Scarlet Nexus Review

In the distant future the world is struggling to exist, humanity is faced with wandering horrors known as Others. A new gene has been discovered in the human brain and those who have been born with it experience a range of psionic powers. Some have been gifted the ability to conjure flames, electricity, teleportation, and even invisibility. These humans are recruited and drafted into the OSF (Other Suppression Force). Their job is to protect the cities/nations that they represent. In Scarlet Nexus you will be given a choice between two characters. Each of these characters will traverse the game world in a slightly different way, but it will take both of them and their comrades to defeat the evil and end that is coming for everyone one.

This is a fast paced game where you’re going to have up to 2 active team members, and the ability to call upon eight psionic powers while in battle. Combat will be done in real time and will be done so within an area of attack bubble. You’ll have to defeat all enemies in order to progress further into levels. Different levels will have different varieties of monsters, which will be extremely important later in the game. The stories of both characters march in a pretty linear fashion, there are times between storyline missions where you can revisit areas, build friendship bonds with your team members, exchange dropped items for different items, and more. These “in-between” times are also a great time to try and accomplish side-quests that you’ll receive from individuals in the cities that you’ll find yourself in. I’m going to be totally honest, I gave up on those side-quests as I spent a ton of grinding for drop items and by the time I attempted that the quest asked for the rewards were useless to me. There are definitely some items that are extremely rare, and so you’re going to find yourself having to battle through areas over and over again hoping for that drop to happen. 

I mentioned the friendship bonds, and I can’t stress enough how important they are later in the game, the stronger the bond the stronger their psionic powers become and you also gain some extra specials to help truly massacre all that stand before you. In order to raise those levels you’re going to have to go on Bonding Story moments, you’re also going to have to exchange drop items for presents that you can give different characters. It’s the developer’s way of filling out the back story of all the characters. Speaking of characters I have to say that I enjoyed the dialogue and voice acting for the most part. It was odd when there were those small instances of just text and no voice, but overall I think the voices added to the experience of the game, and definitely charged my emotions in some instances. There are plenty of twists and turns with these characters, so I recommend never being 100% set in what you think is going on.

I highly recommend this game, if it isn’t obvious by this point. I got almost 36 hours of play time out of it, and with the small exception of having to overly grind for a specific item, I enjoyed the flow of the game. I also appreciated the level of combat complexity that was added as the game went on. This of course made combat more exciting, a little more showy, and of course when I was in a pinch it gave me the ability to save my ass a couple of times. One of the main components for that complexity is the brain tree .Think of it as a skill tree that you get to add points to, which you gain when you level up, so that specific aspects of your character can accomplish more in different modes of combat. So seriously this is a game that has to be played.