While Nihon Falcom deservedly got its flowers at Anime Expo 2024, it wasn’t just their developed games that were featured at NIS America’s booth. FuRyu, known most recently for The Caligua Effect and Monark, also brought Reynatis, and based on what we played, this is a game to definitely look out for when it comes out this fall.
I didn’t always have that opinion of the game. In fact, a panel I attended at Anime Expo more or less convinced me to play the demo again. Knowing how long it was, I figured I’d give it a shot, so let me tell you about my initial impressions of my first playthrough.
I’m not going to go over the game’s story, because I really just sped through dialog. There wasn’t any headphones when playing anything at the booth, so I had no real reason to really listen and focus on what was happening.
I played the game on the Switch, and it looked fine. Take it for what it is, but it very much looked like a solid RPG two generations ago, but in all honesty, NIS America’s published games have never actually achieved Final Fantasy XVI levels of production, and that’s okay. My problem was I didn’t really have any idea of what I was doing. I was walking around what looked like Shibuya in the evening, and when I took a look at the map, I ran to where I saw an exclamation point (!), but it didn’t do anything. It was just an NPC scared of me.
I just pressed random buttons and eventually ran into a battle, and I took the enemies out. That was fun, until I ended up walking around.
I walked around aimlessly until an NIS America attendant guided me to where I was supposed to go. For the record, there was nothing on the map that made that obvious, so I felt really stupid. I did explore as much as I could, but if often led to invisible walls.
Anyway, I ended up at a forest and things took off from there. I followed a linear path and really got a taste of the game’s action-based battle system. It felt the way you’d expect a hack-and-slash action RPG to feel, but it was a tad more limiting. When you run out of stamina, your character cloaks himself and walks around unable to attack, so I just retreated and avoided damage until the meter went up again and wreaked havoc on my enemies.
Why is it this way? I guess that’s just the way the game was built. It was fine against regular enemies, but when I got to the demo’s boss it took some considerable time. I ended up taking it out knowing what I know–hack and slash the heck of the bad guy, and walk around and regain my stamina. Lather, rinse, repeat. Before I knew it, the boss was destroyed, and I ended up back in Shibuya meeting another character before getting into another battle. One of the demo folks at the booth then told me the demo was done.
So if it all ended there, I’d determine that the game wasn’t worth playing.
But I went back.
I played on PS5, and it was a completely different experience.
It wasn’t so much the production value; it was more about actually knowing what I was doing.
The attendant at the booth actually put me in front of where I was supposed to be to get into the forest. What happened was when I played the Switch version, I was far away from that with no direction to go off of. From there, it was smooth sailing, I already knew how to fight. I knew that I could conserve stamina by hooding up and switching back and forth between Suppression and Liberation modes. I also figured out that dodging while in Suppression Mode allows you to get a bigger chunk of stamina back. Knowing this made the combat feel way more intuitive.
Reynatis’ combat is quite intuitive once you really understand what you’re doing.
So when I eventually got back to the boss fight, it was way more interesting. Instead of hooding up and walking away, I went for perfect dodges. Not only that, but when you tap on the right shoulder button just as you execute a perfect dodge, and then hold on it and release at just the right moment, you can freeze time and unleash an onslaught of attacks on your enemies. This just made everything way more fun.
Beating that boss was where the demo was supposed to end, so I went a little too far last time.
That being said, I’m really excited about the opportunity to play more. Reynatis will be out on September 27 for the PC, PlayStation, and Switch platforms. They also recently announced a collaboration with The World Ends With You: Neo, which definitely should turn some heads if the modern-day Shibuya setting didn’t already appeal to people.
While Nihon Falcom deservedly got its flowers at Anime Expo 2024, it wasn’t just their developed games that were featured at NIS America’s booth. FuRyu, known most recently for The Caligua Effect and Monark, also brought Reynatis, and based on what we played, this is a game to definitely look out for when it comes out this fall.
I didn’t always have that opinion of the game. In fact, a panel I attended at Anime Expo more or less convinced me to play the demo again. Knowing how long it was, I figured I’d give it a shot, so let me tell you about my initial impressions of my first playthrough.
I’m not going to go over the game’s story, because I really just sped through dialog. There wasn’t any headphones when playing anything at the booth, so I had no real reason to really listen and focus on what was happening.
I played the game on the Switch, and it looked fine. Take it for what it is, but it very much looked like a solid RPG two generations ago, but in all honesty, NIS America’s published games have never actually achieved Final Fantasy XVI levels of production, and that’s okay. My problem was I didn’t really have any idea of what I was doing. I was walking around what looked like Shibuya in the evening, and when I took a look at the map, I ran to where I saw an exclamation point (!), but it didn’t do anything. It was just an NPC scared of me.
I just pressed random buttons and eventually ran into a battle, and I took the enemies out. That was fun, until I ended up walking around.
I walked around aimlessly until an NIS America attendant guided me to where I was supposed to go. For the record, there was nothing on the map that made that obvious, so I felt really stupid. I did explore as much as I could, but if often led to invisible walls.
Anyway, I ended up at a forest and things took off from there. I followed a linear path and really got a taste of the game’s action-based battle system. It felt the way you’d expect a hack-and-slash action RPG to feel, but it was a tad more limiting. When you run out of stamina, your character cloaks himself and walks around unable to attack, so I just retreated and avoided damage until the meter went up again and wreaked havoc on my enemies.
Why is it this way? I guess that’s just the way the game was built. It was fine against regular enemies, but when I got to the demo’s boss it took some considerable time. I ended up taking it out knowing what I know–hack and slash the heck of the bad guy, and walk around and regain my stamina. Lather, rinse, repeat. Before I knew it, the boss was destroyed, and I ended up back in Shibuya meeting another character before getting into another battle. One of the demo folks at the booth then told me the demo was done.
So if it all ended there, I’d determine that the game wasn’t worth playing.
But I went back.
I played on PS5, and it was a completely different experience.
It wasn’t so much the production value; it was more about actually knowing what I was doing.
The attendant at the booth actually put me in front of where I was supposed to be to get into the forest. What happened was when I played the Switch version, I was far away from that with no direction to go off of. From there, it was smooth sailing, I already knew how to fight. I knew that I could conserve stamina by hooding up and switching back and forth between Suppression and Liberation modes. I also figured out that dodging while in Suppression Mode allows you to get a bigger chunk of stamina back. Knowing this made the combat feel way more intuitive.
Reynatis’ combat is quite intuitive once you really understand what you’re doing.
So when I eventually got back to the boss fight, it was way more interesting. Instead of hooding up and walking away, I went for perfect dodges. Not only that, but when you tap on the right shoulder button just as you execute a perfect dodge, and then hold on it and release at just the right moment, you can freeze time and unleash an onslaught of attacks on your enemies. This just made everything way more fun.
Beating that boss was where the demo was supposed to end, so I went a little too far last time.
That being said, I’m really excited about the opportunity to play more. Reynatis will be out on September 27 for the PC, PlayStation, and Switch platforms. They also recently announced a collaboration with The World Ends With You: Neo, which definitely should turn some heads if the modern-day Shibuya setting didn’t already appeal to people.
by Danreb Victorio
