you’ll even see characters interacting with it. One of the gifts you can give will allow a character to put up a picture of her sister which honestly hits quite hard considering the story. Another gift is a game console and you’ll see two of the characters playing with it together, or a punching bag that one of the characters uses. The game also has team bonding events where multiple characters are involved though they’re few. I wish there were way more team bonding events because seeing more everyday interactions outside of the characters fighting for their lives is very endearing. In the end, I was honestly a bit sad and moved when I took a final look around the hideout before heading off to fight the final boss and seeing just how much there was all over the place. To the characters, this would be proof that at one point they were all together and fighting for the same cause. One more thing I want to add that has no relevance to the game and it’s because my brain has been rotted by growing up on watching/reading romances is that if you’re going to add bonding events then please let me see some of the characters find happiness with each other or on their own. Some of these characters’ back stories I would love to see a conclusion on or see how they move forward after everything is over. If you won’t give me the choice then at least let the childhood friend who very much has a crush on Yuito achieve her goal or attain closure. That’s just me though.

Despite my grievances with the story, Scarlet Nexus is a great game that absolutely shines on its combat. While I still wish you could play as the other characters, the combat works in such a way that you’re basically already using most characters, whether it be through their abilities or calling them in for attacks. Characters, while being walking tropes, are developed very satisfyingly and I grew quite attached to them by the end. I honestly hope we get to see more games of this nature by Keita Iizuka in the future and I highly recommend this game as a fan of action rpgs and especially if you don’t mind anime and all its tropes and nonsense that may come with it.

Alright, time for first thoughts now that I've got ~5.5 hours on this! [Yuito Route]

Solid recommend so far.

The battles are fun--more so than the demo. To explain, the demo gave you more abilities and party members than you actually start with, introduced different Others than you see at this point, and, I feel, ramped up the difficulty at least a bit. While you still need to actively pay attention to what you're fighting and how you're fighting it, I'm definitely more comfortable with it as I've been eased into the game than I was being tossed into the demo with so many abilities at my disposal.

The characters are all pretty interesting. You do have your usual cliché characters, but so far they're all pretty standout and I already have a few favorites. The bonding scenes are cool, too. I dunno if there are going to be any actual "choices" in these at some point to affect your bond level, but so far, one was just dialogue and another was going through an area and fighting alongside someone. A higher bond level grants new abilities when you team up with that character. So that's neat.

The voice acting is...okay. I would prefer to be playing in Japanese, but there is WAY too much going on visually with so much digitalization in the backgrounds, the fights, etc., that trying to read the tiny text windows on the screen when your party talks to you is nearly impossible. I learned as much during the demo so I didn't even bother trying to start the full game in Japanese. [But like...there's a character named Wataru and they pronounce it "Wadder-oo" and it's so painful every time, jesus. And Arashi is "Air-uh-she." How is this still happening?]

It is like a Tales game in a number of ways; I will allow that comparison. Part of it is the outfit customization/attachments, part of it is the the characters themselves, and a few other little things. But it's also very much its own style of game; I think it's just safe to say that a Tales fan like myself would likely enjoy it. The music is really solid, too. Some of the tracks give me so many different vibes at once--the main city theme has some record scratching but also has some of the jazzy vibes of FFX-2 tunes and maybe a little FFXIII, Phantasy Star, and Sonic mixed in. I don't even know how to describe it. (It's Suoh City, if you look up the OST.)

I'm honestly enjoying this so much. There hasn't been a ton of story yet, but the way that the OSF organization has been introduced has been pretty seamless, and since you're a new recruit, the way that things are slowly being explained feels pretty organic.

Edit to add: I was debating whether to play through Yuito's route and then Kasane's, or play them concurrently and switch back and forth after each chapter. I decided to just do Yuito's first.

Fiiinally starting this up! Yeeeee!!

