This review contains spoilers
I was pretty excited for this in the lead-up to launch for a few reasons, but I didn't expect to have to force myself to finish this.
On one hand, the combat is very fun and flashy, particularly in the last third of the game, and I had a decent fun when experimenting with different SAS combos. Also, it fully commits to its insane narrative in a way that feels surprisingly confident for a brand new IP.
On the other hand, I'm too tired to write out my complaints in a way that flows naturally, so I'm going to number them.
(1) The narrative completely buckles under the weight of its laughable writing. This game really wants you to like these characters, but you're never given any real reason to. There's a half-baked relationship system, but it consists of cycling through menus to figure out what gifts you haven't given out yet, and the rewards for putting up with this are pretty few and far between.
(2) Whoever made this can't design an interesting world (or a functioning map system) to save their life. This game comes from the "orange Astral Chain" school of design.
(3) The game completely ruins the appeal of its most highly-touted feature--the inclusion of two protagonists with parallel storylines--by the time you get to the last third of the game. After telling you about everything that happens in their story route, the other protagonist's entire platoon joins your party at once, thereby ruining any appeal of a second playthrough to, for example, experiment with the other platoon's SAS powers (unless you really want to play as the other protagonist, for some reason).
(4) Progression is extremely vague and unfulfilling. You earn "brain points" when you level up, but you can only upgrade the protagonist's skills. This is a fine idea on its own, but 90% of the skills are passive abilities that I mostly never noticed in combat. There are a couple of cool skills, such as aerial psychokinesis attacks and concurrent SAS activation, but these are unlocked far too late in the skill tree to make any real impact. There are only about 4 different weapons and 2 costumes to unlock for each character, and there is almost no reason to optimize your party setup because it will not change their strategy or survivability at all.
(5) That's because this game's idea of ramping up its difficulty is "more enemies" instead of different enemies or unique combat scenarios. Like I said before, this game's combat is pretty fun! However, there's almost no incentive to experiment with any of it, because you'll be fighting the same 5 or 6 enemies for the entire game.
(6) The sidequests are very mundane and routine. That usually doesn't bother me that much, but the sidequest rewards are always either healing jellies or bond gifts, both of which can be bought from the shop. You are never rewarded with experience points, additional plug-in slots, or anything useful. There's also no way to track your sidequest objective--you can pin the quest title to the side of the screen, but you have to open a separate menu to view the objective.
(7) Please stop sending text messages to my brain.
Scarlet Nexus is, by all accounts, a remarkably shallow and uninteresting game. If you're going to play a JRPG primarily for its combat, just like... buy Ys IX or something
On one hand, the combat is very fun and flashy, particularly in the last third of the game, and I had a decent fun when experimenting with different SAS combos. Also, it fully commits to its insane narrative in a way that feels surprisingly confident for a brand new IP.
On the other hand, I'm too tired to write out my complaints in a way that flows naturally, so I'm going to number them.
(1) The narrative completely buckles under the weight of its laughable writing. This game really wants you to like these characters, but you're never given any real reason to. There's a half-baked relationship system, but it consists of cycling through menus to figure out what gifts you haven't given out yet, and the rewards for putting up with this are pretty few and far between.
(2) Whoever made this can't design an interesting world (or a functioning map system) to save their life. This game comes from the "orange Astral Chain" school of design.
(3) The game completely ruins the appeal of its most highly-touted feature--the inclusion of two protagonists with parallel storylines--by the time you get to the last third of the game. After telling you about everything that happens in their story route, the other protagonist's entire platoon joins your party at once, thereby ruining any appeal of a second playthrough to, for example, experiment with the other platoon's SAS powers (unless you really want to play as the other protagonist, for some reason).
(4) Progression is extremely vague and unfulfilling. You earn "brain points" when you level up, but you can only upgrade the protagonist's skills. This is a fine idea on its own, but 90% of the skills are passive abilities that I mostly never noticed in combat. There are a couple of cool skills, such as aerial psychokinesis attacks and concurrent SAS activation, but these are unlocked far too late in the skill tree to make any real impact. There are only about 4 different weapons and 2 costumes to unlock for each character, and there is almost no reason to optimize your party setup because it will not change their strategy or survivability at all.
(5) That's because this game's idea of ramping up its difficulty is "more enemies" instead of different enemies or unique combat scenarios. Like I said before, this game's combat is pretty fun! However, there's almost no incentive to experiment with any of it, because you'll be fighting the same 5 or 6 enemies for the entire game.
(6) The sidequests are very mundane and routine. That usually doesn't bother me that much, but the sidequest rewards are always either healing jellies or bond gifts, both of which can be bought from the shop. You are never rewarded with experience points, additional plug-in slots, or anything useful. There's also no way to track your sidequest objective--you can pin the quest title to the side of the screen, but you have to open a separate menu to view the objective.
(7) Please stop sending text messages to my brain.
Scarlet Nexus is, by all accounts, a remarkably shallow and uninteresting game. If you're going to play a JRPG primarily for its combat, just like... buy Ys IX or something