Review: Reynatis Unapologetically Feels like a PS2 Game

I was unsure what to make of Reynatis for the first few hours. It throws a lot of interesting mechanics at you but simultaneously adopts a linear pacing and environmental structure that you would expect to see in the PlayStation 2 era. When I reached the halfway point, I became invested in Reynatis and started really enjoying my time with the game. However, it undoubtedly has flaws and some notable graphical issues on the Switch, which will be a dealbreaker for some players.

Kazushige Nojima, who has been involved in Kingdom Hearts and the Final Fantasy franchise, is the scenario writer for Reynatis. And oh boy, it shows as the story here is stellar. While playing, I couldn’t help but think that Reynatis must have gotten inspiration from the cancelled Final Fantasy Versus XIII game (which Kazushige Nojima was the scenario writer for) because there are some uncanny parallels here, which we will get into later.  

Reynatis is set in a world where magic is outlawed, and its use is strictly prohibited. Wizards conceal their powers from the public, and a night-time curfew is enforced to maintain law and order in Shibuya. There is also an illegal drug circulating called rubrum, and anyone who consumes it will eventually turn into a hideous monster.

In some weird ways, the plot feels like a bizarre amalgamation of Kingdom Hearts meets Tokyo Ghoul. That statement might be polarizing to some people, but these two themes strangely work together. On the one hand, you have overpowered warriors wielding magical weapons, venturing through portals to alternative dimensions. The other explores dark supernatural themes, as the urban city is troubled by gruesome half-human creatures, with ideals and philosophies constantly being challenged.

For the first half of the game, the story bounces back and forth between two characters, Marin and Sari, who have contrasting ideological beliefs regarding how magic should be treated and conducted. The story-pacing is a bit rigid, mainly because it frequently changes between both protagonists. One time, I played as one of the characters for less than 25 minutes before it jumped back into the other character’s perspective. I really wished it stayed with one character longer. But as you might expect, their paths eventually intertwine, and they join up as one big team, and that’s when the game starts to flourish.

For wizards to conceal their identity, they enter a suppressed form, which, for some reason, means putting some hat or hood over their heads. If you are in this form, citizens of Shibuya will assume you’re a member of the general public and will ignore you while you walk around. However, you can also enter a liberated form, which shows your true magical prowess in full swing. If citizens see you, you will start trending on social media, and if you reach the number one spot, the M.E.A. officers will hunt you down unless you go to a safe spot to lower the attention drawn to you. Think of it like the GTA wanted system.

Not only that, but the pressure of trending on social media will put stress on you, giving buffs and debuffs when you’re in combat. To begin with, this stress system might seem like a big balancing act, and to an extent, it is, but its purpose is to give players options on how they want to play. You can play it safe by keeping your stress low and having many defence perks, or you can amp up the stress levels to strengthen your attacks but be more vulnerable to offensive blows. 

Reynatis, on surface value, seems to harbor a standard hack-and-slash combat system, like Kingdom Hearts, but it adopts a unique mechanic that spices up the fighting and revolves around constantly changing and adapting your playstyle. You can only unleash attacks when you’re liberated, but being in this form will slowly deplete your MP. In contrast, if you’re in a suppressed state, MP will slowly replenish, but this is the only time you can dodge attacks, which builds up your MP bar at a substantial rate. Essentially, the liberated state is offensive, whereas the suppressed state is defensive. It’s an exciting system to play, but it will take a few hours before you start switching between states seamlessly.

At the end of the skirmish, you are ranked out of five stars, which will determine the number of experience points you will get from that fight, which is based on various factors like how many times you changed characters, the amount MP absorbed and performing certain moves. This encourages you to change the way you’re fighting constantly. It’s rather fun to try and aim to get higher star ratings, and the combat difficulty never gets too crazy that you feel like these aspects hinder you.

Now, the people who never got over the cancellation of Final Fantasy Versus XIII will notice that the combat system in Reynatis appears to have a lot of similarities. The main striking one is the main character. Marin’s final menace attack is an animation of swords floating in the sky before they all fly towards the enemy, similar to Noctis in the Final Fantasy Versus XIII trailer. There was also a big emphasis on dodging incoming attacks back in the trailer, which is present in Reynatis. The atmosphere of the fights feels very alike, and I find it hard to believe that Reynatis didn’t get some inspiration from Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

Although this is not the only game which has clearly inspired Reynatis, as when you reach just over halfway through the game, you will come across a cross-over-event with The World Ends with You, where you will bump into Rindo and Shoka in an alternative Shibuya. Without giving too much away, this side mission diversion is super enjoyable, and any fan of the franchise will get giddy from seeing this inclusion. It even has a boss fight featured in NEO: The World Ends with You.  

The environmental structure in Reynatis is worth highlighting. Let’s start with the positives. Shibuya is phenomenal and perfectly captures the nightlife of the hustling urban streets of Japan. But the way the streets are designed is small and incredibly cramped. At first, I thought this might have been intentional in capturing Shibuya’s real-life mood. However, at specific points in the game, you travel to different dimensions, which act as dungeons, but their paths are even narrower, and to make matters worse, the environmental backdrops are mediocre at best. All these flaws create an experience that mimics what you would find in a PlayStation 2 RPG, which some are bound to adore and others will loathe. For the most part, I liked many of these aspects, but I wish the areas you transported to had more life to them.

The aesthetics are another aspect that might be hit or miss for people. The entire attitude and atmosphere embodies an edgy persona from start to finish. This is to match the gritty and sombre tone of the plot, which it succeeds at. Some of the outfits are highly detailed and really give off futuristic urban street vibes. But the characters would look unpolished in cutscenes and in-game. I also observed what I believe may be a model issue with the character called Moa. Her hair would shake during cutscenes, which would be a bit off-putting.

I’ve been playing Reynatis on the Switch, so I can’t comment on other systems, but there are a few issues. Firstly, the game crashed on me a few times, which was annoying, but luckily, there is an auto-save system, so I never lost too much progress. The main issue was the camera angle, which in some of the cramped environments is just pure bad. If I were playing in handheld mode on the Switch, this would be even worse, and sometimes I wouldn’t even be able to see the character performing their move, so I always stayed playing on the dock. To its merit, the loading times were excellent and faster than I expected on the Switch.

Reynatis is the pineapple on pizza of RPG’s this year. Some will love that Reynatis tries to implement various concepts while attempting to keep the magic that made some of the classic titles on the PlayStation 2 so renowned. Others will feel this type of RPG is a massive step backwards for the genre. Personally, I liked Reynatis, but the performance issues held back the experience for me.

Reynatis will come to the PS4, PS5, Switch, and PC in North America and Europe on September 27, 2024, and then in Australia on October 4, 2024.

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