REYNATIS Steam Charts & Stats

I want to love Reynatis, I do, but its cons outweigh its pros which makes it hard for me to justify a purchase at full price. While it isn't outright bad by any means, it's just... kinda boring. If I could leave a neutral review, I would as for me this game is just average at best. [b] Tl;dr [/b] Reynatis is a game that oozes potential in both its combat system and story, but falls short of the mark for both. The gameplay quickly becomes repetitive, boring, and, at times, frustrating. The story is somehow both simple and confusing at the same time. It leaves numerous plot holes and leaves so much unexplained. The one good thing that I, and many other people who have either played or reviewed this game, can attest to is the soundtrack. Yoko Shimomura is, and continues to be, amazing at her craft and it really shows through the game's music. Unfortunately, that isn't anywhere near enough to save this game as a whole. For a whole $60 there are definitely better JRPG experiences out there. Reynatis felt like I was playing a proof-of-concept, and I really hope that the devs pick this game back up and refine it for a future installment as it had such potential. If you played the demo and liked what you saw, go for it and pick it up. For how long I played it for, it was a decent way to kill time as a filler game. I'd recommend waiting for a sale if you're interested enough to try it out. [b] Gameplay [/b] It's a basic hack-n'-slash game with some skills to use mixed in. There's a dodge system that you can only use when not "powered up" in your wizard form. The combat becomes much more developed once you start getting more skills to use and party members to switch between, but other than that there's no further depth. Outside of combat, there's an odd GTA-style wanted system where if you walk around the city while showing your powers, you get a wanted meter that steadily climbs up. Once it hits 100%, you're thrown into a fight with the authorities that you're pretty much forced to lose. However, you don't lose anything for losing this fight, and when you hit the retry button you're just placed wherever you were when you got thrown into the fight making the whole fiasco just a time waster. You can also just clear the wanted meter by going into any load zone making it even more of a time waste. [b] Story [/b] The main cast is fun, quirky, just very anime-esque. The story is very straightforward and does a good job of explaining the basics of what's happening and world building. However, in the last few acts of the game (especially in the last act), there are a lot of things that don't really make sense or just aren't ever explained properly. It leaves a lot of questions left unanswered and by the end I didn't really feel satisfied with how the end played out. [b] Graphics [/b] I usually don't care about how a game looks, but for something that came out fairly recently, this game looks rough. Some things look like they came out during the PS2-era while other things, namely the main cast, are much more refined. It's a bit jarring when you look at it, but not the biggest dealbreaker. [b] Verdict [/b] Play the demo first and see if the combat and story are your thing. If it is, then cool, pick it up. Otherwise I'd highly recommend waiting for it to go on sale.