Beast of Reincarnation: Game Freak’s Action RPG Debut Scores 73 on Metacritic — and Critics Are Split on Why

For nearly three decades, Game Freak made Pokémon. One franchise, one formula, one series responsible for selling over 500 million games worldwide. Beast of Reincarnation, released August 4 for PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC, is the studio’s first sustained departure — an action RPG set in a ruined Japan populated by monstrosities, built around a protagonist named Emma and her dog. It landed with a Metacritic score of 73, and a critical divide that tells you as much about what the industry expects from this studio as it does about the game itself.

Emma, known as “the Cursed,” is an exile navigating post-apocalyptic Japan alongside Ku, her loyal dog. The bond between them forms the game’s emotional and mechanical core. As players push deeper into the world — a sinister, ever-changing landscape where dense forests grow from the wastelands — the relationship develops, unlocking stranger and more powerful abilities. Director Kota Furushima, who previously worked on battle systems and sound design for Pokémon entries, built the setting to feel atmospheric rather than spectacular: dense with ecological detail, described consistently by critics as “gorgeous” even in its most desolate stretches.

The combat system is where Beast of Reincarnation takes its biggest structural risk. Emma handles fast, katana-based real-time action — the kind of close-quarters precision associated with soulslike design. Ku operates on a separate layer, responding to commands that trigger support skills playing out like turn-based moves. The two systems run simultaneously, requiring players to split attention between the immediacy of Emma’s blade and the timing of Ku’s interventions. GamesRadar+ noted the game offers “wide scope for crafting a build to your tastes,” and the depth of the system is not in question — the question is whether it coheres.

On that, critics split. Vice awarded a 9.5/10, calling the dual-system combat genuinely innovative and the world design a standout. GamesRadar+ scored it 9/10. IGN gave it 6/10. GameRant landed at 5/10. That 40-point Metacritic spread — which consolidated around 73 on PS5 and 72 on PC — is not noise. It reflects a genuine disagreement about whether the game delivers on its design intentions. Reviewers who came away critical pointed to structural unevenness: combat mechanics that promise a technical depth the pacing doesn’t always support, and a narrative that leaves some threads unresolved.

The context pressing on all of this is the studio itself. Game Freak built its identity and commercial infrastructure entirely around Pokémon. Beast of Reincarnation is not a spin-off or a licensed project — it’s an original IP, published by Fictions, available on Xbox Game Pass as well as standalone purchase. The Game Pass availability signals that Fictions is prioritizing broad adoption over premium pricing, which matters for a studio trying to establish a new franchise from scratch.

Furushima has spoken publicly about the team’s priorities: a quality gameplay experience rather than graphical fidelity, an emphasis on feel over spectacle. That framing shows in Beast of Reincarnation’s actual design decisions — the camera stays close, the combat is demanding, the world resists easy navigation. Whether that reads as principled restraint or as a studio still learning to make games outside its established loop depends, apparently, on who’s reviewing it.

At 73, Beast of Reincarnation sits in the zone of games that reward a specific audience — players drawn to technical action RPGs with unconventional companion mechanics and a tolerance for design ambition that outpaces execution. For that audience, the dual combat system and the Emma-Ku dynamic are likely to stick. For Game Freak, the more significant number is not the Metacritic aggregate. It’s that Beast of Reincarnation exists at all — a complete, original action RPG shipped on three platforms, built by a studio the world associated exclusively with catching pocket monsters. Whatever comes next from Game Freak, it starts from here.

Tags: gaming, PlayStation 5, Action RPG, Xbox Game Pass, Beast of Reincarnation, Fictions