02 Jul
Blog

Scarlet Nexus Review: A Deep Story With Even Deeper Action

A main character in Scarlet Nexus.

"Scarlet Nexus is an excellent action role-playing game for all fans of the genre."

  • Unique fight

  • A surprising story

  • Funny characters

  • Long running time

  • Stylish look

  • Weak exploration

  • Strong on backtracking

There's no shortage of Japanese action RPGs out there, but Bandai Namco's Scarlet Nexus is a new IP that stood out from the crowd and caught my eye right away. After playing the demo that was released earlier this year, I knew I was having a good time, and I'm overjoyed that my guess was correct.

Scarlet Nexus is a game that takes all expectations and pushes aside from amazing players with new ideas in all directions. This "brainpunk" title takes place in a futuristic world in which people have found a way to use a hidden gene to unlock superpowers in certain people. This premise lends itself perfectly to both the gameplay and the story, which pleasantly surprised me throughout my experience.

While the game starts out a bit slow and took some time to get into, Scarlet Nexus is a rewarding experience and a great addition to any JRPG collection thanks to its bombastic storyline and gameplay.

A shocking story

At the beginning of Scarlet Nexus, I got the impression that the story with boilerplate characters would be based on books. Fortunately, I was completely wrong. While the characters may seem like a tropical tick for anyone who's seen an anime in the past decade, they have so many memorable moments together that they quickly grew on me and I wanted to spend more time with them.

The world of Scarlet Nexus is a futuristic world in which certain members of humanity have awakened to various superpowers thanks to a psionic hormone discovered in the brain. There are also other, wonderfully designed mutants who come from heaven and enjoy human brains. The Other Suppression Force (OSF) was formed to combat the zombie-like threat.

Scarlet Nexus Boss Fight.

Things start with players choosing either Kasane Randall or Yuito Sumeragi, two new recruits to the OSF who have very unique powers and abilities. There is a lot more to this new duo than meets the eye, however, and this is where the story of Scarlet Nexus really shines.

These surprises really make the Scarlet Nexus plot so special – you just have to see them yourself.

Things start out as you'd expect from a story like this one. You meet your teammates, train, go on a mission or two, get to know each other, the usual. Then suddenly one surprise after the other begins and leads to a story without brakes and loads of excitement. Before I knew it, I found characters to get excited about, mocked others, and kept wondering where things were going next. As is usually the case with a story like this, players will wonder who and what they can and cannot trust.

I wish I could go into further detail, but that would mean spoiling everything. These surprises really make the Scarlet Nexus storyline so special – you just have to see them for yourself.

Psychokinetic strokes

History isn't the only area that this game excels in as the gameplay has me drawn to my screen as well. Even in the opening tutorial, Scarlet Nexus wants to show players that it's not like any other action RPG. That's because of its unique combat mechanics, which allows for some fun graphics, combos, and strategies.

The game has everything you would expect from a character driven action game / hack and slash title – perfect dodging, weapon attacks and throwers. What makes it stand out is the use of the psychokinesis attacks and assist specials that got me primarily interested in the title.

Scarlet Nexus RPG Battle.

By holding R2, players consume a psychokinesis meter. This allows players to control surrounding objects and throw them at enemies, causing great damage. Attacks can be chained with standard weapons and specials, with the chains getting longer and more elaborate as you level up to make room for some fun combos. As with any game that has a huge focus on combos and free flowing combat, you can already guess what you will see with this system, but it gets even wilder with the SAS mechanics.

Even in the opening tutorial, Scarlet Nexus wants to show players that it's not like any other action RPG. That's because of its unique combat mechanics, which allows for some fun graphics, combos, and strategies.

SAS is a brain-to-brain connection that allows players to temporarily use the different skills of group members and basically grant different assists. These include elemental attack reinforcements, invisibility, time slowdown, a doppelganger who can double attacks, or a partner who steps in with an auxiliary attack.

This mechanic adds a deep strategic element to combat as different SAS attacks have unique stats that are more effective on certain enemies. For example, an enemy can shoot water that splashes over them after a certain number of hits. Using a SAS assistant with electrical properties allows players to do more damage to their soaked opponent. In the beginning, players start with one of these assists and work their way up to four at a time, which opens the door to high combo potential. It just takes a bit of sanding to get there.

Yes, there is also a role play in there

While the focus is on action and story, the game doesn't lack the usual RPG elements.

To unlock all of a character's abilities, players will have to fight their way through the story and revisit previous areas to level up and earn brain points. As with many other RPGs with such a mechanic, players select points on a map to decide which path to take next.

