As someone who has been following Scarlet Nexus since it was first announced, I was excited when Bandai Namco released a free demo on Xbox and PlayStation. With the full game release coming at the end of this month, this is the best way to tell how much I am going to enjoy it and see if my hype for whatever “brainpunk” is going to be like is misplaced. After playing this demo, I am more excited than ever for the game to come out!

Gameplay

First thing you do for the demo, and will have to do for the game, will be choosing whether you will play through Yuito’s or Katsane’s story. While the overall gameplay setup will be the same for both sides, you will find that they both have different fighting styles, weapons, and teams. I couldn’t tell if these teams are pre-set for that character or just set up for each character in order to provide a full demo experience.

That said, I did prefer playing as Yuito due to his combat style and weapon choice. If these teams are pre-set for the full experience, it would make sense both story-wise and the way that the levels each character goes through would be laid out.

When fighting you have your standard melee options of light and heavy attacks, but you also get to mix your character’s psychokinesis ability into the mix. Sure, you can just throw things at an enemy, but you can also make it into combo style attack. After landing a few blows with your melee attack, you can initiate a psychokinesis attack which will make your character jump back as they prepare to hit the enemy with an object nearby. This changed the fighting type I was expecting as you don’t really need to dodge much when you can semi-dodge in the middle of an attack combo.

You will also get a stronger psychokinesis attack with specific objects. These do more damage, but also require a form of quick-time event where you have to press the correlating button that shows up after it is initiated. This will be limited due to the limitation of items around that allow this attack, but they even showed it is useful in boss fights.

When it comes to your team, they do more than just provide combat support. There is a connection with your team that allows you to borrow their abilities, which differ from yours. Only the two main characters you play as use psychokinesis - the rest are different. On Yuito’s team, you had a teammate that would lend firepower to increase your melee damage with fire damage, while Katsane had a teammate that would lend electric power to increase her melee damage with electrical damage.

Other than an attack boost, the other team members provided powers that were more focused on the level progression - at least in the demo. This includes aspects like teleporting short distances, becoming invisible, detecting hidden enemies, and so on. The only other skill that was for combat was a defense one that gave invulnerability to absorb damage.

Don’t forget that you also have items to work with that can refill health for yourself and your team, along with other boosts like energy refill for your psychokinesis powers. There will eventually be character updates through weapon changes, equipable items, and a skill tree. They aren’t utilized much in the demo, but these aspects rarely are since demos are pretty short and these would affect the long-play of a game.

Expectations

I am hoping that the teams will be able to be changed later on so we can include different characters in the story and change the abilities that we have to work with in a level. Even if this is a limited option where we could only change with specific characters to maintain a specific setup, it would be nice to have options.

Seeing as how the boss battle at the end of the demo was the same with both characters, it seems like we are going to be going through the same story with the same focal points, but from different perspectives. I am interested in seeing how much of a difference it makes to get these perspectives when it comes to the overall story of the game. Furthermore, how will the game and the anime end up tying in together?

Conclusion

Scarlet Nexus is definitely a must-have RPG for me! The variety in the immediate combat options and the combined use of your team is something that immediately caught my attention. I really enjoyed the short demo and it clarified a few aspects for me. While the game isn’t as difficult as I was expecting it to be, the quality in the gameplay and overall entertainment is on point.