Introduction
Today we are going to reach deep into your mind as we will be reviewing Scarlet Nexus. This game likes to insert computer cables into your mind which seem to hurt a lot! Let us hope that our future does not look like that. There are also enemies that are called others, these will be the enemies that you will need to destroy them. There are two paths you can take, each path follows the path of a different person. We followed the path of Kasane and her fight against the others.
What did I think before playing Scarlet Nexus?
I did not know what to expect when I started this game, as I jumped in blind. Scarlet Nexus won the poll of the month in January, I glanced over the information on the game and added it to the game. There were also a lot of people that requested Scarlet Nexus. All I knew was, that it was a role-playing game where you use your telekinetic powers to beat up monsters in a future where a lot of people have powers. For more information, we went to the Steam page!
The Steam Page
https://store.steampowered.com/app/775500/SCARLET_NEXUS/
Well, things start off great, a new era has begun when people started having new powers due to a special hormone activating. It is awesome when people have powers, until those pesky brain eating monsters came from the sky, and they were too strong to take down unless people used those powers. You will follow the story of one of two people as you will try to stop the others and reveal the truth behind where they are coming from! Do not forget to power up your brain with an amazing skill tree!
Rating
I rate Scarlet Nexus with an 8.1 before playing.
There are two dual stories that intertwine, but for this review we followed the story of Kasane.
Story
The story of Kasane starts with her promoting to an official platoon to fight the others. She luckily teams up with her sister Naomi and some other gifted individuals. In this platoon she needs to complete missions and save the normal people, otherwise named duds, from getting their brains eaten. It is like zombies are falling from the sky!
Everything seems to go great, they even meet some cute boys that they would love to hook up with until one mission goes awry, Naomi gets shot with a dart and suddenly turns into an other, After Naomi turns into a brain eating zombie, Kasane will do anything to figure out where they came from and how to stop them and if possible save her sister from always being a brain eating zombie!
Rating
I rate the story of Scarlet Nexus with an 8.6
There is a dual story, thus we still need to play the side of Yuito! However, the story of Kasane is pretty lengthy and awesome standing on its own. It involves throwing cars at others, aka zombies that fall from the sky, amazing plot twists and a huge cast of characters!
Gameplay
The gameplay of Scarlet Nexus closely follows that of a role-playing game, you beat up monsters with your psionic powers, aka throwing stuff at them, ripping their brains out to get a huge load of experience to level up! When you level up, you will gain brain points that you can use to learn new skills in different skill trees! Maybe you want to have a bigger combo, or maybe reduce your damage from incoming others, I still think they are zombies.
One of the best upgrades in the skill tree is to use SAS with multiple platoon members, wait what is SAS? Well in this future the people can link together with those computer cables that I mentioned earlier, link up and share your power! No, that totally does not sound intrusive and privacy breaking at all. However, you can only link up with one platoon member at a time, however when upgrading your skill tree, you can eventually link up with four platoon members at the same time! However, you cannot use electrokinetic powers and pyrokinesis powers at the same time.
Since your party members are usually not helpful in battle, using SAS is a perfect way to gain the upper hand. You can also collect components when killing the others that you can exchange for weapons, this means that you can deal more damage, also getting plugins for your character, means that you can build your character how you want. This can be useful to upgrade your power, defense or even special abilities!
It is even possible to upgrade your SAS with other platoon members. Since this is a link where you plug in cables into each other, it might help if you know the other person a bit more. This comes in the form of bonding episodes after gifting them items or even fighting alongside together a lot. Improving SAS with bond episodes means that you will unlock special features for that SAS or even reduce cooldown times for linking! If they like you enough, they might even take blows for you!
Rating
I rate the gameplay of Scarlet Nexus with a 9.0
The gameplay is well-thought-out, and it works quite well, there are off course side quest, but I failed to find them until in the late end of the game. Since I was never under powered for the main missions, I stopped searching after looking in all the cities, turns out it also not the normal TV in the hideout but rather the holographic TV!
Sound and Graphics
Graphics
The graphics of Scarlet Nexus are quite good, but you do not need to mind cutscenes since there are a lot of them, they can also easily take up to an hour in later chapters of the game. The gameplay also uses a lot of the graphical assets, mostly to throw them at the zombies from the sky! However, you can also ride a buss, or even wave board a metal plate through the snow! The bonding episodes are kind of dull sometimes, I had trouble with not zoning out since it was just talk about plants or recipes.
