Beast of Reincarnation PS5 Review: Great Parries, Costly Stutters

Game Freak’s move into a bleak, overgrown future Japan gave me one clear reason to pay attention: Beast of Reincarnation builds its entire identity around the sound of a perfectly timed parry. I guided 18-year-old Blightborn Emma through ruined forests and abandoned structures, her plant-infused hair snapping into blades, whips, and traversal lines while Koo, her enormous wolf companion, tore into anything that threatened us. When the game locked me into a brutal Nushi duel and demanded that I learn a boss’s rhythm, I had a fantastic time. When it asked me to jog through another washed-out zone, watch another flat cutscene, or parry through a sudden hitch, I felt the ambition sag.

I finished Beast of Reincarnation impressed by its combat and frustrated by almost everything that surrounds it. The game has the bones of a great action RPG: responsive controls, generous parry timing, aggressive boss design, strong traversal tools, and a wolf companion who feels like a useful partner rather than decorative AI. On PS5, though, uneven performance turns into a genuine design problem because this game asks me to react to animation timing with precision. I recommend it to players who crave boss-focused parry combat, but I would wait for patches before paying full price unless that specific combat loop is already irresistible.

Key takeaways

• I loved Emma’s parry-first combat, which makes posture pressure and counters far more important than passive defense.
• I found the Nushi fights to be the game’s best content, with multi-phase patterns, sharp audio cues, and satisfying stagger payoffs.
• I appreciated the adjustable difficulty settings, especially the options that soften incoming damage and widen parry leniency.
• I grew tired of repetitive zones, familiar enemy groups, and a chapter structure that keeps returning to the same basic rhythm.
• I found PS5 Performance mode’s frame drops and streaming stutters especially aggravating during traversal and demanding boss attacks.
• I recommend waiting for performance improvements unless parry-heavy action games sit at the very top of a player’s wishlist.

Emma and Koo carry a combat system built on confidence

Emma’s core problem is literal: the Blight has fused her body with plant life, leaving her with living vine hair and a place in a dying world that never feels secure. I liked that setup because the game puts its strangest visual idea directly into my hands. Her hair becomes a close-range weapon, a piercing tool, a mobility line, and the basis for several combat stances. I spent most fights pressing forward rather than circling for a safe opening, because the game rewards conviction.

Parrying sits at the center of everything. Enemy strings carry readable animation tells, and every clean deflection adds stress to an opponent’s posture. Once I built enough pressure, I could stagger the target and land the heavy counter that makes the whole exchange feel worthwhile. The cadence is demanding without being cruel. I had enough room to learn a delayed swing or an unfamiliar multi-hit sequence without feeling that a single mistimed input had erased the encounter.

That flexibility matters. I adjusted the difficulty options while testing the tougher encounters and found meaningful control over incoming damage, parry forgiveness, and enemy aggression. I could preserve the rhythm of the combat while lowering the punishment for a bad read, which is exactly how these settings should work. I never felt that the game stripped away its identity to accommodate me. I still had to recognize patterns, hold my nerve, and commit to the counterattack.

The build system gives me enough room to shape that style without turning Emma into a completely different class. I favored upgrades that strengthened counter hits and posture damage, then paired them with vine attacks built for repeated pressure. Other choices focus more directly on raw damage, elemental effects such as burning or corrosion, or Koo’s ability to interrupt enemies. I wanted a broader range of radically different fighting styles by the end, but the narrower approach at least keeps the game focused on its strongest idea: parry, stagger, punish, repeat.

Koo is a real combat partner

Koo earned his place in every major fight. I could send him lunging at targets, use him to pin an enemy in place, or trigger a stagger that disrupted a dangerous sequence. Those commands gave me a valuable second layer of control during crowded encounters, especially when I needed to create space instead of gambling on another parry. Late upgrades make Koo even better at setting up openings, and I enjoyed timing his interruptions around enemies whose attack patterns became too aggressive to handle alone.

I also liked the way Koo supports the game’s melancholy without forcing it into dialogue. Emma and Koo move through a future Japan reclaimed by vines, debris, and hostile life, and the pair’s quiet physical coordination often communicates more than the game’s wordier scenes. Koo’s contribution has mechanical weight, but he also gives the journey a pulse when the story starts dragging its feet.

The Nushi battles are where Beast of Reincarnation blooms

The regional Nushi hunts gave each major area a destination, and I found these bosses consistently more memorable than the routes leading to them. Their multi-phase structures force adaptation: a familiar attack pattern gains a new follow-up, the arena introduces a hazard, or a previously safe position becomes a trap. I had to stay close, listen for the attack cues, and keep feeding the stress meter. Backing away for too long made every encounter slower and more dangerous.

One of my favorite sensations in the game came from surviving a Nushi’s extended combo, deflecting the final heavy strike, then watching Emma’s counter break the boss open for a brutal punish. The visual effects are loud and satisfying in these moments, but the sound design does even more work. A crisp impact sound confirms a successful parry instantly, and that feedback kept me locked into the rhythm even when the screen grew busy.

