Scarlet Nexus review | PC Gamer - minterchapill

Our Verdict

An excellent combat system buffers a classically unhinged anime report in an fulfi RPG whose aspiration outpaces implementation.

PC Gamer Finding of fact

An excellent battle system buffers a classically unhinged anime story in an action RPG whose ambition outpaces murder.

Motive to know

What is it? An legal action RPG featuring psionic powers and a tidy sum of dating sim trappings.
Expect to devote: $60/£40
Developer: Bandai Namco
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Reviewed connected: Windows 10, GeForce GTX 1070, Intel Substance i7-9700 CPU, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer? No
Radio link: Official site

Scarlet Nexus is a bit too man-sized for its britches. Bandai Namco's up-to-the-minute original game aims high—this is an action RPG hybrid festooned with Devil May Cry-like swordplay and Monster Hunter weak spot targeting, bottled risen in an epic narrative that seems to explore a new peaky-concept sci-fi theme with all chapter. (There's time go off, nervous implants, undemocratic governments, the basic inquiry of consciousness.) In the margins you'll find a Character-ish relationship system, an interwoven network of psionic powers, and a boatload of adorned, cosmetic customization options. It's a admiration how close IT comes to pulling all of that turned like a sho.

You take control of either Yuito Sumeragi or Kasane Randall, 2 young members of a paramilitary fighting force called the OSF. They're tasked with exterminating these dread, eldritch beings known only as "The Others" who are laying siege to our futuristic, mysterious, and slightly weird smart set. Both characters have their own full campaigns that crisscross at predestinate junkets, giving players a lot to chaw through once they wind up their initial trip direct the plot of ground. (Similar many other games that have used this trick, such as Nier:Automata and, um, Hearable Adventure 2, there are plenty of lore-bombs hiding unsuccessful in apiece of those crusades severally.) Regardless of what perspective you choose, you'll starting line outgoing by following orders and clearing out teeming pods of Others along the outskirts of human refinement, before the story takes a darker, increasingly inexplicable turn. Who exactly are these creatures we're killing? What's in those shipments that dungeon going the urban center?

You will complete this investigating on a level-by-level basis. Yes, Yuito and Kasane can traipse about the represent to loot overlooked corridors and bring out a few sidequests, just for the most part, your time in Cerise Nexus will be spent zoning into an region, sidesplitting a ton of bad guys, and enjoying the grave cutscenes that break the setpieces. This isn't a problem, because Namco has generated an fantabulous combat system here. Both protagonists are paranormal, and past property the right trigger you'll air any piece of dust is nearby hurling towards an enemy's face. Mix that in with your melee strikes, and you give an elementally cheering mixture of tumbling and violence that rivals Ninja Gaiden, War god, surgery any other mid-2000s button-mash standard. Scarlet Nexus never approaches the horizontal surface of technique displayed by true Bayonetta lifers—there are hardly any combos to con operating room weapons to captain—but IT was flashy plenty to confirm me till the final chapters.

On the way, Yuiko and Kasane have memory access to their minor travelling band of other psionic teens. Those accomplices aren't restrained directly, and frankly I found them to do pretty negligible damage overall, but they make caper a essential role. The party has a diverse suite of supernatural expertness. Some are sclerokinetic, which grants impregnability, or electrokinetic, Oregon clairvoyant, and the player can tap into those skills at any time—which is kinda like pop a cooldown in an MMO. All of these effects can have a forceful impact happening the combat; an Other in the distance shields its weak spot whenever I draw cozy, so I borrow my friend's teleportation ability to blink up into striking distance without the beast noticing. I toss out a metal drum untouched of oil onto a floating in the corner, and tap into an friend's pyrokinesis to set them on fire and make or s tarriance bonus damage. (Yes, there's a whole interlocking chain of status effects in Scarlet Nexus, yet another bit of circuity that the mettlesome flirts with.)

(Simulacrum deferred payment: Bandai Namco)

By the end game I was firing several pounds per square inch blasts at once, before overloading Yuiko's own brain in order to blast my opponents with massive chunks of dark shrapnel. One of my favorite ideas that Vermilion Nexus sooner or later weaves in is a "brain crush" bar that appears to a lower place the health meters of The Others. It works similar to Sekiro's posture system; put on down the enemy with a compounding of psychical and physical strikes, and the protagonist can unleash a devastating takeover that renders their remaining HP completely obsolete. Those animations are roughshod and pure gum anime, the sort of stuff that could be edited together in a 1 blood-potty YouTube video like Mortal Kombat fatalities. An fulfill spirited ought to let the player feel like a god once they've traversed down the talent trees, and Bandai Namco passes that trial with flying colours.

