Scarlet Nexus mostly looks like a game from a bygone era. I think of such games. Everything is known so bitterly well known. How I run through corridors, what I do, where I do it, how I do it. It’s just a massive difference. The other games Scarlet Nexus’ relatives play on did not have the fraction of the budget the developers behind Scarlet Nexus have had to deal with.
This is a game that oozes quality and knowledgeable developers who know what they are doing. Everything is thought of, and the game is so heavy with a level of detail around how things should be done that it is at times mektiv impressive. Scarlet Nexus is a complex game with a complex combat system that miraculously appears to be very easy to win.
We take the trip into a distant future where the word cyberpunk is easy to resort to, though, Bandai Namco has found its own expression for this game; «Brain punk». It is by no means a random word choice. Your brain, and many others’ for that matter, play an important role in this game, and in this world where technology and man go hand in hand. People have abilities, and people connect, and the whole thing is almost like a dystopian nightmare the main characters themselves take as the most mundane thing in the world.
Though, it is not all everyday. Even if one were to believe that having one’s brain linked to a computer was a recipe for success, there is a crisis on earth in this distant future. Strange monsters that mostly look like perverted misunderstandings sewn together by equal parts human, animal and, well, car, broomstick, a vase of flowers. It is strange, distant, and looks like it belongs in a new edition in the Silent Hill series.
Raw action
I have seldom had so much fun with a combat system. They often have the one thing that prevents them from really creating the flow a beautiful combat system should have. The Scarlet Nexus is dangerously close to having everything. First and foremost, it is unique. It naturally has elements taken from previous games, such as the typical weak and strong attacks, but everything works differently here. Instead of linking these two attacks, you link physical attacks with psionic attacks. You punch a few blows at the enemy, before picking up a bike with raw thinking power and sending it roaring in the face of the enemy who is waiting.
Creating long combos that flow into quadrants is a dynamic and elegant dance that opens up and becomes more and more detailed. You get to know enemies, find new techniques, and master more and more. Most important of all is that you are really left with the feeling of being a completely raw warrior.
However, you are not alone. In the beginning, you get to choose between two main characters, a boy and a girl. They offer slightly different stories with large overlaps, as well as slightly different gameplay where one is focused on melee while the other has a slightly greater range. At the same time, these two heroes get a bunch of warriors on the road who offer their own qualities and cunning tricks.
Every ally on the team gives you access to a new trick. One allows you to teleport short distances, one allows you to see invisible enemies, while another sets fire to your weapon. They are all quite different, and the game does a good job of communicating when you should use what. But this is just a small part of what the game’s battles offer, it’s constantly being loaded with more and more things that make the game even wilder, and the best thing about it is that you never feel it gets too much. Every new thing comes at such a good pace that one gets enough time to learn how things work before it expands. In the end, one sits there and feels almost like a god among mutated misunderstandings.
The same old visa
There is a lot to keep track of in the Scarlet Nexus, and not just in combat. History also offers its to keep track of. It starts small where you just go on missions like obedient soldiers do, but after a quarter of an hour things start to go awry. It’s quite intriguing. The game has an interesting mythology in a pretty cool world, and it all oozes style. The Scarlet Nexus is unlike anything else, and it is instantly identifiable.
I, on the other hand, am not a fan of how history begins where it should be, in the background, and gradually takes over more and more. The plot itself is interesting, and in the right hands this story could definitely be really intriguing, but it is not in the right hands. On the contrary, it is in hands that should never be allowed to come close to such, and you get so many stereotypes and anime tropes stuffed into your mouth after a quarter of an hour that you feel like throwing up.
I do not understand why some “narrators” can not calm down a bit. Alt must not be included. One can leave some things on the desk. The difference between good and bad writers is often the ability to see what does not need to be said. The bad writers can not stop. They just have to spit in more, meir, and more. It never ends, and as a result, something that could have been good drowns in a puddle of irrelevant shit.
In Scarlet Nexus, the story becomes less and less interesting because the main characters get more and more they should have said. Everything must be commented on, everything must be discussed, everything must be talked about completely to death. Where the game in the beginning is an action game with a bit of history, it becomes after a quarter a visual short story with some action between casts. I’m exhausted by it. The dialogue is embarrassingly bad. The language is unnatural and artificial, and the whole thing bears strong marks of being plagued by essentially two things; an enormous trong to doubt the tropics, and a localization team that should find a new job.
Anything wrong with Japanese games
Problems are in line. First, there are the new generations of animevissvass. You know what I mean. Forget Ghost in the Shell and Akira, or all the movies from Studio Ghibli. We are talking mass-produced whips without original thoughts here. The main character who is so damn perfect that you feel like giving him one on the chew. All his friends who look at him as the new messiah, all the nauseating side characters.
Say a stereotypical anime character, and you can find it here. We have a best friend who will always be so in love with him. We have the shy girl who can never realize that she has value outside of the main character she sees in her. We have the one person who dislikes our hero, who of course can only get himself to do such a thing because of his own problem. The list is long. Too long.
It’s unoriginal piss, and I’ve heard it before, seen it before, read it before so many times that I refuse to accept such creative idleness as anything other than the laziness it is. It does not get any better from another lousy translation from people who are unable to understand that Japanese is not a language you can only translate directly. The works no. It must be arranged, rewritten, find out what is meant instead of what is literally said.
If you do not stick your tongue in your mouth with such things, you end up with exactly the artificial and unnatural language that the whole Scarlet Nexus suffers from. Every little thing must be pointed out infinitely many times, everything must be nailed down and weighed down with more information. Instead of coming to the scene and asking “why did you do this?” Scarlet Nexus offers dialogue in the streets as “why every day you have used a lawn mower to share a watermelon when we all know it is better to just use a knife, or maybe a spoon to really capture the good taste. I like spoons, but I have even used my bank card once because I had no other ».
I stop there. Scarlet Nexus on the other hand, Scarlet Nexus would have made an entire chapter on how to divide a watermelon.
As if that were not enough, the story is told in a crooked way. Instead of animated film sequences, we get what mostly works as an automated cartoon. We get a background image and some close-ups of the people talking, and so it goes slowly forward without any drive or rhythm, or something that at times reminds of drama and engagement.
I have not even taken the time to name all the endless (and thankfully optional) dialogues you have to go through to build the friendship (and with it the qualities) with your allies. Free and preserve me well. Enough is enough. Scarlet Nexus has a cool story wrapped in shit, and that’s too far. Too, too far.
Conclusion
If you skip all the dialogue screens and simply give a glimpse into history, Scarlet Nexus will offer a huge action game of the highest caliber. I’m not kidding when I say this is some of the crudest I’ve played on the action front. The combat system works to that degree, and it’s insanely fun. When a pig beats an enemy and everything just slides in the perfect rhythm, one is swallowed by a completely raw feeling. It’s bullshit, in short.
Otherwise, this is not just an action game. It becomes clearer and clearer that this is a game that will first and foremost force on you an inflated and swollen story I almost get angry just thinking about. I’m so tired of these characters. If I hear their voices one more time, I’m threatening to take a Van Gogh.
I have seldom been so bored with a game. It bullies and bullies about all the shit you do not care about, and nectar to end. Every time you think you’re close to the goal, they come up with one or another new idiotic thing that needs to be talked down before you get the chance to move on.
The gameplay alone makes this game one of the fattest experiences of the year, and for a while it kept the story of the engagement, a bit weighed down by the poor translation, but then it all goes awry. Do yourself a favor, as soon as history loses you, skip. Save yourself.
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