On the other side of the field, party members can be leveled up to unlock more SAS skills. This is achieved by increasing the level of attachment with them, similar to what is done with the Persona series. The bond with a character is increased by talking to characters or giving them gifts, which in turn unlocks more skills. Once a specific interaction requirement is met, players will also unlock a Bond Episode, a special cutscene in which the player character gets closer to the person they have connected with. This also increases overall team loyalty and grants bonuses such as special items and free resuscitations. While it may sound like a chore, it opens up lots of fun moments of dialogue between characters without getting in the way of the core battle loop.

Exploring the overworld of the Scarlet Nexus.

There is also the classic material system that RPG fans are familiar with. In the levels, players will find small digital cubes that they have to pick up. These can be taken to a store and exchanged for various party cosmetic items, health items, and various weapon and stat upgrades.

It feels lively thanks to the abundance of NPCs and the great care that has been put into the look, feel, and sounds of the various maps.

The only downside to RPG gameplay is the exploration of the game. While I really liked the game's bright and detailed city and ruinous environments, it feels like traversing the city. Items are placed in empty and boring hallways and often feel unnecessary. It gets even more annoying when you return to these areas to find more.

Still, I enjoyed exploring the world of Scarlet Nexus. It feels lively thanks to the abundance of NPCs and the great care that has been put into the look, feel, and sounds of the various maps. I just wish hunting for items didn't feel like a drag at times.

Our opinion

Scarlet Nexus is a must have for any fan of Japanese action RPGs and standard JRPGs. If the story doesn't get your attention, the fight will be. It has enough flesh to distract from its tiny blemishes. It's a pleasure to interact with his characters, and seeing them grow together really got me fully invested in all of their story arcs. I left the experience and longed for another title like this one that would take its excellent action even further.

How long it will take?

It should take over 60 hours in total. The unlockable skills are well worth the hunt down as well, as they add plenty of extra playback time for those looking to dive deeper.

Is there an alternative?

There are tons of other action RPGs out there. The Tales series and the acclaimed Final Fantasy 7 Remake are some that I would recommend, but Scarlet Nexus offers such a rich and unique experience that I wouldn't turn it down.

Should you buy it?

If you're hungry for some good action or story, I highly recommend jumping right into this one.

Editor's recommendations



05 Apr
Blog

Outriders Review: Space Magic Saves a Flat Sci-Fi Story

Outriders

"Outriders has great action and deep customization, but it lacks personality."

  • Fun shooting

  • Excellent customization

  • Different classes

  • Strong rep hooks

  • Weak story

  • Flat characters

  • Always online, unnecessarily

Outriders is not like Destiny … at least according to developer People Can Fly. No matter the premise of the sci-fi looter and shooter. Don't look out for these Thrall-like creatures roaming around in swarms. Ignore the class-based superpowers, one of which gives players a Titan Slam.

Okay, it's a bit like Destiny. To be honest, it's a lot more than that. The cover-based third-person shooter grabs some bits of its contemporaries while defying some of the games' biggest pitfalls. By distancing themselves from modern live service games, People Can Fly wants to separate the luggage from the valuable loot.

Outriders lack personality and their edges are rougher than an octagon, but the core battle is just plain fun. Thorough character customization, numerous equipment benefits, and exciting superpowers make for a nifty shooter that should shine after much-needed maintenance.

Mass Effect Lite

Outriders has great narrative ambitions, though they don't quite pay off. The dystopian science fiction story revolves around mankind's attempt to colonize one of the last livable planets in the galaxy, Enoch. Players control a title outrider who awakens from a 31-year-old cryogenic slumber to discover that the mission has failed and civil war has broken out among the remaining humans. To make matters worse, there is a mystical aura called anomaly that turns people into overpowering "altered" ones.

There is certainly some potential in the area, but it doesn't quite come to fruition in the dry colonization soap opera featured here.

I can't tell you too much about where it goes from there because the story is as "in one ear out of the other" as it gets. There's tons of sci-fi technobabble to learn, read pages of dry lore, and meet dozen of flat NPCs. During a character's big emotional beat, I caught myself asking "Who?" loud to no one.

The game lacks personality and that goes beyond the narrative. Enoch itself is a vague planet that clinically moves between popular video game areas, from generic desert wastelands to subdued green forests with brightly colored plants. It's hard to identify any of his levels from a series of modern science fiction shooters.

