Going into Scarlet Nexus, I had no expectations whatsoever. I didn't see any trailers or gameplay due to lack of interest, and I've never seen anyone mention much about this game other than it's existence, so I decided to give it a try and was somewhat pleasantly surprised with what I experienced.
Let's start with the two things that I think are absolutely amazing: The Art Direction and the Combat Interactivity.
Starting with the first, most of the environment design ranges from good to amazing. Some of the earlier areas feel a little generic, but by the time I reached the mid game mark, there were plenty of moments where I stopped to take a few screenshots of the areas and their design. However, this doesn't even compare to the stellar enemy designs. All enemies in this game reach a balance of feeling alien, while at the same time bringing some sense of familiarity in their design. Just looking at some of the bosses it's clear the love an inspiration the artists put into their designs, which there's nothing quite like it. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the character designs. Most of them are pretty standard and dull generic anime designs, which I guess isn't exactly bad per say. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing "bad" about them, but nothing good either, it's just something that's been done hundreds of times before.
Now, onto the other subject that surprised me: the combat.
The combat mechanics are pretty simple, your character has a basic attack combo, a dodge, a jump and the ability to use items to supplement combat.
But perhaps the best addition, is the powers that Scarlet Nexus brings to the table. Both main characters you can play as have psychokinesis, which is the ability to move things with their mind. This brings a new edge to combat, where the player can use objects in the environment as extensions of their attacks, supplementing a character's lack of range or damage by throwing big objects from a distance at the enemies. To explain further, in the setting, most characters have superpowers and use them in combat. While it might not seem relevant considering you can only play 2 characters which have the same power, the game introduces the SAS system. When you're choosing your party members, you're not choosing only the characters and what they can bring to the table, but how their power can affect your gameplay style. Using the SAS system, you can connect with a character and user their power, which has some slight alterations to gameplay. These powers can range from elemental buffs to your weapon, to invisibility or the ability to teleport. While appearing not much by itself, the SAS system really shines in it's interactivity with the enemies. For example, the simpler powers like applying a fire buff to your weapon burns the enemy, a lightning buff can paralyse them and so on. But the more esoteric powers, like duplication can duplicate the objects you throw with your psychokinesis, or hypervelocity severily slows down every enemy on screen. This goes much further with the introduction of the Crush Gauge, which functions sort of like a stamina bar, which when depleted opens the enemy up to either be instakilled or to be dealt a very large amount of damage. By a combination of targeting enemy weakspots and correctly choosing the power most effective at dealing with those enemie's weakness, one can master the combat of Scarlet Nexus and truly show the depths of what appears to be such a simple system. There's more combat mechanics like Brain Drive or Brain Field, but they mostly function as combat buffs (the former) or a super mode like Devil Trigger (the latter), and aren't all that innovative.
Now, let's move on with my biggest gripe with the game: the writing in general.
Starting with characters, most of them are really bad, and even the best ones aren't more than decent.
None of them have any depth to them, and are mostly there to fill anime clichê roles and tropes.
I'll describe some of the party members so you can see what I mean: A Spunky Happy-go-lucky Childhood Friend, a Shy and Quiet girl that likes flowers, a Walking Talking Oedipus Complex, a Too Old For This Shit Boomer, and so on...
The biggest problem is that they have nothing to offer outside of filling their clichê roles, the characters have no depth whatsoever, they just feel like they were all taken out of really bad seasonal anime.
And the protagonists might be even worse. The male one is just your typical shounen protag who wants to do good and save the world, and the female one is unredeemably rude, to the point where it's her whole personality, being cold and rude for no reason whatsoever.
Moving on, let's talk story. And boy, if you think the characters were bad, you're gonna be even more surprised. Huge spoilers ahead.
Starting with the setting, it's a technologically advanced society where most people have powers. However, monsters called Others fall from space, so the people with powers joined together to form a military to fight them.
The story starts off with the male protag joining this military, and pretty standard slice of life stuff with the characters going from one place to another saving people and killing monsters.
However, the story quickly takes a dark turn when one of the characters is suddenly turned into an Other, and your shady military superiors clearly know more than what they let on.
What follows next I can only describe as akin to a group of children who have been caught doing something bad so they start blaming each other.
It starts off with a reveal that the goverment you work for is doing 1984 shit like brainwashing whoever goes against them or turning people into Others for research.
This sparks a rebellion led by a dude who creates a rival goverment and who is apparently really important, but you've seen him like twice outside of cutscenes.
Okay, so the government sucks and is behind it all, not giving any points for originality there but it could be a decent setup.
Some shit happens and now there's a gigantic black hole consuming the Earth.
Nope, they then shift gears for the bigger bad being a secluded religious group who you've seen being mentioned in dialogue literally once the entire game. Turns out humanity came from the Moon and that religious group wants to use the main characters power to take control of the Black Hole and open the way up to return to the Moon.
Okay... so you go and beat those guys up but turns out that the true villain behind it all is the Dude that rebelled against the goverment.
All of this happens because the main character's actual power is Time Travel, and the main villain wanted to use that power to try and save his dead girlfriend.
Yeah. That's the plot.
I just have no words for it. It clearly lacked a direction with all the ping-ponging the plot did about who was the actual villain. It just feels really disjointed, especially considering the characters conveniently forget some of the plot elements so the writers can setup reveals.
To conclude this review, I kinda enjoyed the game I guess. I felt like it was held back a lot by the lack of direction that the story had, and it was particularly held back by the awful and boring characters.
