A Game I have been Playing: Scarlet Nexus

Scarlet Nexus, on the PlayStation 5

This game was released back in 2021, by BANDAI NAMCO. This one is an Action-RPG like, Devil May Cry, Astral Chain, and Tales of Arise, in which there is some Tales fingerprint in Scarlet. I mean, you even get Alphen’s Blazing Sword and its broken mask in this game.

I’ve had this game on my radar for quite some time, eventually, I forgot about it until it appeared in my Monthly Games on the PS Plus. I downloaded it right away and added it to my backlog, until this last weekend when I decided to check it out.

Scarlet Nexus takes place in a futuristic/alternate reality where some people are gifted with powers of the mind like Pyrokinesis, Clairvoyance, Teleportation, and others. There are augmented-reality-like advertisements around the city, people can send messages directly to each others’ brains, and those with combat abilities are recruited in an organization called the OSF (Others Suppression Force) to battle against otherworldly creepy-looking things known as Others which some remind me to the monsters in Stranger Things, to be honest. What are the Others? I am still unclear, I am only 4 to 5 hours into the story, and there hasn’t been a lot of information, yet, to get the whole picture. In these first few hours, it has been a lot of, training, and character development. There are two playable characters in the game, Yuito, and Kasane, with both, having their own story to follow.

The game is very Anime-like, in fact, my wife thought I was watching CrunchyRoll rather than playing a video game. The art is great, and the voice acting is not bad. When I first experienced the combat, I immediately got some Astral Chain vibes, and if you haven’t played this game, do yourself a favor and play it! Not sure if it’s the art style or the combat system but I felt right at home. The combat it’s pretty fluid and fast-paced, think of Devil May Cry without the combo system though. For most of the missions, you will have at least one OSF member, sometimes two, with you and they can lend their powers to enhance yours during combat. This makes combat more variable and fun. There are some sweet combos to perform and awesome, very satisfying, finishers.

I did not think I was gonna stick to it as at first I felt like it was way too slow, sometimes I forget RPGs do start to slow. But once you get the combat down and you start doing some missions, it kinda gets hard to put down. So yeah, I am having a blast with this one.