Here’s a riddle for you: What do you get when you blend the complex, character-driven narrative talent of Final Fantasy VII writer Kazushige Nojima, the epic, sweeping melodies of Super Mario RPG composer Yoko Shimamura, and an over-the-top action combat gameplay system?
You get Kingdom Hearts, of course. However, developer Natsume Atari has dared to attempt recapturing the lightning-in-a-bottle success of the iconic crossover series by combining those same ingredients into an all-new package: Reynatis. This fresh action RPG first hit the Switch in Japan in June 2024, and is now arriving overseas. We’d like to say that’s cause for celebration, but as enticing as a game that boasts some of the same key talent and gameplay underpinnings from Square Enix’s beloved action franchise may sound, we reckon this second go-around needed more time in the oven.
Reynatis introduces an alternate, modern-day Shibuya in which wizards and witches run rampant, elite magic-wielding institutions are vying for power, and sinister magic drugs plague the populace. Amid this chaos, you follow two alternating narratives: the story of Sari Nishijima, a prodigious witch officer who aims to restore peace to the city streets, and the story of Marin Kirizumi, an aloof wizard who aspires to become the strongest magic-user in the world for…reasons. While they start out separate, Sari and Marin’s parallel journeys soon begin to interweave and shake the foundation of wizard society.
Gameplay in Reynatis is split between exploration and combat. In battles, you take control of Marin, Sari, and a number of other playable characters. Each has a distinct standard magic attack, along with two assignable special attacks.
What primarily sets Reynatis apart is the ability to swap between two distinct combat modes. In Liberation Mode, characters wield their magic abilities and deplete MP with attacks. In Suppression Mode, they can’t attack but can perform special dodges that allow them to quickly regain MP, counter deadly enemy attacks, and even slow down time to gain the upper edge. Solid evasion is just as crucial as solid offence here, and mastering both tactics is key to success.
While there are some intriguing quirks to Reynatis’ combat system, it’s ultimately pretty simplistic and repetitive fare. That may disappoint players who hoped for more mechanical depth, but we don’t mind a good old-fashioned button masher that doesn’t require much in the way of technical dexterity. Battles are fast-paced and flashy, and each character plays uniquely enough to keep the action varied. There are some streamlined ways to customise fighters, such as obtaining basic upgrades for special abilities and reassigning abilities to any character based on your preference. You can also locate passive stat enhancements and more by exploring Shibuya and locating spots of magical graffiti called Wizart, which are unlocked by completing side quests and lowering the city’s Malice meter.
Exploration is similarly basic, though its few unique mechanics feel considerably more half-baked. While exploring Shibuya, you can swap between Liberation and Suppression modes, with the former allowing you to see hidden items but alarming the public and forcing you to hide in designated spots before you get reported. There’s also a Stress meter that ticks up when you speak with civilians and forces you to enter Liberation Mode when it reaches 100%. For reference, our stress meter never rose above 15%, and we found that avoiding getting reported amounts to simply standing out of civilians’ line of sight for a second or two.
The other component of exploration is dungeon crawling. By entering portals of fog dispersed throughout the city, you can access an alternate magical dimension known as Another. Much of the main story progresses by making trips into these portals and navigating to the end of labyrinthine forests while fighting monsters and picking up items along the way. All told, it’s just about as basic as dungeon crawling gets.
If there’s one part of Reynatis that could use more simplicity, it’s the narrative. Delving into urban fantasy and exploring a magic-tinged tale of crime, corruption, and social injustice is an inspired concept, but the game seems more interested in constantly tossing out cool-sounding exposition than developing an engaging story. You see, most magic users get their powers when they have a near-death experience — but they’re just Replicas. Wizards-by-blood are called Legacies, and they’re aligned with the Guild, which distributes an addictive magic drug to humans called Rubrum that turns them into monstrous creatures known as the Damned, which happen to be different from magical monsters called M. But the Damned able to resist the addiction are called Fools and…well, you get the point.
It would be easier to embrace Reynatis’ self-serious commitment to worldbuilding if the actual storyline had any emotional resonance, but it doesn’t. The plot is mundane and tropey, and it meanders along with no real sense of urgency despite how big of a deal the main cast’s actions are supposed to be. The characters themselves are wooden with muddled motivations and have a knack for remaining completely poker-faced through the game’s few emotional beats. There’s a scene early on where one character runs into his old friend while he’s out on patrol, only to discover he’s become one of the Damned. You then proceed to kill the friend like any other common grunt enemy. The entire sequence is over in about a minute or two, and it’s seldom mentioned again.
