Scarlet Nexus has some of the most anime ass scenes, combat and dialogue that I’ve ever witnessed and my god does it feel so good.
The game itself is a brilliant hack and slash with gorgeous in game cutscenes and visual novel type dialogue boxes that create a wonderful game overall.
The story itself is so anime. If you love anime, you’ll enjoy this game purely due to its wild plot that escalates every single chapter and always tops itself until it’s heartfelt conclusion is reached.
In terms of gameplay, I can not recommend the PS5 version enough. The vibration and haptic feedback in the controller creates for the some of the most incredible feeling combat as you’re hacking away at the absolute insanely unique monsters the game throws at you.
As you level up, the game offers way more in terms of combat and you begin to combo into combos, hitting every button you could ever imagine to create an anime battle that looks as spectacular as a full blown cutscene but in game.
Shoutout for them using The Oral Cigarettes “Dream in Drive” as its opening because that song slaps and that band slaps harder.
Overall, this game was extremely enjoyable. I had a fantastic time with its plot and even more so with its gameplay.
If you’re looking for another reason why I think the PS5 owns the world with its dual sense controller. This is yet another shining example

Segunda vez que lo intento y no hay manera. El mundo que dibuja es muy interesante con una historia muy enigmática que te dan ganas de descubrir. El combate es divertido y desafiant con muchas variantes y enemigos con diseños muy curiosos. Muchas muchas virtudes por todas partes... Pero el ritmo es HORRIBLE. Cada vez que se anima la cosa y te atrapa te lleva de vuelta a la guarida. Venga un par de misiones de vínculo (amistad) con los compañeros muy a lo Persona y salimos de nuevo de misión. Se anima se anima, combate divertido...yyy de vuelta a la guarida. Y así toooodo el rato. Déjame jugar!! Bah!

When I first saw footage of this game, it immediately caught my eye but I was pretty suspicious if it really felt as good to play as it looked, since I tried previous ARPGs from Bandai without finding much satisfaction.

Well I was wrong, this game absolutely rocks on the gameplay side of things and props to Bandai Namco for having a permanent demo available on Steam, something not many developers outside of indies seem to do. And what's the deal with demos that are only temporarily available?


Good gameplay, good ARPG:

Scarlet Nexus offers a unique sort of beat 'em all where you play a ESP user whose main attribute is throwing things, but you'll be able to do a lot more. The game slowly expands your abilities with the power of your teammates and by the end of the game, you have access to more basic battle abilities, nine types of ESP, a lot of interactable items and multiple types of special attacks that all come up very regularly.

I wish the game unlocked all powers earlier though, it takes quite a while until you get a complete set of four partners and then even longer until you get all nine of them. And then you restart from scratch for the second character (well, you keep a lot of your knowledge honestly).

The combat offers a lot of tools at the player’s disposal and I think every power you unlocked filled its own niche. You have purely attack focused powers, then you have one which strengthens your counter/dodging and at the same time it’ll allow you to keep track of some special foes, then you have invisibility and sneak attacks, duplication… The powers are awesome and as you progress, they also get more special effects added to them. For example there was one power I only used to spot invisible enemies, I didn’t care for the effect of increasing the timing of dodges. It became my all-time favourite when there was the added effect of staggering enemies after a dodge; invisibility is pretty limited at first but later you can attack while staying invisible and it becomes much more interesting. And then every power you don’t use, you can instead trade the power’s usage gauge for a special move instead.

The game benefits from having a more than decent level design. While it's pretty linear, I found the levels to be interesting enough. First of all, they look beautiful and detailed, there really are a lot of details all around. The throwable items all over the place fit in the world, there are even specific interactive objects depending on the area you're in such as bulldozers in a construction site, trains in the subway... and they're all really cool to discover and use. A few branches here and there have optional fights and rewards so overall I had a lot of fun exploring.

It could have been more organic though: the levels are very independent from one another and most of the interactions are inside the hideout area. The town areas are essentially useless outside of your first exploration and only serve the purpose of getting quests. Some other games which attempt this end up having a more organic world as a result and it would be welcome here with the attempts at doing RPG stuff.

The maps also have way too many save points and you can see why. Since the game is linear, you’re not gonna go back to save after beating a boss so you need a save point before and right after the fight. This is where rethinking the save system could have helped, especially since it’s literally a human NPC who acts as such and he’s all over the place. Or they could map the map into a Dark Souls circle, unlocking a shortcut that sends you right back to the first checkpoint.

They could definitely reuse the old areas more too, especially with a scaling system for the monsters. Speaking of monsters, the game has a huge and interesting roster. There are multiple groups of enemies with cool designs and in each group, there are variants of the same monster. It provides a lot of change as they’re not just recolor but they can have a different weak area for example and different attacks too. Even the special endgame missions have unique monsters that were never seen before so that was cool. The bosses are no disappointment either, the game nails this part.