The trouble is that regular enemies rarely match this standard. I fought too many familiar groups in too many familiar circular combat spaces, and late-game encounters leaned on difficulty spikes rather than fresh ideas. A boss can teach a pattern because its animations, arena, and phases form a deliberate whole. A repeated mob encounter with more damage and less room to move only made me impatient to reach the next Nushi.

Traversal feels good, but the world rarely earns the journey

Emma’s vine-based mobility kept me moving. I enjoyed pulling across gaps, scaling environmental routes, and using the hair mechanics to turn the landscape into something I could manipulate rather than merely cross. The semi-open hub-and-spoke structure gives each region enough space for secrets, upgrade resources, and optional detours. I also valued that exploration fed directly into combat progression instead of functioning as empty sightseeing.

Still, the game’s ruined Japan often looks more like a framework than a place with a distinct history. Forest, rubble, and decayed industrial material blur together, while the zones repeatedly funnel me into similarly shaped arenas. I found pieces of atmosphere in the overgrown architecture and the sense of nature consuming what remains, but the environmental design rarely built momentum. I kept waiting for a region to surprise me with a stronger visual identity or more inventive route design. That payoff never arrived often enough.

The chapter structure also becomes predictable. I would enter a new region, navigate a set of repetitive combat spaces, collect upgrade materials, hit story scenes that slowed the pace, and work toward the Nushi. The boss would then remind me how strong the game can be. I felt the contrast every time: the central fights have urgency and personality, while too much of the road between them feels like connective tissue.

A dark story with a weak presentation

I wanted more from Emma’s journey because the ingredients are strong. Her Blightborn condition, the ecological decay surrounding her, and the looming Beast of Reincarnation establish a bleak science-fantasy premise with real emotional potential. Emma’s character arc becomes more effective near the ending, and I found the final stretch satisfying enough to justify the long road there. New Game Plus also adds abilities, giving me a genuine reason to revisit the stronger combat encounters.

Getting there tested my patience. The plot takes too long to find its footing, and the game leans heavily on flashback material that often removes abilities or interrupts the freedom I had built through play. Those sections made Emma feel less capable precisely when I wanted to understand her better. Long cutscenes also carry a flat, formulaic energy that clashes with the game’s otherwise eerie tone.

The visual presentation compounds the problem. I found attractive lighting, strong combat effects, and occasional haunting views among the plant-choked ruins, but low-detail textures and drab assets repeatedly undercut the larger mood. The optional Cinematic Mode locks cutscenes at 24 frames per second, and I found that choice intensified the stiffness of scenes that already lacked momentum. The action has impact; the narrative presentation too often feels frozen in place.

PS5 performance is the reason I hesitate to recommend it now

I played in Performance mode because this is a game where response matters more than pixel count. The mode targets 60 frames per second, and much of ordinary combat felt responsive enough for Emma’s dodge, parry, and counter flow to work. I had no trouble learning routine enemy strings or reacting to the basic telegraphs that make the system satisfying.

The problem arrived when the game asked more of the hardware. I hit noticeable frame dips during traversal, streaming stutters when moving through the world, and rough patches in boss fights where the timing mattered most. A parry-centric action game cannot treat a hitch during a critical attack as a minor technical blemish. I felt the disruption immediately when an enemy animation lost its smooth rhythm, because I had built my input around that rhythm.

These drops did not ruin every Nushi battle, and I still finished plenty of demanding encounters without technical interference. They did, however, break trust. Once a boss enters a dangerous phase, I want failure to belong to my read, my timing, or my choice of upgrade. I do not want to wonder whether a sudden stumble in performance nudged an otherwise clean deflection off its mark. That uncertainty kept PS5 from being the easy recommendation the combat deserves.

Who I recommend Beast of Reincarnation to

I recommend Beast of Reincarnation to players who value the physical satisfaction of deflecting attacks, breaking posture, and dismantling large bosses through learned patterns. The adjustable difficulty settings also make it a smart pick for anyone who wants a demanding parry system without an inflexible punishment model. Emma’s mobility and Koo’s commands give the action enough personality to carry the weaker stretches.

I would steer players away from an immediate PS5 purchase if technical consistency, striking world design, or a tightly paced narrative matter as much as combat. The game’s story takes too long to become compelling, its zones repeat themselves, and its stutters directly undermine the timing-based system at the center of the experience. Waiting for patches is the sensible choice for anyone who is not already sold on the Nushi fights.

Bottom line: a rewarding fight trapped in an uneven adventure

Beast of Reincarnation gave me several excellent boss encounters, a parry system I wanted to master, and a convincing partnership between Emma and Koo. I enjoyed the confidence the combat asked of me, and I respected how the difficulty settings preserved that tension rather than smoothing it away. The game’s best moments have a sharp, percussive energy that stuck with me long after the credits.

I also spent too much time pushing through repetitive spaces, watching underpowered story scenes, and bracing for performance drops that had no business appearing in a reaction-heavy action RPG. Game Freak has built a strong foundation here, but the PS5 version needs better stability before I can call it an easy full-price buy.