Last week, Game Freak released its brand-new title Beast of Reincarnation. The post-apocalyptic action RPG immediately peaked at over 15k concurrent players on Steam, but its reception has been quite divided due to several issues related to playability and performance.
In an interview with 4Gamer conducted following Beast of Reincarnation’s launch (and before the release of the v1.0.7 patch), game director Kota Furushima talked about the game’s design and reception. When asked about how he sees the early reactions, he says, “I honestly feel that there are still areas in the game that require our sincere attention. I’m truly sorry that parts of the game haven’t provided a sufficiently enjoyable experience.”
On the other hand, Furushima considers some aspects of Beast of Reincarnation to have landed as intended, particularly the combat revolving around teamwork with Koo. “I feel the aspect of defeating enemies alongside your partner has been well-received, and we’ve also received positive reactions regarding the overall atmosphere of the game. I think the unique post-apocalyptic vibe of the world is resonating with many players,” he says.
Still, the director is aware the game “needs polishing” in other places and says his team intends to make robust improvements. Beast of Reincarnation’s first big patch, released in response to player feedback on August 10, addressed camera-related issues, tweaked parry timing windows, and implemented enemy balance adjustments among other fixes. Going forward, the developers plan to improve story pacing and add a much-requested cutscene skip function, as well as implement frame generation (DLSS 4/4.5 (L/M) and FSR4).
Regarding the difficulty, another aspect of the game some players have expressed qualms with, Furushima tells 4Gamer that his vision was not to simply to make Beast of Reincarnation hard per se, but to ensure players genuinely needed to rely on Koo and engage with the game’s cooperative combat. Although the game does not explicitly tell you to work together with Koo, the difficulty is envisioned so as to make players intuitively realize when they need to cooperate rather than just use Emma’s sword and parry.
While the release date for Beast of Reincarnation’s next patch isn’t known yet, the devs have confirmed that they are planning a series of updates to address player feedback. The game is available for PC (Steam/Microsoft Store), PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