It’s worth mentioning that the game has 5 levels of difficulty. I played on very hard and I felt like it provided a fun challenge, the monsters were just tanky enough to have me exploit all the cool mechanics of the game to their fullest. Normal felt too easy and I would kill monsters before having the time to do cool combos.


Before I get into the bad parts, I want to say that this game was just very good at what it does well and that I really enjoyed it. I like this game, however it's pretty bad at some things which I'll detail next.


An action game crippled by its pacing:

First of all, the overall pacing can be somewhat burdensome. While SN is an excellent action game, it will regularly interrupt you with pretty long cutscenes and especially with a sort of "interruption" sequence (called phase standby in-game) where you will get the opportunity to interact with your teammates, gather quests, etc. This part is the main reason why the pacing sucks because where a level takes about one hour to go through, this entire segment can also take anywhere from 30min to an entire hour and unfortunately it's a pretty average section. You can thankfully skip most of it but you'll lose on some of the progression so it kinda sucks.

The so-called phase standby segments are really where the game is lacking. The way you interact with teammates is by raising an invisible relationship meter until you trigger enough points for events and level increases, which will unlock new abilities. Unfortunately I think it was a pretty bad choice to tie the relationships to abilities because it somewhat forces you to go through it to get the most out of the game, even if you don't like this section. While the events themselves are relatively okay and I do like the characters, I think the pacing of just having them included in a separate section of the game and spending a good hour between levels doing this was not the most fun.

Perhaps this separation is the main problem. The levels are not tied together when they could have been and the hideout section is too separated from the rest of the game. The switch from action to a Persona emulation is pretty jarring. I have played other games such as Dusk Diver which attempted this and I think they were more successful because of the overworld you move in and how you'll come across quests while going to the main location and then naturally coming back and talking to characters on your ways instead.



Painful menuing experience:

The gift system is also pretty gruesome. I think it was a really cool idea to incorporate the gifts into the game, everything you offer to your mates will eventually show up in the hideout and it gets very lively by the end of the game. Unfortunately the system itself is not very organic. Firstly, there are too many gifts and a lot of them have negligible effects, you would need maybe 30 copies of them to get a level up. Secondly, you obtain gifts by spending another five minutes in a menu where you craft them with confusing loot obtained from monsters or from exploring the environment. I think it would have been more fulfilling if they were just obtained in the environment or if there were less materials to keep track of for everything, it's just too complicated when you aim to complete the list.

Another menuing experience that detracts from the main game is the side quests. This is perhaps the single worst aspect of the game but before I criticise it, I really need to emphasise that this is completely ignorable and mostly useless in-game. Nonetheless it's a missed opportunity. As mentioned before, you don't really evolve in a world outside your hideout and therefore obtaining quests which require you to go back to a few peaceful areas where there's no reason to be is not organic. Every once in a while you waste time doing these rounds, just teleporting and checking if a quest appeared on the map. I really think they missed the opportunity to put these areas to use because outside of your initial visit during the story, they really are useless. It's a shame because they're beautiful and really detailed, they could have made the game's universe feel more alive.

The quests you obtain this way are essentially optional challenges to complete (and guess what, there is also something called "challenges" which is another submenu to take care of). Almost all of them just require you to kill mobs in a specific manner. Have X power activated while killing Y or use Z move to kill A. The problem is that a lot of the quests are so specific that you have to go out of your way to do it, you also obtain these quests after going through the area where you meet most of these monsters (until maybe a new encounter much later) and you have no reason to go back to areas (which don't scale, I wish they would).

A certain portion of the endgame has additional quests to unlock ultimate weapons and oh boy they really are not fun. At that point you not only do not remember where to find the monsters you need (with no form of indication whatsoever) but they ask you to kill them in extremely specific manners that require you to carefully deplete their health and spam a special move a few times, making sure they die from it and not another attack.


Decent story with comic-like vignettes:

While the game has numerous good ideas, most of them were hardly exploited at all. The game will drop a lot of things and move on to the next element instead, for example the story begins with mentions of discrimination between scouted soldiers and volunteers yet it is completely irrelevant to the story. They’ll occasionally mention some discrimination and all the lore adds up, it’s great honestly but the presentation doesn’t work. I feel like this game needed Falcom NPCs to carry that lore or some good side quests focused on those. Ultimately the story feels very unfocused with a lot of things going on. The characters are the nicest part, I felt like they all had their charm and I appreciated the interactions between them.

