Scarlet Nexus is a hack-and-slash, JRPG developed and published by Bandai Namco, the studio behind the popular “Tales of …” series. Scarlet Nexus was released in June of 2021 on Steam. This game has sold more than 3M digital copies on Xbox as per the Windows Central. This game offers and expansive JRPG experience through two different gameplays played by the perspective of female character Kasane, and male character Yuito. Scarlet Nexus is not an open world game, but it offers a hub-based world that let you explore the unlocked locations from it. The story is progressed through combat, and in-between the combat you exchange gifts with you friends and eventually improve your relationship with them.
Scarlet Nexus is available at the full price of ₹1,999, but you can pick up at sale for as low as ₹319 on sale.
I am writing this Scarlet Nexus review after spending 27 hours, and completing one of the two endings this game has to offer: Kasane’s gameplay. My review is going to lean heavily on the overall experience, talking about whether I liked this game or not. I will mainly talk about the elements of this game rather than the story since its story is easier to spoil. Infact, I am omitting the story section and will add some details when I need to in between the other aspects of the game.
What is Scarlet Nexus
Scarlet Nexus sets in a futuristic city that is under attack by the extra-territal enemies, that are called “others”. You can play as one of the two playable characters, both comes with their unique storyline, the exist in the same timeline. As a part of OSF (Other Suppression Force), your job is to eliminate the “others”. By the middle of the game, you disband from the OSF and start taking your own adventures against the others as well as the corrupter corporations and rogue OSF agents. You fight as a part of the team curated by the OSF. Each character has their unique roaster of teammates, that let you utilize their abilities in combats as well provide kinship throughout the story. For example: Kasane can use Arashi’s ability to move at supersonic speed, eventually slowing down the time.
This is an interesting new game IP and wasn’t a part of any existing media (anime) or earlier game; much like Code Vein, a souls like anime get published and developed by Bandai Namco itself. However, they aired an Anime for this game during July – December of 2021. The intention must be to promote the IP. Ever since, we have not seen any sign of sequel or new game set on the same universe, Code Vein sequel is yet to be released, and their official steam listing is live. The anime is unofficially available on YouTube with English subtitles.
Seems like, despite the 2M copies sold on Xbox, it really didn’t get that much of attention they were hoping for. It is considered as the underrated gem among the Anime games. It will clear to you why once I dive deeper in details.
Since, I have played with Kasane so far, I am going to talk about the gameplay and combat mechanics from her perspective. Being said, I am going to start this review by first exploring the combat mechanics of this game. It is important here, since the overall game is designed around it.
Scarlet Nexus Combat Overview
Basic Combat System
Combat in Scarlet Nexus dive deeper than any other RPG I have ever played. The two different characters offers you a varying combat mechanic provided by their weapon of choice. While Kasane use throwing knives to fight against enemies, Yuito uses his sword. This applies to both the normal attack and dodge attack. Besides the basic combat, both of your characters have the psionic ability, Psychokinesis. With the help of psychokinesis, you can assault your enemy by mentally pulling an object from the environment.
Psychokinesis comes in two variants, varying in the damage they make:
- Your basic psychokinesis (triggered by holding RT) let you pick an object varying from a bench to a car and assault your enemy with it.
- Your special kinesis (triggered by holding LT when available) will pick a much heavier object, a crane or a bulldozer and trigger a cinematic while attacking your enemy with it, followed by quick time event(s).
Both of these kinesis attacks rely on your “PK gauge” that fills with the damage you made to the enemy using your basic attacks and SAS attacks.
Enhanced Combat
Speaking of SAS attacks, they are the psionic abilities that you borrow from your friends using SAS (Struggle arms system) for a limited time. They come with their own gauges that can be filled with the time passed as well using a SAS refill drink if you are in hurry. There are 4 initial psionic abilities available in the starting of the game, that increase to 8 as you progress through the story. With progression, your ability to stack psionic also increases. The maximum you can stack is up to four abilities at once. While it sounds like an additional combat mechanic, your battle relies heavily on psionic abilities borrowed from your friends.
Speaking of your friends (or team-mates), you will never be left alone by them. You can make a team of up to 2 members besides you. The remaining team will not engage in combat with you. They appear in combat from time to time though. Hitting a certain bonding level with a character can make them appear in combat: to either help you dodge any attack, or they perform a special attack. Or you can bring them up for a combo by holding down the LB and pressing B/Y/A/X or activate a SAS chain combo by holding LB and pressing B Y A X in sequence. I figure this out very late in the game though, and it wasn’t really helpful until then.
Brain Drive & Brain Field
Besides all of these, you have a brain meter that fills with combats. Once it fills up, it activates brain drive that increases your speed and make your attack do more damage. You can also activate a very oppressive mechanic called Brain field that throw you, your mates and enemies in an arena with unlimited psychokinesis. Obviously, it’s very limited and it will hurt your character, but it gives you too much power to defeat or weaken any main bosses.