The game is more successful when it plays with its otherworldly elements. The best moments come when he faces Enoch's extraterrestrial creatures who stir up the usual firefights against interchangeable human factions. Giant spiders, kite-like birds and acid-spitting bipeds bring the world to life and give a better sense of the chaos in which humans have found themselves. They're also more compelling targets that require players to get out of cover and play aggressively.

There is certainly some potential in the area, but it doesn't quite come to fruition in the dry colonization soap opera featured here. It just feels like an outdated take on Mass Effect, the first of many associations the studio will have trouble shaking with.

Less fate, more Diablo

What Outriders lacks in history it more than makes up for in its action. Let's get some more inevitable comparisons out of the way. Take the Division's third-person shoot, Destiny 2's class-based action, and Diablo's character building, and you are well on your way there. To be clear, this is not a punch. The game does an efficient job of taking the best ideas from each of these games and seamlessly piecing them together into its own recipe.

Outriders

What makes it all fit together so well is the deep customization that every combat mechanic improves. Shooting itself feels good, but it's only enhanced by weapon perks, which turn each weapon into its own "exotic" to borrow a notion of fate. There is a lot of joy in equipping a gun blindly and firing a shot only to discover it is freezing an enemy. It gets players to experiment with their loadout and offers lots of cool rewards for doing so.

In addition to standard shooting, the game has four character classes, each of which brings unique skills to the table. Fraudsters can manipulate spacetime to teleport behind enemies or slow them down. Pyromancers set bad guys on fire and cause damage over time. Each class is completely different and has different skills that can be mixed and matched. Switching classes can completely change a style of play, so everyone is worth a look.

It doesn't stop there. Each piece of armor also has benefits that can further change class skills. In addition, there is an extensive skill tree that enables more permanent tinkering. Of every comparison the game warrants, the Diablo is the one most liable. This is an action game that allows players to create hyper-specific builds and raise hell in so many different satisfying ways.

Outriders don't know how to tell a story, but it's damn sure they can stage a battle.

Here is a specific example. I mainly played a technomancer, a support class that can heal towers and spawn. My final build was to reduce the cooldowns and improve the health of all of my tower skills so that I could put up ice and poison towers every few seconds. This allowed me to approach combat like a tower defense mode, where I could strategically place turrets around the battlefield and put enemies in danger. I couldn't believe I had managed to create something so specific in the game. I was even more shocked that there was so much more I could do to make this setup even more deadly.

Sometimes we crave deep, narrative experiences from a video game. Sometimes we just want to shoot a frozen kite out of the sky with a lightning-fast weapon. Outriders don't know how to tell a story, but it's damn sure they can stage a battle.

Another service

There's a certain reason People Can Fly doesn't like the modern game comparisons. Outriders is not a Destiny-style live service game, although it looks like it is. Instead of connecting players with the promise of weekly updates, see what you get. It has all the charm of building a strong character through RPG mechanics, without the baggage, having to keep up with updates all the time. It's a game that respects that at some point players will want to play a different game.

Outriders

There's a wealth of strong content and ideas out there that will help extend the life of the game beyond the 25-30 hour campaign. One of the more effective hooks is the World Tier system, which acts as a clever difficulty level. Players can unlock up to 15 levels, each of which adds additional challenges and rewards to the game. It's an ingenious system that dedicated players can use to test their championship and work towards a final badge of honor (and the true ending of the game).

The biggest draw is the game's multiplayer mode, with which up to three friends can put together and tackle missions together. The class system shines here as it promotes a coordinated game where each team member has a specific use in battles. The game doesn't offer a great solution for dealing with players who are at radically different levels, but firefights are so fun that it doesn't matter too much.

It's a game that respects that at some point players will want to play a different game.

While there is a lot to do, Outriders is in rough shape right now. The game's opening weekend was plagued by crashes, bugs, and server issues that prevented players from getting their hands on it for too long. Oddly enough, the game features the same "always online" model that is reserved for live service gaming. When servers go down, fans can't even play alone. It's an inexplicable choice that is already causing some frustrated gamers to drop it altogether.

Outriders game

People Can Fly is not mistaken in distancing Outrider from other games, but it's hard to blame people for making the comparisons. With unnecessary live service DNA, the game is a quack to be a duck. Just as its protagonist is torn between a human and an altered state, Outriders takes a strange middle ground between old and new game design. It's an identity crisis that weakens the current experience.

But did I mention you can get armor that electrifies your evasive throw? Cool.

Our opinion

Is Outriders a sophisticated action game with a compelling science fiction story? No. Is it fun to freeze a spider with an ice tower and crush it with a well-placed sniper shot? You bet. Sometimes that's all you really want from such a Sagittarius. It could use an offline mode for single player sessions and some maintenance, but it's a solid foundation for an action game that respects its players' time.