One pointless addition in my opinion is the mail system. It was genuinely unnecessary, it’s yet another menu to keep track of and an interruption. On top of having characters talk to each other, you’ll receive a mail which says pretty much the same thing but you won’t know before you read and you have to open a menu that interrupts the on-going conversation. Oh and if you don’t read them you might miss out on your opportunity to answer them! Which does… does it do anything actually? Maybe not, maybe it slightly raises relationship points, either way it was slightly annoying and didn’t add much to the story.

I’ve seen many criticisms for the visual presentation of the story but I personally liked it. Not having cutscenes means that the pacing is much faster than your usual game and I appreciate being able to read it like a visual novel instead of being stuck having to watch cutscenes. It looks pretty cool and the vignette storytelling is pretty well paced, with some animations that express what’s happening. It was really a welcome change in my opinion, I hope to see more of this. One thing I didn’t like is that on top of the main vignette, they’ll almost always add a bigger portrait of the talking characters and they can look lifeless at times, plus they are just redundant when the main picture is more expressive. I also have to note that both cutscenes and those vignettes will show your character costumes and weapons so that was really cool!!!

Both character have their own branching on the story but it doesn’t add much. There weren’t enough changes between the stories, too much of it is the same and since it’s hard to tell what’s different, especially when the differences in a same event are very minor, you don’t know what part you can skip so I ended up sitting through it all. NG+ has a nice option of resetting levels which… is pretty much necessary if you want to enjoy it, because there’s unfortunately no scaling. So you either overpower the game or you restart and relearn every ability progressively. I would have liked to steamroll through the game but not because I deal higher damage, instead because I had all my skills unlocked and could do sick combos from the beginning. Instead I had to go back to basic attacks.


Lastly I will say that the soundtrack is a blast. It’s a mix of electronic and jazz, I really liked it and some of the tracks are stuck in my head.

Overall, Scarlet Nexus is a great experience. It has an interesting setting and a unique concept. It's a great beat 'em all/ARPG but not a good JRPG, which it also tries to be. I hope this game will get a rightful sequel where the developers can improve the few things holding it back from being a well-rounded good game and not a flawed one.

Scarlet Nexus é um bom jogo da Bandai... mas em seu lançamento lá em 2021 custava bem caro pra nós Brasileiros.
Pegar em uma promoção atual pode valer a pena.

Pra mim ele é um jogo OK que me prender bastante até platinei, mas pra quem for só jogar de boas, vai ter umas 40h jogando com os dois personagens.
Gostei dos cenários e das músicas também, é um bom jogo.
Eu completei as duas plays em 100h de jogo por que fui atrás das conquistas, recomendo pra aqueles que procurar um JRPG de ação.

This game is fantastic. I don't care what anyone says, this a 10/10 game for me. I feel like a lot of people are undermining the shit this game achieves. Firstly, I want to start with the story. I think the story is great. There are various key turning points and generally alot going on but I never felt particularly overwhelmed when processing all of the information. I think the pacing is also good. The only inconsistent pacing I recall was the whole bit with Togetsu, but it wasn't bad at all. The story also deals with time traveling which is always a heavily discussed topic in the way how it would or should work but I think this game does it fine. There were some things that didn't make sense to me, but looking back it's honestly convenient for the player and doesn't really feel like an asspull necessarily. Secondly, I want to discuss the characters. I see this part being underappreciated the most, so I'll try to explain what makes them great. I want to first get out of the way that Yuito (Male protagonist) is pretty cliche as a character. There's nothing wrong with being kind, forgiving, understanding, etc. I just feel like he could've had more of a personality. He's not bad, just somewhat stereotypical. The female protagonist on the other hand i do think is more interesting and more well constructed (though i still reccomend to go with the male MC for a first playthrough). The other characters, however, I think are great. I'm not gonna go into detail for each character cause that would simply make this way longer than it already is so I'm going to make a general summary of the character writing here. I'll admit, when it comes to building personality or the building of a character, the story mode doesn't prioritize that too much. That said, The squadron has a ton of personality and distinguishing character traits for example; Shiden being a conceited tsundere, Kagero being a carefree adult, Gemma being an old boomer, Arashi being lazy af etc. There are 2 routes though where you can see the stories from 2 different characters perspective. You can view many changes and observe new story events with the already established characters, and i think that's a good way of creating a more complex narrative, as well as providing deeper insight on the situation and person. The story is still mostly well, story driven and focused however that's where the bond episodes come in. I'm sure we've played games where there exists bond episodes, friendship stories or whatever, but I think this game does them particularly well. There are 6(?) episodes for each character in the squadron and all of them follow an important rule when it comes to making a great character. That rule is character development (duh). These bond episodes build upon the relationship you have with a character, but also talks about their struggles, their lives, the people they want to be, the things they want to achieve, their hobbies, etc. There are also episodes where certain events will occur and you and (insert character you're trying to bond level up) try to overcome said event. You can see the way they act during different situations and how they adapt to it. Their strength comes from you, and makes them want to do what's right, even if it's a risk. The game really hammers home the value of friendship and how much of a positive effect it can have in a person's life. We as humans are social creatures by nature, so growing up and becoming better than our yesterday selves due to the bonds we have and the efforts we put in is a product of companionship. It's honestly one of the things I can praise this game for because I've played multiple other games with this same concept, but fail to grasp it correctly. I might be looking to deep into it, but that's the message I got when maxing out each bond story. I really do adore everyone in the squad. Finally, the combat. The combat is what most people can agree on is the best part of the game. It's got a very deep combat system but the best part for me is abusing the SAS abilities. You can use a total of 9 different types of abilities which are fire, teleportation, defense, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, electric, superspeed, duplication and invisibility. All skills you can use and incorporate into your combo attacks. There's also brain drive, the brain field, the follow up attacks, etc. There's just so much to the combat I love it. I've had a blast with it the entire playthrough and I think it might just be my favorite combat system I've experienced in a game. There's a spreadsheet of skills you can unlock throughout the game and unlocking these skills grant you more power, new skills, new attacks, new mechanics, etc. One more thing before I finish here is that I want to mention that this company is the same one that created the more famous Tales of Arise. I've made a separate review for that game but one things for sure, both games do their characters right. My only issue with ToA is that the story is not as good as Scarlet Nexus which is kinda disappointing since it is a newer release.