Sound
There are a lot and I do mean a lot of voice actors in Scarlet Nexus. They all did an amazing job at portraying their character, emotions are seen quite clearly, the sound is also on par with the voice acting. There are many soundtracks that go along with different regional areas, as you will traverse subways, mountains, abandoned cities and a lot more!
Rating
I rate the sound and graphics of Scarlet Nexus with a 9.3
The sound and graphics are superb in this game!
What did I think after playing Scarlet Nexus?
While I myself, did not enjoy the game thoroughly as much as I had hoped, and I had to force myself through some moments of the game, this was not because the game was bad. In fact, this game has great mechanics, an awesome skill tree, many memorable moments and even two stories to unfold! Add along a new game+ and you are looking at a considerable amount of gaming time.
This game was just not for me, but it had a well paced story that kept me going along with a skill tree to build along with new skills added along the way. If this game did not have these amazing mechanics, an amazing story. Chances are that I would have slogged my through the game at a snails pace, instead I did enjoy the story, but this was just not my game. I still recommend you to try to play this game for yourself!
Rating
I rate Scarlet Nexus with an 8.7 after playing.
The pacing of the story keeps you going even if you do not like the game that much, however the long cutscenes at the end are a huge drag. I believe it took over an hour for the final cutscenes.
What are my personal thoughts about Scarlet Nexus?
While the mechanics and gameplay are very good in Scarlet Nexus, especially with a dual story, I had to push my through mainly because the game just did not click with me. I can see however that a lot of people would enjoy this game, it just needs to click with you. If Scarlet Nexus was not this good, I would have taken a lot longer to finish, although I might have left the game open a lot in between gameplay sessions.
Rating
My personal Rating of Scarlet Nexus is a 5.5
Like I mentioned before, not a bad game, it just did not click with me, but the game does have great mechanics along a good story!
Last Words
Pros
- Follow the story of either Yuito or Kasane to unravel the secrets of the others
- Amazing graphics with a variable amount of soundtracks
- Use components to create new weapons and plug-ins to build your character
- Level up to fill your skill tree with neat and amazing skills
- Upgrade your SAS links through bond episodes to make better use of your platoons powers
- Explore many regions whom are all home to different others!
- Complete side quests for additional loot to upgrade your character!
Cons
- The cut scenes can take a lot of time to watch!
- The bond episodes can be kind of dull
- You only get the full party near the end of the game
Have you ever wanted to drive over brain eating zombies with a bus? Play this game and you get your wish fulfilled, do not forget that you can also use all kinds of different attacks, either heavy or normal. Heavy attacks are the bus, smashing statues against the enemies or even using a wrecking crane to smash them zombies to pieces!
Final Rating
8,7
Let me know what you think of Scarlet Nexus in the comments!
I hope you enjoyed reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review!
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my favorite game
From the bonding episode the voices are A+ but the script is b-, sort of bland. I know it’s just a fragment, but just from this interaction between the shy girl and the stern one it did not spark any interest in me. Good review!
this game looks insane, but from this video, it seems that it has a lot of dialogue cutscenes to watch… doesn’t it slow down the game too much?
Yes, a lot!
The spooky design of the monster is cool!
The others do look spooky!
Nice game
It bears a strong resemblance to the NieR saga.
I really need to play that game!
It looks gorgeous.
It does!
amazing looking game
Yeah, the graphics are indeed good!
I played it on the gamepass and I found it really good, tbh the dialogues and cutscenes add a lot of details to the game and I don’t see them as a bad element of the game
As I mentioned, the game is excellent! I also reflected this in the final rating, as for my own personal opinion, I dislike it a bit!
I agree with your personal score more than the overall score. It’s nothing special. :3
It really needs to be your genre!
Good/interesting story, skills, equipment, grinding; totally my kind of game xD
These types of games, being so long and with a lot of dialogues, can be an uphill struggle if they don’t click with you.
So thank you for following through to the end to give us an honest and complete review of the game 🙂
I hope that you start playing the game!
You are welcome, more reviews upcoming!
I regret playing Code Vein over this one. Scarlet Nexus is more like Devil May Cry than Dark Souls.