Is there a better alternative?

Gears 5 for a third-person narrative shooter and Destiny 2 for a Space Magic looter, but Outriders is a great option for those who want a little bit of both.

How long it will take?

The main campaign lasts around 25 to 30 hours with a good portion of side quests. Multiplayer and World Tier Grind extend this time much further.

Should you buy it?

Yes. It's a bit rough but fun to play with friends. Even cuter, it's included with Xbox Game Pass, which makes it a breeze for Xbox owners.

Editor's recommendations




07 Apr
Blog

Final Fantasy VII Remake Review: Solid Story, Archaic Design

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Review 2 vii 03

Final Fantasy VII Remake Review: Thundaga can't strike twice

"… although the entire Final Fantasy VII story is a fascinating, emotional globetrotter adventure, this first 40-hour romp is anything but."

  • A well-written extension of one of the most popular game stories

  • Visually striking when history demands it

  • Generously expressed and magnificent with solid performances all round

  • Fight tries to be too much at once

  • Level design consists of corridors, platforms and stairs

  • Extremely linear gameplay with little exploration

  • Too much fluff between the good things

Final Fantasy VII Remake is here to take things in a new direction more than two decades after the original gave us a hero and villain almost as recognizable as Mario. While this eagerly awaited update is brave and sometimes beautiful, it is the latest victim of a company that places too much trust in its experienced designers.

Square Enix changed the game landscape with the seventh iteration of the Final Fantasy franchise 23 years ago. Final Fantasy VII has had a profound impact on the lives of millions of children and adults. His warm welcome influenced a CGI feature film that expanded his story, as well as some interesting spin-offs.

I only played this cultural milestone a decade after its release at the request of a close friend who was caught up in Clouds and Sephiroth's dreamy polygonal appearance.

Getting off the train as Cloud, a young mercenary with a grudge against Shinra, overlord of the world, is still a fantastic opening all these years later. Aside from the money on the table, it will be a long time before we fully understand why he is helping a militia detonate a bomb in a nuclear reactor. Nojima, the writer of the original story, lets Cloud's enigmatic personality emerge during the 40-hour campaign at the behest of his gripping cast of characters, but we as gamers have been responsible for the bleak teenage heartbreaker for so long that he's stale far too soon.

Example of a fight in Final Fantasy VII

The early introduction of repetitive gameplay elements will not help. Every time the story decides to take a breather, you're exposed to some really outrageous sections. Between the captivating cutscenes that shame the 2005 film, it's a slow, highly scripted adventure through dark tunnels and corridors with lots of glacier crossings and incredibly uninspired switch and platform sections.

Midgar, the industrial city in the sky that this whole story is about, is huge. But apart from a pizza trip and light identity theft, you can hardly see it. Of course there is a reason for this. They spend most of their time in the slums below, but even the shadow of this steel state is little more than long, narrow paths with impressively written but graphically overwhelming shantytowns.

Fast, fluid, faulty

Unless you choose a more relaxed difficulty level, the battle in Final Fantasy VII Remake is almost entirely in real time. It's a big difference from the turn-based system of the original and one that doesn't always give the best results. Stylistically it's absolutely great. Attacks have real weight and flair. And while summoners with little fanfare feel thrown in, it is almost enough to tear them out of their assigned material and let them wreak havoc to interfere with some of the harsher realities of this otherwise tortuous combat system.

If you have the chance to put everything into a fight, there is no better feeling. Boss fights, like the Airbuster Mech, are as magical as they are stressful. There are numerous cases of these well-fought battles, but they're almost always hidden behind multi-monster brawls that seem to play by their own rules. If you are not being fought over by off-screen opponents, the target system stabs you in the back. It is almost impossible to know the outcome of a strike. Tifa will happily throw herself in the air to box a bird with her bare knuckles, but will try to use a stronger skill and she will land on the ground again so as not to swing.

Final Fantasy VII remake

In such a real-time action title, we're used to the idea that everything can be perfected. But that's not how it feels here. Try toppling the scales in favor of a more exciting attack strategy, and you could end up switching off from your main target, botching a powerful spell, and getting hit by something you either couldn't see or could adapt to for half a second. This is a series of small battlefields and narrow camera angles, but it could be improved with a simple target list of wands.

If everything goes well, the fight feels incredibly rewarding. Tifa and Barret are doing shockingly well to the point where I actively try not to control Cloud whenever I can. You can choose which character you want to control from the start of a fight. If the scenario does not require this, you as Mr. Moody Mercenary will cross the overworld for a long time.