Brain overdrive

In the impermanent moments, where you're not decapitating Others and experimenting with all your skittish, death-transaction powers, Yuiko and Kasane spend a mickle of clock consoling the storm-beaten souls in their platoon. Scarlet Link doesn't motivate in quasi-real time like Part, but the game does pause at certain junctures in the story for a brief cooldown period. On that point, you can give gifts to your crewmates and start up brief "shackle episodes'' where you get a line a little bit to a greater extent nearly them. Those episodes usually reward the thespian with a boost in their family relationship therewith NPC, which allows them to be a olive-sized more savvy in your party. (At one friendly relationship tier up, I could summon a chummy teammate into an chance for a brief bombardment, almost like tagging in a Wonder vs Capcom character.) These subplots are generally pretty good, and they help fill in the extremely dense fiction that Scarlet Nexus wants to establish. Particularly, I was taken by Tsugumi, a unseasoned clairvoyant who confided about deep trauma with Pine Tree State on unity of the first times we hung out. Afterwards all, if you've been able to see the future since you were a baby, there's no telling what horrors you might accidentally witness.

By and large though, I wish Scarlet Nexus diversified some of those outings a little better. You're almost always hanging out with your comrades at the exact same restaurant, and the plot beats are uniformly adjusted happening a slow interrogation of the manifold injustices that comes with being a high school-aged supersoldier. What makes Persona of import is how Wyrd and questionable those journeys can follow. One day you might be care to a drunk diary keeper in the bar, the next you're campaigning for a Bernie Sanders reliever outside of Shibuya Crossing. Scarlet Nexus, connected the some other hand, uses most of these engagements to lay on an extra veneer of exposition that the developers couldn't fit in the primary storyline, which is certainly valuable, but I didn't look like I got to know my battalion as well as I would've liked.

Honestly, that corresponding issue pervades through the rest of Scarlet Nexus' fixings. This is a real freehanded pun that's been forced into a teeny-weeny box. The background is indelible: An uneasy, Shadowrun-ish realm, defended by a field of study who are augmented with information processing tech that lets them leverage their brains A ammo, holding the line against these grotesque, Escherian demons who are desperate to spew mankind from the streets. If Scarlet Nexus only wanted to recount that story, it would probably be much more boffo. Instead, we quickly deviate to body horror, to government censorship, to the enigma of pink matter, to standard-come forth, Looper-style clock time travel paradoxes. By the clip the fifth surgery sixth mess around wrench was thrown into Namco's story, and IT became clear that they weren't going to follow whatsoever one of those fascinating hooks to a gratifying termination, I started to stay out. Honestly, it feels like every 30 minutes of gameplay is broken up by a lengthy lambas peeling back yet another layer of what's really going along here. But those reveals never hit me emotionally, perhaps because I knew that in the future chapter, a brand new monologue would overwrite everything I equitable heard.

The same goes for Scarlet Nexus' overworld, which is beautifully rendered in fineline Zanzibar copal cartooning, and is equipped with a lofty J-Pop doggerel. (The music, across the display board, is fantastic.) Unfortunately, the downtown hub is a couple of blocks, and the courageous has a preventative desire to reuse doddery level layouts for recently missions. A cardinal sin! The sidequests are also foolish; you in essence babble out to a random bystander on the street and they ask you to move out wipe out an Other archetype in a specific way. Your reward is rarely anything to a higher degree a wellness potion. Scarlet Nexus creative team were clearly out to establish a bold unprecedented franchise, just the scale they were working with countenance them down.

But frankly, that gives me hope for the time to come. If Vermilion Nexus earns a continuation—if the next time I shlep down a Comic-Con hall I see dozens of teens dressed for cybernetic warfare—past I guess the team at Namco leave in truth iron out the kinks in the second go just about. A larger, more interactive universe, some juicer off-the-of import-path content, maybe a few new environments for our languid, afternoon friendly relationship outings. It's all so undemanding to imagine. For now, Scarlet Nexus is a great promise and a dandy game.

Scarlet Nexus

An excellent combat system buffers a classically unhinged anime floor in an action RPG whose ambition outpaces writ of execution.