I’ve had a very long relationship with JRPGs. I remember when Dragon Warrior was brand new to NES owners in the west, and my buddy in 4th grade showing me the bestiary that was included with the first Final Fantasy, because he was as nuts about gaming as I was. That continued as I got older and ignored girlfiends whenever a new Final Fantasy came out, or when I’d decide against being social with coworkers to stay home and spend the evening with Phantasy Star Online. To someone who isn’t into gaming, that sounds like a giant waste of time. But to me and I’m guessing many of you that visit this channel, experiencing the stories, characters and the excitement of these games are more memorable than going drinking or watching a movie with someone I haven’t spoken to in 20+ years anyway. And there’s nothing wrong with that, despite what anybody tells you.

I’m giving you this long-winded intro because over the past 10 or so years I’ve gotten pretty bored with JRPGs, though there’s still a few franchises I still enjoy like the Tales games and Dragon Quest. I guess that’s because as you get older, priorities, family, and career obligations change, and I feel like I’ve seen everything at its peak, and most of these games now seem like 2nd or 3rd rate imitators. Especially stuff in the west that would rather shoehorn their stupid political opinions into everything they do. I won’t pay $60 to be lectured.

Scarlet Nexus was always going to be a gamble for me. The “brainpunk” description sounded gimmicky and the art style reminded me of Code Vein, a game that certainly looked pretty but I got bored with about 15 hours in and haven’t picked up since. I also didn’t play Scarlet Nexus’ demo because I like living dangerously. I’m glad I bought it though because this is such a good game that if you have even a passing interest in JRPGs, it’s worth buying, even at its launch price. And I’m a cheapass, so that recommendation doesn’t come often. This is a game that has the influence of all of those classic JRPGs, but takes all the best parts and impliments them remarkably well.

I’m going to cover the meat and potatoes of this game but the story will be kept kind of brief, because it’s actually so strong that I don’t want to spoil it. It’s a story that tackles a lot of material that’s pretty poignant with current events, like a government’s near-Orwellian control of its population, a civilization’s reliance on having screens all places at all times, to how those in the military deal with loss – and my favorite, is how a tabloid-like news media just makes everything worse. There’s more where that came from also. There’s a lot going on under the hood and I’m happy to say that the usual overused storylines and archetypes you see in most modern JRPGs aren’t here. There’s not ultimate evil that awakens every millenia to be fought, there’s no ancient curse that needs lifting, but the threats here are personal and worldwide, and you care about what happens.

When you first fire up the game you play as one of two characters, Yuito or Kasane. Each is a member of the OSF, or Others Suppression Force, basically a military unit under the government that fights beings called Others, which are this alien-like creatures that want to eat the brains of their victims. These characters each have a special power and they range from your basic elements like fire or electricity, to more out-of-the-box ones like clairvoyance to see hidden enemies or teleportation. In fact in this world, that’s actually the norm. Getting the full scope of the game means playing through both character’s story, basically like playing both Leon and Claire’s games in Resident Evil 2 or Jude and Milla’s stories in Tales of Xillia.

Each main character has a distinctly different personality and motivation, and it’s great watching one character’s story play out from their perspective, then you get to see the other character’s perspective in the other half of the game. The game has an ensemble cast, however, with other OSF members acting as their teammates in both story and combat who get divided into separate platoons for a big chunk of the game, and then they all come together again, I’d say about half or 2/3rds of the way through. One one hand it’s disappointing to not get to utilize the other team members for about half of the game, especially if you like one character’s power more than others, but on the other this is great for pacing because you’re just getting to know half the cast at a time.

Even then you’ll still get pieces of backstory for everybody since you’re able spend time with them in the form of “bond episodes”, which are basically like the sections of Persona games where you’d get to raise your social link with your friends. And just like in Persona, there’s lots of benefits to doing this, like shorter cooldown timers for using their powers in combat, or getting revived when you fall in combat, which saved my ass several times.

My favorite part of combat is probably when you whittle a yellow bar down – called a crush gauge – and once it’s empty the enemy’s brain – which is a giant lightbulb – is exposed and they can be instantly killed, or if it’s a boss it’ll heavily damage them.

The cast is great and while they may not be quite as memorable as the characters you find in Persona or a classic Final Fantasy title, they’re still very well written and the voice acting is top notch. There’s not enough good things I can say about the cast in this and the story has a lot of twists and turns that makes you question everything going on, and you’ll care a lot about what happens to everybody.

In addition to great voice acting is a great soundtrack. They opt for a pop and smooth jazz sound all of the areas and it fits great with everything going on. You’ll still get some heavier tracks for boss battles but the music altogether helps set the tone for everything going on and doesn’t really stop reminding you of how stylish a game you’re playing. Teammates will compliment each other on fighting, or if you’re fighting an enemy needed for a quest they’ll call out to you as a reminder.

The graphics in this are gorgeous. The game has a very futuristic look to it without copying the cyberpunk look like everybody is doing now. Ads, crosswalks, tv shows, pretty much everything is on holographic screens and signs, and news media gets their footage by controlling drones (heh – it’s controlled *by* drones in real life too) and broadcasts by both the government and press can be beamed directly into the minds of its citizens. Later in the game you also visit areas that are very surreal and computer-y looking but also fit in with the overall tone and theme of the story. The game has a very clean look to it, with its characters taking on a more anime-inspired style that’s reminiscient of other Namco-Bandai titles like Code Vein, including the style of clothing they wear. In particular I love that on each character’s outfit you can see the red cables indicating their brain’s connection to the world. Each area is very different from the last and while the flow of each area is mostly linear, there’s still a lot of side paths to explore for items.

