Playing Scarlet Nexus was a bit of a rollercoaster. It looks great, it has nice tunes and its combat system looks stylish and fun. But then, the more of it I’ve played, the more I grew frustrated and bored. And in the end, even though I’m a huge fan of games where you have two playable characters going through two parallel storylines, I couldn’t keep on playing with the second character. I just didn’t have it in me to play more of it. Yet, what a fascinating project this is.
At the first glance, you might think that Scarlet Nexus is the kind of a Japanese action RPG that leans heavily into fun hack and slash mechanics, like what you’d get in recent (and highly enjoyable) Ys titles. We get all of the recognizable elements of a game like that – a perfect dodge that slows time and gives you a chance to counter, two types of attack, combos, special attacks. And on top of that, you throw things around with your playable character, which is incredibly fun and can enhance the flow of the fight. Then you also get the cool finishers and additional movement abilities and as your party grows, the special abilities that are tied to the party members get even more fun and creative.
And yet, if you try to play this game as a fast paced hack and slash, you will die a lot. The thing is – this game isn’t actually an Ys type of game, or even a Final Fantasy VII Remake type of game. It’s far closer to Final Fantasy XV or “Lightning Returns” in terms of how it plays. Meaning that while you input typical hack and slash combos, they work more like traditional jRPG menu commands that cannot be interrupted. Started a combo? Can’t move or dodge until the animation finishes. Started any special animation? Locked into it until it’s done. Or you get hit. To be fair, if you decide to start with Kasane as your first character, her fighting style is more in line with what the game wants to be, but even there it feels flawed. While Yuito controls just like your typical hack and slash anime swordsman, except really unresponsive when it matters.
The approach to the combat the game has isn’t bad, when you play it “as intended” and you can still pull some fun combinations, all while looking cool af. Problem is – the way the game wants to be paced is slow and tedious. Its main gameplay is basically divided into two main parts – the cutscenes that are presented in a nice stop-frame style (mixed with realtime from time to time), and the fights. Sure, there are bits of exploration as well and even the social element, but both elements are very simplified and are nothing but lead-ins into the two main parts. And since there’s so much fighting going on all the time, you really want to speed it up and play fast, like one would in a hack and slash. And it actually can work in many spots. But not everywhere and most certainly not during boss fights. Which require you to just stop attacking and run away (or wait for the perfect dodge moment) as soon as the enemy is preparing the attack.
This could be more fun if this slower, more methodical pace, gelled well with the music, the animations, the “coolness” and the damage output of your party, but it’s not. In fact, boss fights often take a lot of time to get through, all while you can die almost randomly. No joke – you can go the entire boss fight without getting damaged, at full health, and then attack at a bad time or not dodge correctly and then get stuck in a failure state until your health is at zero. Dying before you even get the control over your character back. And needing to replay this otherwise very simple and samey fight again. It’s genuinely strange how much better the game is when it allows you to just go fast and destroy enemies with quick and precise combos and yet, that’s not how it’s intended to be played. And the game would eventually punish you for that approach.
Similar confusion is caused by the story. Scarlet Nexus has a really cool (both visually and conceptually) world and there are many points in the story where you catch glimpses of what amazing themes could be explored. But then the game goes for a basic trope instead. The characters have interesting traits, but are instead treated as predictable anime stereotypes. The storytelling suffers from the typical “overexplain things to the players as often as you can” issue lots of Japanese RPGs have, where you learn one simple fact during a story chapter and then this fact gets regurgitated for the next 10 minutes, adding nothing to the story or the characters. And in the end, the story is far less exciting than what it could be. Though, damn if it isn’t stylish and accompanied by some great memorable tunes.
I wish I could straight up recommend Scarlet Nexus, because I feel like it does have some cool concepts. I just don’t think they were developed the way they should’ve been. Maybe the dev team couldn’t decide upon the direction they wanted. Maybe they couldn’t nail the gameplay. Or maybe they got exactly what they wanted and I just didn’t find it fun enough. There’s a chance you will enjoy the gameplay much more than I did. Scarlet Nexus is definitely worth checking out, just keep your expectations right and don’t try to play it as a fast paced Ys-like game. Because it isn’t.