And off course, most of your combat are upgradable, either through bonding or a skill-tree that purposefully called Brain-map.
All of these combat mechanics when put together, will give you the most solid and unique gameplay that you might never had in any other games. But hey, let’s talk about the elephant in the room that holding it back. Because this game, despite with this exceptionally good combat system, have some exceptional flaws.
Gameplay Loop
As I have already mentioned the biggest highlight of this game, combat system. Let’s talk about the Gameplay Loop. Allow me to divide this section in two parts: the first is your bonding game, and the second is story progression through dungeon crawling.
Bonding with Team-Mates
Dungeon crawling progress the story and divided into phases, in between the phases, you will take rest your hideout. You will be provided with a hideout once you finish the phase 1. Your hideout is divided in living room, kitchen, and a gym. You will be followed by a save point agent, “Satori the Archivist” in dungeons as well as your hideout, that let save your progress and make transactions: buy gifts and combat devices or sell and exchange collectibles.
Hideout is a place to relax and chill with your friends, you can exchange gifts and have bonding episodes with them. Every bonding episode will reveal more about you and your friends and offers you SAS upgrades. Bonding is required at a certain limit, and the game may soft-lock you at a certain point unless you bond with friends. Every gift you receive or give populate in the hideout.
You can also do training mission to improve your skill through the hideout. And this is pretty much it about it, if I skipped something deliberately, consider it an optional side activity.
Once you done resting, the second part of the gameplay is 🎊 PLAYING THE GAME 🎊.
Dungeon Crawling
With one of the most unique combat mechanic available at your disposal, you are going to get the best of the best combat in the history of the JRPG, right?
Well, kind off. This is a hidden gem for a reason.
The other half is combat loop. I am using the word dungeon on purpose here, cause personally speaking, many of these locations feels like dungeons. They are very linear despite having many branches, filled with the enemies on every nook and turn. There are collectibles that aids you in combat and the collectible that you can exchange with Satori for unlocking outfits and wearable items, more on that later.
Battles
Bandai Namco has designed some of the most unique looking enemies, or “others”, but they all feel same most of the time. Not just that, you are attacking the same enemy repeatedly in every combat opportunity. Not just that, once you clear one battle, the next battle is going to utilize the same enemy again. Once you clear one set of enemies, you are going to meet the same enemy again. This game suffers from repetition. And remember, this is not randomized, they are all scripted. They could have done some variations, but it seems they didn’t and many of your dungeons will populate more or less the same enemies again and again.
The boss fights are unique, but stale pretty quickly due to repetition. Once you learn their pattern, you have to repeat the process until you defeat them. They give you a gimmick as they throw some new tactics after their health dropped to certain points, in reality they pick the new set of combos they are going to repeat. When they are close to their demise, they pull all their previous used attack in sequence. And this is true for every single one of them. The AI is pretty weak and don’t learn from you in any way, in fact, they don’t try to go out of the box to defeat you even once your health dropped to critical levels.
Dungeons
The same repetition is seen on dungeons as well. Many of your uniquely crafter level going to repeat. Not just that, some of them looks pretty cool with the cyberpunk or brutalist design but some of them are rather mundane. Few of them comes with puzzle that are extremely boring; some of them are roadblock in your progression while some are holding your collectibles. Allow me to talk about my favorite levels: Seiran research facility, a mansion like facility with huge doors, large furniture that makes you look tiny in front of them. Togetsu research facility is a flashing point in the story, and the level is crafted with care. And the entirety of level 12 with its eerie atmosphere filled with cyberpunk infrastructure that keep me hooked.
But in contrast to that, you have boring looking levels like Suoh city that has mundane streets where you meet your foes. And the old OSF hospitals with unlockable doors, I’d say, it is one of the lamest looking levels in the entire game, on top of that you have sepia filter on it for some reason that makes it even more dull.
Also, it’s important for me to mention that I played most of the game on Hard setting and until the very last level I switched the difficulty to normal. Not because the game is too hard or something, in contrast to that, the game was pretty easy on hard difficulty. The reason is the overall experience itself which I will talk in detail in the next section of this Scarlet Nexus Review.
The Flawed Gameplay
Gameplay is one thing and gameplay experience is another. Before buying this game, I played the demo for a while to understood what this game has in store for me. I loved the game and instantly bought it after completing the demo. Thankfully, the game pulls your demo’s save in the full game.
A Little About the Story
I enjoyed the game and tried to put my foot in the story, emphasis on tried. There are so many moving parts thrown at you with big name that makes it harder to grasp the story. I mean a lot is happening in a linear game that you find it difficult which is the main plot, and which is a backdrop. Spoiler alert, the rivalry between the two cities takes the precedence in the early hours then it takes the backseat. The new plot adds and obsoletes the old one (the BABE revealing), the secrets and motives of the characters revealed throughout the story, but they also become obsolete because they changed their world view already and it doesn’t even matter anymore (Kyoka and Kagero for instance).
Kasane lost her sister pretty early in the game, this had been a huge deal in the first half of the gameplay, in the second half it is mentioned once at the very end, and even in the mention is not directed towards her.
