Beast of Reincarnation Exposes Game Freak’s Pokémon Trap

With Beast of Reincarnation, Game Freak faces the one burden it can’t dodge: proving that the studio behind Pokémon has a voice when it isn’t speaking through pocket monsters. Based on Andrew Webster’s review at The Verge, the answer is frustrating. Game Freak has made a slick action game, but not yet a distinctive one.

That matters because Beast of Reincarnation isn’t interesting just as another postapocalyptic action RPG. It’s interesting because of who made it. Game Freak has spent decades shipping mainline Pokémon games with extraordinary regularity, while occasionally slipping out stranger projects like Tembo the Badass Elephant, Drill Dozer, and HarmoKnight. Those games suggested a studio with more odd ideas than its dominant franchise could absorb.

Here, though, the studio’s bid for blockbuster seriousness seems too careful. The disappointment isn’t that Game Freak tried to leave Pokémon behind. It’s that Beast of Reincarnation often sounds like it left Pokémon behind only to walk straight into someone else’s design vocabulary.

Beast of Reincarnation enters the harshest possible spotlight

The scrutiny is brutal in a useful way. A major review forces the question that previews can avoid: does this new Game Freak project stand on its own?

The setup has promise. Beast of Reincarnation presents a postapocalyptic action RPG built around a dangerous world, a wandering protagonist, and a bond with a powerful companion. The player controls Emma, whose journey gives the game its motion, escalation, and reason to keep pushing toward the next threat.

That’s workable action game fuel. The Verge also credits the combat as the game’s strongest feature, especially once Emma’s plant-like hair powers open up. She can cross gaps, grapple to high places, zip through fights, attack from above, and coordinate with her giant magical dog companion.

The problem is what surrounds that combat. Mystery, used well, creates gravity. In Webster’s account, Beast of Reincarnation stretches mystery until it becomes fog. The world, Emma, her companions, the dog, and the wandering fighters all arrive wrapped in unanswered questions. The review says the game hides explanations of key elements in a tutorial menu and that major answers are “mostly underwhelming.”

That’s not a lore problem. It’s a voice problem.

Game Freak’s oddball history made this experiment more exciting than another Pokémon spin

Game Freak has earned curiosity because its non-Pokémon projects have been strange, not because they were massive. A militarized elephant action game. Horse racing crossed with cards. Rhythm experiments. These aren’t safe pitches in the abstract. They’re proof that the studio can think sideways.

That history is why Beast of Reincarnation should feel like a release valve. Instead, according to the review, it often feels weighed down by familiar modern action game language.

A useful comparison:

The best detail in Beast of Reincarnation may be the one most clearly connected to Game Freak’s old strengths: the bond between Emma and her dog companion, named Koo in GamesRadar’s reporting. Director Kota Furushima told DenFamiNicoGamer, translated by GamesRadar+, that silence between the two was central to the game’s design.

“The truth is that it's incredibly important that there's no talking,” he says. “When you don't speak, you gain something else. We wanted the game to give you a certain feeling, and that wouldn't happen if talking had benefits over keeping quiet.”

That’s the Game Freak idea worth chasing. A relationship built through play, not exposition. The issue, based on The Verge’s review, is that the rest of the game doesn’t sound as committed to that specificity.

Beast of Reincarnation gets trapped in the modern action game template

The harshest read from The Verge is that Beast of Reincarnation keeps reminding you of other things. Not through one single lifted idea, but through the broader feeling that its story, encounters, base systems, and progression often sit inside a familiar modern action game frame.

That impression is dangerous for a new game’s identity. Not because influence is forbidden. Games always speak to other games. But when too many major elements feel broadly recognizable, the player’s mind can drift away from the work in front of them.

The review also points to undercooked systems: food growing, weapon upgrades, straightforward level design, simple platforming, and a skill tree that is literally a tree. Some of that may be charming in isolation. Together, it suggests a game that has ideas but doesn’t sharpen enough of them.

For Beast of Reincarnation, the center should be Emma, Koo, silence, survival, and the strange physicality of its combat. Too often, the review suggests, the center is closer to “remember that other kind of game?”

The Pokémon shadow makes every Game Freak experiment a referendum

Game Freak faces a rare burden. Any original project it makes will be judged against Pokémon, even when the comparison is unfair.

That shadow cuts both ways. Pokémon gives Game Freak the platform to attempt something like Beast of Reincarnation. It also makes every experiment feel like a statement about what the studio is without its most famous creatures. A smaller developer might be praised simply for competent combat and mood. Game Freak doesn’t get that clean slate.

The irony is that the most promising parts of Beast appear to come from Pokémon’s deepest design lesson, not its surface traits. Furushima’s comments about building relationships without dialogue point directly to the studio’s long experience with partnership mechanics. Game Freak doesn’t need to copy Pokémon to escape it. It needs to translate what Pokémon taught it into a form that only this game can own.

That’s why the derivative feeling hurts. If comparisons to Pokémon were inevitable, Beast of Reincarnation needed an unmistakable creative signature. A giant magical dog and plant-hair traversal are a start. They aren’t enough if the world, bosses, base, progression, and story rhythms keep leaning on familiar authority from elsewhere.

A cautious first swing is understandable, but caution isn’t memorable

The fair defense is strong. Building a new action game is hard. A studio associated so closely with turn-based monster collecting doesn’t need to reinvent action design on its first major swing into this tone and scale. Familiar systems can orient players quickly. They can lower friction. They can let the team focus on execution.

The Verge’s review gives real credit where it’s due. Combat eventually allows “freedom and creativity.” The sound and visuals create an “incredible sense of melancholic moodiness.” Those are not minor wins. They show craft.

But caution can explain a conservative game without making it compelling. A new IP needs risk baked into its identity. Not chaos. Risk. A rule, relationship, combat structure, or world logic that could not be mistaken for another studio’s work.

Game Freak already has hints of that here. Emma’s hair is weird. Koo’s silence is meaningful. The studio should push those features harder, not bury them beneath familiar scaffolding.

Game Freak’s next choice is whether to get stranger

The practical takeaway is simple: Beast of Reincarnation should not be treated as proof that Game Freak needs to retreat to Pokémon. It should be treated as evidence that leaving Pokémon is only step one.

The next step is sharper authorship.

Game Freak should carry forward the things it knows better than most studios: readable systems, memorable creatures, companion bonds, progression loops that invite attachment. It should not confuse maturity with grayness, or ambition with imitation. If Beast has a future, the path isn’t to become a better collage of prestige action games. It’s to become less embarrassed by its own weirdest ideas.

Escaping Pokémon is a start. Game Freak’s harder task is proving that its next great idea can speak loudly enough without Pikachu in the room.

The Bottom Line

• Beast of Reincarnation tests whether Game Freak can define itself beyond Pokémon.
• The review suggests the studio’s action-game craft is improving, but its identity still feels borrowed.
• For players, the game may be more notable as a studio experiment than as a standout RPG.