It certainly doesn’t help matters that Reynatis isn’t much of a looker. Some great art direction and character design are let down by the game’s otherwise underwhelming presentation. Environments give off a gaudy and unfinished vibe, character models are unpolished, and the in-game cutscenes have more stilted walking animations and awkward cuts to black than your average Pokémon game. It’s like everything is blanketed in an aura of cheapness that’s too heavy to allow for even a bit of suspension of disbelief. Outside of the odd pre-rendered cutscene and Shimamura’s stellar soundtrack, the game consistently fails to imbue itself with the feeling of spectacle one would expect of a game about a bunch of ultra-powerful wizards doing cool wizard things.
In its best form, Reynatis is an RPG with a dull story that only partially makes up for that fact with some serviceable action-based combat. Unfortunately, that’s where arguably the biggest problem lies, because the Switch version of Reynatis is far from the game in its best form. Even a considerable hit to resolution can’t stop frequent stutters and frame drops, especially during loading zone transitions. Ironically, performance during battles remains more consistent than anything else, but there’s no getting around the idea that Reynatis generally feels quite rough to play.
The game is also riddled with bugs, running the gamut from glitchy character models to outright crashes. Throughout our roughly 18-hour playthrough, the game crashed about nine separate times. Three of those crashes occurred during cutscenes immediately after defeating difficult bosses, forcing us to replay each fight from the beginning. By the time we beat the final boss, we were too busy whispering “Please don’t crash” over and over again at our TV screen to bother paying attention to the story’s resolution.
And, perhaps, that says it all. For as much as we can try to focus on the fun we had with Reynatis’ redeeming qualities, we were all too relieved to start seeing those credits roll.
Conclusion
It would be one thing if Reynatis was a decent enough action RPG to turn your brain off to and enjoy some simplistic, button-mashy battles with. The problem is that the creators behind this title so obviously wanted it to be more than that, but it doesn’t have the writing quality, the technical spectacle, or the mechanical depth to make it happen. Just like its co-lead Marin, Reynatis’ single-minded ambition to reach greater heights unveils its greatest weaknesses — a sense of aimlessness and a general apathy toward its own fantastical world. If you believe you can still find some enjoyment in Reynatis despite its failings, it might be worth a shot. Unfortunately, the performance deficiencies of this Switch release make it a game that’s best played on just about any other console you have available. With plenty of other great action RPGs out on the market, you have to wonder if it’s worth the trouble.
Comments 45
Wow and I was planning to get this game the coming week too. Guess I'll just wait for a sale on this one.
After playing the demo I thought it was an average game. I expected the story, characters and music to make this game interesting. I think 5 is an exaggeratedly low score. Considering that you even gave the game a 7 in your other review today, I think this game does not deserve to be given a 5.
@JokerCK Well, it's not like the reviews so far of the game have been glowing. Other sites are giving it low scores aswell.
I guess I'll have to wait for the real Kingdom Hearts on Switch 2 then 🥺
I was looking forward to urban fantasy, but I think I'll pass.
I'll wait for patches to improve performance and get rid of bugs.
@Ulysses Here's hoping SE actually takes the initiative with the next system. 😭
That's rough, had this pre-ordered until recently but decided to wait and see and well glad I did given the reviews. I have Crystar and Crymacinah to play though from the same dev and from the sounds of this they have went a little down hill.
Very deep Sale and post some patches if at all.
Yeah, i'll just stick to The Legend of Heroes and YS series, thank you very much!
Yeah I got that impression when I played the demo months ago.
@JokerCK A 5 is quite literally an average review.
"5/10 — Average
"A middle-of-the-road title, you really need to start wondering if this one’s for you. A game awarded this score may be uninspired, unfinished in key areas, or represent poor value for money. It'll still have redeeming features, though, and you'll need to determine if they're important enough to you to mitigate any flaws."
It’s got that scrappy jank PS2 charm which I love. Dunno if it’s worth the full $60 but I’ll keep an eye on it.
Thanks for the review, still somewhat interested in giving this game a shot at some point despite its issues although I hope that they'll be able to fix the technical ones and/or Switch's successor can improve on performance if it has backward compatibility as it should!
@EthanZack What's about dual audio option?
The performance issues are not only on switch though. They are on pc as well for sure. Not sure if it crashed as much as switch but it’s not good on pc at all. I think the same with ps4 and ps5 but I haven’t checked it out much.
It is a shame this game is in this state. I feel like it definitely could have been a great game if most of these areas are fixed like the writing, graphics and performance. Maybe change the gameplay a little too. But this is furyu afterall. They don’t really release a lot of killer titles. Very little has stand out as a matter of fact for them. I don’t ever usually buy from them after playing a few of their games because they were all mediocre and suffered from a myriad of problems. I want furyu to do better but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
I saw this coming since it was announced. It looks so average.