By the end, none of these matters except the main plot which is destroying the Kunard Gate: a portal to a different dimension that allowing “others” to into our planet. On-paper it sounds good: you have a main plot that dwarfs any other plot, any complaint you have with your friends can take a rest. But it is not executed well.
Scarlet Nexus Dialog System
On top of that you have the awful dialogs. Some people may not like the art style they have chosen for their cinematics, the visual novel like frames where the characters avatar pops-in when they have something to say. No, that is fine for me. What not acceptable is their unnecessary one-liners. Character often makes a point and repeats it to the eternity, until one of them conclude it for them.
“Even if he goes back the past, it doesn’t necessarily mean X will be saved. The future is always uncertain.”
“So, he’s going to keep jumping through time until X is saved?”
“Wait…. he time travelled after that, right? But X is still dead at this time.”
“He went back to the past, but history hasn’t changed.
These four lines were dropped by four different characters. You have to torture yourself to watch characters forcing themselves to speak lines that make little to no-sense.
Besides the god-awful dialogs, we have the awful Lip-sync as well.
Repeated Enemies and Overstayed Levels
Apart from that, solid combat system that suffers by the repeated gameplay loop and some boring levels is still my main gripe. I could avoid the story, but not the gameplay loop. It was too boring that I can’t even play it on a podcast session. That I pretty much avoided since I played this game with my full attention.
Last but not the least, the length of the levels. The level in the early game was fine, doesn’t took much of my time and ends pretty well, leaving me satisfied. There were some levels that were extremely boring, but I have already mentioned them.
The ending levels were just long. It’s not that they jumped the difficulty or something, the just put so many enemies that take so much of your time. Big enemies with their multiple clonse, and once you deal with one set of cloned enemies, the other same set appears to fight with you. Another set of enemies appears alongside at some locations. Their patterns, well off-course, predictable, but they keep coming in numbers, ate so much of my time. All in all, the ending levels overstayed their welcome. At some point I felt like I was done with the level, but only to realize that couple of more sub-levels left. The 10th and 12th mission was the perfect example of it. Overly boring long, bring some plot point, but are stretched to death.
The Final Battle
Now let me talk about the final battle, avoiding any potential spoiler. The last boss fight was, well, predictable as usual. It was unique to begin with, but then it takes full cycle and repeat the same again, until you defeat the boss. Once he gets defeated, the other set of fight begin, once he gets defeated again, the other set begins where you utilize your SAS combos to bring you friends attack the boss. Then the cut-scence started, kept me wondering that the boss has been defeated yet or the game will throw another battle on me. Luckly, the boss got defeated. And the game was over then. Credits rolled.
Another cutscene started again leaving you with an objective to approach all 8 team members to push the A button repeatedly. The conversation was maybe designed to bring new story on the surface, but it never happened (at least till yet). Retrospectively, they were meaningless, they added nothing new to the story, they bring some old character tropes that was established throughout the game. I respected the game and follow along for all of them. To reach the final conclusion.
Thankfully, there wasn’t anything mo… oh wait, I have just finished the first part of the story, we have Yuito story left. Oh Boy!
Anyway, we saw the last animation of Yuito and Kasane posing for the menu screen. At least I loved that.
Before I drop the conclusion, I would like to drop something this game executed pretty well as compared to many other games.
Photo Mode
This game offers one of the most accessible photo mode features in the gaming history. Not just a photo mode, but a photo mode that actually saves a picture in your computer, Tales or Arise can’t do that even after getting released 2 and a half months later. You can enable photo mode pretty much everywhere with LB + D Pad Up, hide the UI with X, and take a screenshot with SELECT. Now off course its rather simplistic and only allows couple of editing option, but I would rather have accessible photo mode then none. Also, the camera is not pivoted around the character, you can move it freely till a certain limit off-course.
The rendering, however, is not up to the mark. Screenshot gets sharper to the extent they lose some quality. So, it’s up to you to choose photo mode over steam screenshot shortcut. Either way, you will get so many opportunities to take screenshot thanks to the level designs.
Conclusion
Look, it may sound like I was trying to discourage you from buying this game, but I wasn’t. This game had something unique to offer in the shape of combat that I did enjoy when the game wasn’t trying to throw the repeated sequences of fight. Other than that, I did enjoy the bonding episodes, and the side-plot that every character had. I kind of thankful that I picked Kasane, not just because of her, but I found the roaster she came with was interesting. I wasn’t expanding on the story aspect of this game since my main intentions here were to create a foundation of how the game works, its positives and its flaws.
Story in itself was confusing and didn’t really hold me up till the mid game. The characters dialogs sounds forced, lip-sync issues, and the meaningless conversation was painful. But something keeps bringing me back to the game, in fact, I reinstalled this game many times and finally put it to its end. Anyway, I want to hear your experience of this game, please let me know in the comments.
I will be back with the another game review, till then, have a great day!
Leave a Reply