Reynatis is a curious project. It involves notable creative talents linked to the Kingdom Hearts franchise, including Yoko Shimomura, the series' acclaimed composer, and Kazushige Nojima, who wrote all the core Kingdom Hearts titles and the scuttled Final Fantasy Versus 13. This is a conspicuous coincidence, as Reynatis intentionally borrows several visual motifs from what little was shown of Versus 13. Reynatis’s d🎃irector Takumi Isobe has stated that this was all very intentional. With a director keen on resurrecting this fabledꦑ lost fantasy working alongside its writer, what could possibly go wrong? The answer, unfortunately, is a surprising amount.
Reynatis is an action RPG set in a version of our world where magic exists, but can only 🐎be wielded by a select few. Those who are without this gift fear those who are more magically inclined. This paranoia led to the formation of the M.E.A., an organization tasked with policing magic use. If this sounds a little like the X-Men to you, that is because it is basically the same premise. Reynatis has two protagonists: Marin, the rogue wizard, and Sari, a rising star in the M.E.A. Theoretically, they provide a different perspective on the ongoing conflict taking hold of Shibuya.
Presentation Problems
Shibuya itself is fairly well realized, if a little sparsely populated. If there is joy to be had in Reynatis - and that is a big if - you will find it while bumming around the city. As you do, you’ll be accompanied by Yoko Shimomura’s beautifully crafted compositions. There are only a small handful of tracks, so they do end up repeating quite often, but what is here is definitely solid. Unfoꦅrtuna♛tely, as you wander the streets of Reynatis, you will be quickly confronted by the game’s many problems.
Visually, Reynatis is a mess on a level rarely seen. Everything clips through everything, the geometry is crude, and there is an abundance of jaggies. The way mouths animate is also shocking♔ly primitive. Jaws flap open and close, making certain characters look more like living 💝nutcracker dolls than human beings. It is rough in all the ways you would expect a PS2-era game to be. While nothing to write home about, the attack animations are definitely better. Which is good, as you'll be seeing a lot of them.
The Combat Engine That Rescued Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory
Reynatis’s combat appears promising at first. It feels like an action-RPG reinterpretation of the ATB system. As you battle baddies you will need to freely swap between your ‘Liberated’ mode to dish out damage, and your ‘Suppressed’ mode to regain stamina. This is almost a very cool combat engine. Unfortunately, it all falls apart with the inclusion of Burst Liberation, which is this game’s version of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bayonetta’s Witch Time.
In the game, your stamina ꧂is referred to as MP, but for the sake of this review, I’m going to refer to it as stamina as that ๊is how it functions.
Activating Burst Liberation will regain a substantial amount of stamina, slow down time, and close the distance between you and your enemies. But unlike most games that have this mechanic, you don’t activate it by timing a perfect dodge. Instead, if you are in your Suppressed Form, the screen will slow down when an attack is about to connect. You don’t need to do a thing to initiate this.🌱 Once time slows, you simply need to press and hold the dodge button. So, the optimal way to play Reynatis is to stand still, wait for an enemy to attack, wait for the Burst Liberation mode prompt to pop up, activate it, dish out damage, then rinse and repeat. This 'strategy' will carry you through to the end of the game.
Even if the combat wasn’t ruined by Burst Liberation, you wouldn’t need to adjust your approach much anyway since you fight the same enemies over and over again. And I’m not solely talking about regular enemies. The Titan is a giant rock golem who acts as the first boss in the game. And the third boss. Oh, and the fifth boss. I genuinely lost count of how many times I fought the Titan. But I can confirm that one of the last boss encounters in Reynatis is against this same rocky monstrosity. And before you ask, no, it is almost completely unchanged from tꦜhe first time you fought it.
The Titan does get t🏅he ability to summon weaker monsters partway through the game. So there’s that.
That repetitiveness carries through to Reynatis’s dungeons. These are all set in the ‘Another’, which is, you guessed it, another world that exists in a magic dimension or something. Nearly all of these dungeons take the form of a path in a forest. You will see the same forest again, and again, and again. Literally dozens of times. Nearly every battle you will fight will be fought in that same forest or the streets of Shibuya. You will occasionally get to travel to a different location, but that is exceedingly rare and mainly occurs at the very end of the game. Nearly all of the excruciatingly tedious optional dungeons are also located in that same forest. Worry not, if you play Reynatis to the end🐭, you will eventually grow numb to it all.
From Bad To Abysmal: The Story
Well, the gameplay may not motivate players to progress, so thank god we have the legendary Kazushige Nojima penning the script, right? Well, unfortunately, Reynatis is Nojima at his absolute worst. The narrative tries to tackle some pretty heavy themes, dealing with drug addiction, class struggle, and bigotry. But it is all handled exceptionally poorly, especially the drug addiction stuff. ‘Rub’ addicts, you see, are destined to turn into very literal monsters, at which point you simply have to kill them. You will encounter dozens of Rub users, and though the game alludes to there being some form of treatment, the only resolution ever practiced is ꦍto stab them to death. Often, the implication is that you are doing them a favor. Needless to say, the complex issue of drug addiction isn't handled brilliantly here.
The primary thrust of the narrative is Marin’s quest to be the strongest wizard, which is as puerile as it sounds. Sari is motivated by her hatred of drugs, and her part of the narrative doesn't amount to anything. By the halfway pointꦗ of the game, she is rendered completely superfluous. The whole story is a hodgepodge of contrivances and tropes that, more often than not, felt liꦉke the writers were making it up as they went along.
Twists and turns come quicker than the plot can support, making everything feel haphazard and rushed. A betrayal happens in the first third of the game, but the traitor in question is so poorly established that what the game tries to sell as a big moment feels weightless. More often than not, Reynatis tries to convince you that a sad moment is occurring by wheeling🙈 out the obligatory piano track. There just isn’t an ounce of craftsmanship in the whole slapdash mess. The story reads like pa🧜rticularly amateurish fanfiction. Every moment of it is agony. Which is, unfortunately, the story of the game as a whole.
I'm not sure what happened with Reynatis. Yoko Shimomura and Kazushige Nojima are legends. It feels like FuRyu had everything they needed to deliver a great JRPG. However, game development is difficult, and some projects are bound to miss the mark. That happened here in a big way. Reynatis is one of the most miserable🎀 experiences I have had with a game in decades. It is an ugly, repetitive mess that houses some of the worst writing the medium has to offer. Outside of the OST, there is almost nothing of value here. If this is, in fact, anything like what Final Fantasy Versus 13 was supposed to be, then I can comfortably say that Final Fantasy fans dodged a bullet.
Reynatis is an action RPG that puts us in the midst of modern-day Shibuꦉya, Tokyo. Two citizens are destined to meet in the night streets, despite a curfew, with opposing views on the mag♏ic powers they possess.
- Platform(s)
- PS5, PS4, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo Switch, PC
- Solid Soundtrack.
- The character portraits look nice.
- Tedious gameplay.
- Miserable writing.
- Extremely dated graphics.
- Repetitive use of locations and enemies.
- Snuffs out your inner light.