(I wasn't feeling great earlier. I finally went to the doctor about my frequent headaches back in May and have been on a preventative medication that has actually done wonders for my sleep--so that I'm not waking up constantly and actually get a restful sleep at night--and has kept me from getting headaches so often; however, I've had a headache on and off for three days now, so this morning I tried the abortive pill that I was prescribed to immediately kill a bad headache, which I haven't had to try so far. It was like I took a pill and got the flu. Felt achey and weak all day, so when I got home I tried to rest but now the headache is back so I give up. I think it's the rain. And Florida. It's hot. I'm pale and like the cold. I need pizza.)

ANYWAY. Some first thoughts probably tomorrow!

I decided to go ahead and preorder the Digital Deluxe yesterday.

Why do I do this to myself?

Honestly, the demo did a fantastic job of showing what the combat will (eventually) look like, but...not much else. I had no idea how story-driven the game was going to be, which is an important factor to me. I also had no idea what the rest of the gameplay was like. This isn't the kind of combat system that I LOVE, but it's not one of the many that I'd hate, if that makes sense. It seems like something I could eventually get the hang of and enjoy. So I was actually curious about the rest of it.

Found a video where a guy had been able to play a few hours into the actual game, and he called it a "mainline Tales game in all but name." That's a preeeetty strong claim, considering that's my favorite series, but it kept me watching. (There were also a number of Tales dev team folks working on this, so.) It looks pretty story-driven, there's a bond system with your party members, there are costumes and attachments (which I'm a sucker for and which is a huge part of why I pre-ordered and got the deluxe version with all the bonuses), and overall, it just looks like something I'm gonna dig.

I do still need to finish DQXI... I finally played this weekend after not playing for like three weeks. I've been teaching summer school and the first week and a half was a nightmare, so I've been too beat to do much else after work other than play some Animal Crossing and read. Gettin' that extra money for gamin', I guess.

[Demo]

I was right: Yuito is easier to use.

That could be because I had already used Kasane yesterday and was a little more familiar with it all (controls and psychokinesis are the same for both--they just use different weapons). However, I felt like maybe he moved a little more fluidly? I dunno.

His team was definitely more useful. The abilities that you can use when you combine with teammates were just overall more effective and efficient. I didn't feel that way with Kasane. I was also getting wrecked by those plant things when I was playing as Kasane and never did beat them (thankfully they were just in a side area). There were a couple of challenging foes in Yuito's route but not so challenging that it was pissing me off like those plants.

Playing in English probably also helped because I wasn't missing half of the dialogue and such. Might give her route another shot and see how it goes a second time around. I'm overall just not great at these kinds of games. But we'll see.

This didn't really tell me much as far as how the story is going to be. So I still have no idea if I want to drop money on it.

I haven't been looking into this game at all for whatever reason (I guess it's mostly that I just expect a lot of these JRPGs to play a certain way, meaning a way I don't like), but decided to download the demo after work. I played through Kasane's route.

I'm reeeeeeeally picky about battle systems. It's 90% of the reason that I'll not pick up a game at all, or why I'll drop one. This is def not my favorite, but I think it might be tolerable once I get used to it. I'll have to try Yuito's route to see for sure, but I have a feeling Kasane's probably the more difficult character to use.

If I do pick up the game, I'll likely have to play it with the English dub, begrudgingly. There was so much shit happening at once that I missed 75% of what the other characters were popping up and saying while I was running around trying to throw trucks at monsters with my mind and not get wrecked by a stupid plant blasting me with water for half my health but closing itself into a box every time I tried to attack it back.

It'll definitely take some more play time to get the controls and such down, but it seems comprehensive enough.

Just got through the demo and thinking this game seems pretty neat. One of those combo-based action games that flows really well when you get the hang of stringing attacks together.

Besides the combat though... I don't know. The cut scenes are these still shots with talking heads that are barely animated. I guess to give it a comic book / manga style or something? It doesn't work for me, maybe other people dig it though.

Anyone else give it a shot yet?