It sure is tiring to read game reviews on the site and have performance issues reported on 85% of them at this point.
We need that Switch 2 already, idk how people can say Nintendo can wait on it till 2026. This thing can't get announced soon enough.
game looks beautiful on the ps5 but otherwise a dull game.. they gave it a 5 as well..
i thought square would focus on making quality games not in this case..
People do realize the devs aren’t square enix, right? It’s FuRyu. Square is probably just the publisher if they’re even involved at all. FuRyu developed Monarch, which was also pretty generic.
Also the combat seemed like the worst part of the game. The demo had a lot of dead-time and it felt like you had to dodge attacks in order to even use your weapon as it drained magic just by using the weapon. The first boss in the game was very very unfun and underwhelming. Maybe combat improves later in the game- but the first impressions definitely don’t make me want to stay to find out.
@johnedwin This isn’t a square enix game. It was made by FuRyu
@VoidofLight Well Enix makes games too, so they are guilty by association.
@DripDropCop146 This isn’t how that works. It’s like saying that since Monolithsoft makes rpgs, they should be blamed for not stepping up due to genre association.
i was confused no wonder it is not a quality game then not being made by square-enix..
@VoidofLight Oh but it is how this works, and Monolithsoft failed spectacularly for not stepping up. Next time pick a different genre.
This is for me a potato chip JRPG. It’s flashy and I like the style and combat, and it will be a nice way to lose a few hours. Many of the more prominent JRPGs I bounce off of so something simple like this will do me fine. I enjoyed the demo of this game and will pick it up eventually.
Oh! A game written by Nojima who has a ***** story? My!
Seriously, is anyone really surprised by this?
@johnedwin Square hasn't produced a quality game that isn't a remaster (and still, their remaster are more often than not lazy if not downright garbage) or that isn't developed by them directly for almost 10-15 years. People's standards really got down, I swear!
@Astropez live a live a was a quality remaster
What a disappointment. There are three very exciting games coming out next week (this, Epic Mickey, and Zelda.) Due to work and school obligations I chose only one and it was originally Reynatis! It’s not too late to swap the preorder for Mickey or Zelda then.
Maybe if this had released 2 years ago when I was nabbing everything that came my way and looked remotely interesting!
I expected the game to run poorly on Switch, but I was not expecting it to do so poorly on other consoles as well. Looks like a skip no matter what your platform of choice is. A game has to do more than look good when it’s at this price.
PushSquare gave it only a 5/10 and it's getting pretty mild reviews across the board, so I don't think we're missing much in the 1st place. The devs and publishers not optimizing the Switch version only makes things worse.
@EthanZack Just wanted to give you a heads up that the composer's name for the game is spelled incorrectly throughout the article! Her last name is "Shimomura", not "Shimamura".
Ah dagnamit, I had this on the wishlist. Can't work out whether to delete it or maintain it pending a patch. Problem is, the eshop is an ocean and it's non-technical issue cons also bring it down a notch. So, I think I will hesitantly completely pass having read this revew. Cheers for the bad news review guys, lol. Saved some moolah
I had high hopes but the demo turned me off. It just felt kind of rough around the edges.
I feel like saying Mario RPG composer Yoko Shimamura is like saying The Lost World composer John Williams
No mention of Neo: The World Ends with You? Is that content coming later because that's literally all I care about.
@Kilroy Personally I'm waiting for Morpheus: The World Begins with You.
Furyu is king of middle of the road experiences. Monark, Trinity Trigger, The Caligula Effect.
None of these games are particularly bad, but it doesn't seem like their track record is getting much better either.
Downloaded the demo but never got around to trying it. I don't mind a ho-hum RPG game, especially one not tossing out huge empty open worlds just to do so. The amount of mediocre RPGs I played through in the PS1-2 days that I still enjoyed..tons of em.
That said , nothing really jumped out at me with this and I doubt itll ever go on sale cheap enough to warrant an impulse buy.
Wasn't this the game that was supposed to have a crossover section with Neo TWEWY?
Yikes. I hate button mash action RPGs. Sad that’s what the genre has come to.
I watched people play and review the Japanese PS5 version of this game (its Japan release was several months ago). Their opinion was very positive, although not exactly "rave reviews." Since I have a Switch and PS4 Pro, I pre-ordered the PS4 version. I wouldn't have minded getting it for Switch, but since I haven't seen any footage of the Switch version to see how well it runs, I decided to play it safe.
It really grabbed me with the trailer. Then I tried the demo.. Id say "underbaked" is the perfect description. It just wasnt good enough in all aspects
This was a hard knock for me. I thought it was gonna be the next VSXIII, so I have a preorder fully paid off.
Gotta change that.
I played the demo on both Steam Deck OLED and Playstation 4 and loved it.
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