The combat system certainly has potential if fleshed out a bit more, but the whole thing is so dedicated to the anime aesthetic, that it ends up being chained down by it in most aspects.
Let's start with the two things that I think are absolutely amazing: The Art Direction and the Combat Interactivity.
Starting with the first, most of the environment design ranges from good to amazing. Some of the earlier areas feel a little generic, but by the time I reached the mid game mark, there were plenty of moments where I stopped to take a few screenshots of the areas and their design. However, this doesn't even compare to the stellar enemy designs. All enemies in this game reach a balance of feeling alien, while at the same time bringing some sense of familiarity in their design. Just looking at some of the bosses it's clear the love an inspiration the artists put into their designs, which there's nothing quite like it. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the character designs. Most of them are pretty standard and dull generic anime designs, which I guess isn't exactly bad per say. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing "bad" about them, but nothing good either, it's just something that's been done hundreds of times before.
Now, onto the other subject that surprised me: the combat.
The combat mechanics are pretty simple, your character has a basic attack combo, a dodge, a jump and the ability to use items to supplement combat.
But perhaps the best addition, is the powers that Scarlet Nexus brings to the table. Both main characters you can play as have psychokinesis, which is the ability to move things with their mind. This brings a new edge to combat, where the player can use objects in the environment as extensions of their attacks, supplementing a character's lack of range or damage by throwing big objects from a distance at the enemies. To explain further, in the setting, most characters have superpowers and use them in combat. While it might not seem relevant considering you can only play 2 characters which have the same power, the game introduces the SAS system. When you're choosing your party members, you're not choosing only the characters and what they can bring to the table, but how their power can affect your gameplay style. Using the SAS system, you can connect with a character and user their power, which has some slight alterations to gameplay. These powers can range from elemental buffs to your weapon, to invisibility or the ability to teleport. While appearing not much by itself, the SAS system really shines in it's interactivity with the enemies. For example, the simpler powers like applying a fire buff to your weapon burns the enemy, a lightning buff can paralyse them and so on. But the more esoteric powers, like duplication can duplicate the objects you throw with your psychokinesis, or hypervelocity severily slows down every enemy on screen. This goes much further with the introduction of the Crush Gauge, which functions sort of like a stamina bar, which when depleted opens the enemy up to either be instakilled or to be dealt a very large amount of damage. By a combination of targeting enemy weakspots and correctly choosing the power most effective at dealing with those enemie's weakness, one can master the combat of Scarlet Nexus and truly show the depths of what appears to be such a simple system. There's more combat mechanics like Brain Drive or Brain Field, but they mostly function as combat buffs (the former) or a super mode like Devil Trigger (the latter), and aren't all that innovative.
Now, let's move on with my biggest gripe with the game: the writing in general.
Starting with characters, most of them are really bad, and even the best ones aren't more than decent.
None of them have any depth to them, and are mostly there to fill anime clichê roles and tropes.
I'll describe some of the party members so you can see what I mean: A Spunky Happy-go-lucky Childhood Friend, a Shy and Quiet girl that likes flowers, a Walking Talking Oedipus Complex, a Too Old For This Shit Boomer, and so on...
The biggest problem is that they have nothing to offer outside of filling their clichê roles, the characters have no depth whatsoever, they just feel like they were all taken out of really bad seasonal anime.
And the protagonists might be even worse. The male one is just your typical shounen protag who wants to do good and save the world, and the female one is unredeemably rude, to the point where it's her whole personality, being cold and rude for no reason whatsoever.
Moving on, let's talk story. And boy, if you think the characters were bad, you're gonna be even more surprised. Huge spoilers ahead.
Starting with the setting, it's a technologically advanced society where most people have powers. However, monsters called Others fall from space, so the people with powers joined together to form a military to fight them.
The story starts off with the male protag joining this military, and pretty standard slice of life stuff with the characters going from one place to another saving people and killing monsters.
However, the story quickly takes a dark turn when one of the characters is suddenly turned into an Other, and your shady military superiors clearly know more than what they let on.
What follows next I can only describe as akin to a group of children who have been caught doing something bad so they start blaming each other.
It starts off with a reveal that the goverment you work for is doing 1984 shit like brainwashing whoever goes against them or turning people into Others for research.
This sparks a rebellion led by a dude who creates a rival goverment and who is apparently really important, but you've seen him like twice outside of cutscenes.
Okay, so the government sucks and is behind it all, not giving any points for originality there but it could be a decent setup.
Some shit happens and now there's a gigantic black hole consuming the Earth.
Nope, they then shift gears for the bigger bad being a secluded religious group who you've seen being mentioned in dialogue literally once the entire game. Turns out humanity came from the Moon and that religious group wants to use the main characters power to take control of the Black Hole and open the way up to return to the Moon.
Okay... so you go and beat those guys up but turns out that the true villain behind it all is the Dude that rebelled against the goverment.
All of this happens because the main character's actual power is Time Travel, and the main villain wanted to use that power to try and save his dead girlfriend.
Yeah. That's the plot.
I just have no words for it. It clearly lacked a direction with all the ping-ponging the plot did about who was the actual villain. It just feels really disjointed, especially considering the characters conveniently forget some of the plot elements so the writers can setup reveals.
To conclude this review, I kinda enjoyed the game I guess. I felt like it was held back a lot by the lack of direction that the story had, and it was particularly held back by the awful and boring characters.
The combat system certainly has potential if fleshed out a bit more, but the whole thing is so dedicated to the anime aesthetic, that it ends up being chained down by it in most aspects.