Enemies are similarly detailed and as I mentioned in my impressions video, reminded me a lot of the shadows in Persona and the angels in Bayonetta. These are enemies that rarely have faces and will be some bizarre mish-mash of, well, anything. Plants in corsets walking around on female legs in high heels, monsters with water spigots attached to their faces, just weird stuff like that.

Combat in this starts great and gets even more fun as you progress. It’s all stylish action and while you only control whoever you chose at the start of the game and they both have psychokinesis, you’ll get to borrow your teammates powers during combat for an extra boost. Though for the record you can change your teammates’ tactics to suit your style. Many times you’ll need their powers specifically to kill certain enemies, and exploiting their weakness to cripple them and then gang up with your teammates is really satisfying. You attack with your basic weapon and while you’re doing your thing, you can hold either trigger button down to activate and launch objects in the area.

Doing all of this at once sounds complicated but the game eases you through everything and it feels pretty natural after awhile. If you’re facing a tough enemy your teammates will let you know which of their powers you should use as well. By the end of the game you’re able to activate multiple powers at once, so for example you can slow down time to a crawl, then split yourself into 3 or 4 copies to triple or quadruple your attacks, give your weapon electricity, and turn invisible to give yourself more critical hits, and you’ll have a blast annihilating whatever you’re fighting. Your eyes might explode from all the lighting effects also.

Enemies all behave pretty differently and there’s a lot of variety to them. There’s enemies with armor that needs to be broken before they can be damaged, or enemies whose projectiles you can throw back at them to cause status ailments. My favorite part of combat is probably when you whittle a yellow bar down – called a crush gauge – and once it’s empty the enemy’s brain – which is a giant lightbulb – is exposed and they can be instantly killed, or if it’s a boss it’ll heavily damage them. These attacks can be really elaborate and are really satisfying to watch and the gorgeous particle and lighting effects in this give you extra eye candy while it’s all happening.

You’ve also got a couple special modes such as Brain Drive and Brain Field. There’s…a lot of brain themed things going on. Anyways, Brain Drive reminded me a lot of hitting Dante’s Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry in that you’re a more suped-up version of yourself and you attack faster and do more damage. Also your little hoodie thing turns into a mask and it looks like your character turns into some EDM DJ. Unfortunately this happens automatically, which I thought was annoying. The Brain Field is activated by clicking both analogs and you basically enter this weird psychic space where your powers are amplified and you get a whole new set of attacks. The drawback with this is that the longer you use it, the more you risk hurting your character and making them a vegetable from keeping it on too long.

Being that this is an RPG, you do get to level up and when you do, you’ll get “brain points” to spend on your brain map, which will get you damage bonuses or new abilities, like double jumping or being able to dash attack. Because of the brain map, leveling was actually pretty exciting because of how many useful upgrades there are, and you can cherry pick a lot of your favorites.

At the save points scattered around, you can buy equipment at the store like weapons, and also plug-ins, which are wearable items that give stat bonuses. You can also exchange materials to get cosmetic items, consumables, or special gifts for your teammates to raise your bond with them. I have to say that money is a lot more scarce for most of this game than I expected, so I never exchanged the cosmetic items to keep and wear. They’re worth a lot of money when you sell them though, so they were really good to hock when I was running low on cash after restocking consumables or equipping my team with new weapons and plug-ins.

There’s also sidequests to do and to beat both Yuito and Kasane’s stories, is going to run you around 60 hours. To someone with a job and a family, this runtime felt meaty but not too short or too long. Also with each side at around 30 hours, each character’s story actually felt pretty brisk and the game doesn’t have a ton of filler. Compared to something like the Final Fantasy 7 remake where it forces filler on you, this game feels like it respects your time. Also as you can expect, beating the game unlocks a new game+ that lets you keep your level and gear from the last playthough and also unlocks new sidequests.

I don’t have any major complaints with the game. You’ll do some backtracking to previous areas, which isn’t that exciting. The targeting in combat felt wonky at times. Like you’d be locked onto an enemy and go to attack, and you’d fly right past it. At times it’d feel like you’d have to stop fighting and get your character looking directly at the enemy for the attacks to connect, but then that was never gamebreaking either, more annoying than anything else. I also didn’t like that Brain Drive was automatic. My playstyle in these types of games is save up whatever special modes or attacks I have and then when I hit a tough boss, I’ll activate everything to blow my load all over them. Why they decided to not give the player this option is just weird to me but maybe they didn’t want to give us too much of an advantage between both Brain Drive and Brain Field.

So to summarize, I really enjoyed Scarlet Nexus. You can see a lot of the influences from other anime and JRPGs as you play through it, and it’s got so much going on that you don’t think it’ll all work together, but it does, and it does beautifully. Between the fast and fun combat, to the story and characters that you’ll come to care about and be invested in, to visiting this beautiful yet damaged world they all live in and want to protect, this is a game that I wholeheartedly recommend to anybody who thinks this sounds even sort of interesting. This is the first JRPG I’ve played in a long time that actually felt different and I’m looking forward to jumping back in.