I’ve spent the last week playing Beast of Reincarnation and I’ve really enjoyed it, though I am not, admittedly, a huge lover of parry-centric action. And Beast of Reincarnation has loads of parrying. You can’t not parry in Beast of Reincarnation, but there are ways to make the combat far less reliant on precise parries and dodges.
Protagonist Emma starts with a crossbow and when I realised this I wrote it off as a throwaway accoutrement that you can’t really rely on, kinda like the rifles in Bloodborne, or the companion drone in Stellar Blade. But no. Focusing on the crossbow and the long bow—which you get about an hour into the game—is basically the game’s easy mode, without resorting to the game’s actual easy mode (which exists, by the way).
Because if you focus on upgrading projectiles they’ll end up chewing through health bars at a stunning rate. While some bosses—especially those with two forms—will last longer than your ammo supply will, projectiles are a sure fire way to absolutely shred their health pool from a safe distance without taking too many close range risks in a game where two hits can kill.
Spoilers follow, but this is me against the first major boss in New Game +. The video isn’t really meant to demonstrate how easy it is, but more to show what crossbow violence looks like when you invest in it. This boss has a second phase, but luckily I hadn’t used a single one of my arrows yet.
(Yes, enemies can still close the distance on you if you’re not careful. No, investing in projectiles will not completely eliminate the need for parrying and dodging.)
It’s a lot of fun to float suspended in mid air, thanks to Emma’s entanglement gauge, while raining down hell on the vast majority of enemies incapable of touching you. Arrows and bolts replenish at every checkpoint campsite, and since these are very, very common (perhaps too common) you can pretty much mainline projectiles from about a third into the game.
The best direction on Emma’s skill tree to start with is the bottom left, where Tracking Shot is the first option. This, as you’d expect, makes your ranged arrows track enemies. Further on you can increase the chance of shots not consuming arrows or bolts by up to 15% percent, which dovetails nicely with a later skill that gives a 50% chance of replenishing up to 10% ammo for ranged weapons for every enemy killed.
Another skill, Magic Bullet, will have each tracking shot loop back around and hit an enemy again once its first made contact. Add to this Scatter-Shot, which splits every ranged projectile into three spreading shots, and you can probably imagine the potential for some intense audio-visual fire works here. Whenever I was popping off bolts the area felt like a News Years dancehall.
But for Scatter-Shot and the also awesome Entangled Shot—which makes every ranged attack “slightly” restore your world-pausing entanglement gauge—you’ll also need to invest heavily in Emma’s Hair skills as well. Overall, my focus on Emma’s projectiles meant that I didn’t invest a whole lot in the mutt Koo during my first playthrough, but there’s always New Game + for that.
The skill tree isn’t the only avenue to upgrade projectiles. At workbenches and campsites you can upgrade each ranged weapon to at least +11, in my experience, which takes in upgrades to reload speed and damage. Every individual arrow and bolt can be upgraded too. For example, I’ve upgraded acid arrows to +2, which increased its damage and the amount I have in my quiver. I put the vast majority of my amber into upgrading projectiles, which probably would have seemed silly to me in most other action games but not here.
Overall, I was surprised by how viable a projectile playthrough of Beast of Reincarnation is. Now, to focus on the dog…
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