There aren't many anime-ish games out there that are of this quality so if you enjoy anime games, this game certainly delivers. Definitely gonna remember this game fondly and the shit this game gets is so undeserved.

Finished both campaigns. Started with the Yuito campaign which I found more enjoyable storywise compared to the Kasane campaign. Even after playing the story from both perspectives I wasn't satisfied with how some plot points where handled.

The social link-like system gets kinda irritating during the second third of the game, when it gets difficult to justify that the characters would be interacting at that point of the story. Should have limited crossing over characters from one campaign to the other until everyone gets reunited during the story, but I guess now then the problem would be that you are cramming interactions with half of the cast during the last third of the game.

The combat isn't as deep compared to other third person action games, but it's serviceable enough. Even though the main characters use different weapons, their playstyles aren't any different in practice, both being closed ranged fighters. The difference is then relegated to the special abilities, since the two campaigns have different parties for two thirds of its duration.

Really liked that almost none of the Skill Tree upgrades were simple stat % increases, so most upgrades where inmediatly noticeable when unlocked.

The story is interesting enough, but I think its strength is in its worldbuilding. Really enjoyed that the campaigns focused on different aspects of the setting during their first two thirds.

A 7/10 game elevated by its setting and worldbuilding. I recommed at least playing Yuito's campaign and from there decide if you are interested enough in replaying the game a second time repeating the same levels with just a couple of changes in the story.

I had an urge to play another Action JRPG recently, so I decided to give Scarlet Nexus a try.
Despite hearing mostly decent things about the game, I didn't have high expectations for it, and after playing through it, I'm glad I did, for several reasons.
First of all, I'm gonna get 2 things out of the way; the gameplay is very good, it's not perfect, but it's deep enough to keep the player entertained for at least 1 playthrough.
Also, the art style is good as well.
With that being said, however, the most interesting thing about Scarlet Nexus is that everything else in this game just... kinda sucks.
The worst offender in my opinion is the whole "PowerPoint presentation/Manga panel" looking cutscenes; oh my god, they're SO goddamn boring! And if that wasn't enough, the story, the writing and the characters are just awful; nonsensical time travel garbage paired with literally every generic trope imaginable. It's like the game doesn't try to be interesting or unpredictable in the slightest.
It doesn't help that the game is very linear, so you go from cutscene to cutscene every few minutes, listening to its terrible characters and writing all the time.
While the game's world has interesting concept and ideas, the level design is pretty bad and most areas are rehashed multiple times through the story.
Also, the enemy and boss variety is seriously lacking.
Lastly, the last few missions and the final dungeon are so tedious, it's almost unbearable.

Pros:
+ Enjoyable and cool gameplay
+ Nice visuals
+ Intriguing concept and world

Cons:
- Very boring cutscene format
- Badly written & completely generic story and characters
- Extremely linear structure and level design
- Rehashed levels and very poor enemy variety
- Flawed pacing

Narrative: 2/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Content: 5/10
Characters: 2/10
Music: ?/10
Art Style: 7/10

Final Rating: 4/10
- Weak -
Scarlet Nexus is the kind of game where you have to "turn off your brain" and enjoy the gameplay without paying attention to anything else around it... because everything else in this game just sucks.

Do I recommend it?:
Not really, but only at low price if you're interested in it.