It is cold under the steel sky

What is waiting behind all the fluff is pretty convincing. Most non-player characters (NPCs) aren't nearly as graphically great as the main characters, but that doesn't mean they're not worth a look. Far from it. The area around the seventh heaven is full. It lives. Everyone has something to say about their day, a personality that is immediately noticeable.

Children practice dance routines, jocks discuss hitting girls, and rumors spread left and right. It's like Square Enix hired every voice actor on the planet to breathe life into these tiny hamlets. But as soon as you leave Wall Market behind and try to return to Aerith's house, you'll be reminded of how little scenery there is to explore. You'll get a glimpse of something bigger when you stray from a beaten path for a side quest, but after another four, you'll realize that the full Final Fantasy VII story, while a fascinating, emotional adventure around the world, is this first 40 hours romp is anything but.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is a fraction of the whole story. More will come, but we don't know when. After 20 years of hardware development, Midgar still doesn't feel as big as we have always felt. I can only hope that the time spent cutting off so many corners here has been spent on designing a far more ambitious follow-up. The world of Gaia will feel terribly small if you rely on the practices presented here.

Kazushige Nojima, who wrote the original of Final Fantasy VII and the subsequent side stories, returns to the baby he created over two decades ago. Between writing FFVIII and the tearful Kingdom Hearts series, the man spent years working out his world in spin-off titles, books and the popular film. With Remake, he worked it out further and expanded a fairly tame and tiny part of the original game into a section that is almost as heartbreaking as the entire chronicle.

New in this retelling are characters that come from subsequent side stories. Leslie from the Advent children's prequel book The Kids Are Alright makes direct contact with Cloud this time, which means that one can assume that the original FFVII is no longer completely canonical. There is more to this evolution once you delve into the details, but Remake is more than a simple extension of what was before – it's a completely revised narrative that will undoubtedly sink its claws into subsequent releases and that still has a lot of possibilities should captivate those who have already invested in FFVII traditions. Nojima's big story was a catch for a younger self. His efforts have shaped the series ever since. Anyone who is able to make some archaic game design decisions can look forward not only to storytelling, but also to eyes and ears. Mostly.

While Nojima does what he does best, composers Masashi Hamauzu and Mitsuto Suzuki join colleague Nobuo Uematsu to resume the game's classic soundtrack. New additions like the hip-hop sound of the grubby Collapsed Expressway and the completely revamped Wall Market theme are two bops that I can't wait to add to my playlist.

Visually, Final Fantasy VII remake looks incredible. No stranger will be blown away if they catch a glimpse of it on a YouTube ad, but considering that its real-time cutscenes outperform the pre-rendered footage of the mid-2000s Advent Children film, it's incredibly exciting to see how far we have come. It's just a shame that no amount of stories or catchy melodies can offset this boring attempt to wrap a playable game around his script. World building is not the drawback of this game – it is still one of the greatest game stories ever told. The questionable, outdated game design that is widespread everywhere makes Final Fantasy VII Remake fall flat.

Our opinion

After years of waiting, it hurts to say that Final Fantasy VII remake doesn't really impress. The classic plot – or at least what is offered here – benefits greatly from generous and outstanding speech, but how you extract the story of a generation is nothing short of a shame. Running up and down corridors and stairs for dozens of hours is a burden, and while the combat system can sometimes offer fights that embarrass MMO raids, mountains of fluff, and a combat system that can't be committed to a single style leaves this like feel a little step back from the already problematic Final Fantasy XV. There is very little freedom of movement here. Just a linear campaign that doesn't have much else to offer.

If we take into account the polarizing reception of Final Fantasy XIII, it is clear that Square Enix's weirdly long development times have resulted in a track record of games that just don't count the number of hours of work going into them.

Is there a better alternative out there?

If you're looking for an emotional roller coaster, two names come to mind. If you prefer a more in-depth experience, Persona 5 is really worth a look. It's almost three times as long as Final Fantasy VII, but it knows what it does with that extra time. However, a closer comparison is Nier Automata with its action-oriented combat system.

How long it will take?

Right now? Give or take forty hours. This also applies to all side quests, of which there are not many at all. Apart from an option for hard mode and some additional additions for Colosseum quests, there is little to prevent the repeat value.

Should you buy it

If you have had problems with Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy XV, you will find the same errors here. Perhaps you support a creator by watching the playthrough instead. If you played Final Fantasy VII as a kid, you will get a kick out of this lengthy story experience, but you will feel challenged.

Editor's recommendations