Themes of duality, magic and mayhem come together in this new RPG
I need to start with a little background for Reynatis. When I saw who was a part of this game my hopes got really high. The development staff includes Kazushige Nojima, who wrote Final Fantasy VII and was the Final Fantasy VIII and Kingdom Hearts Scenario Planner. Yoko Shimomura, also of Kingdom Hearts fame, is handling the music. The pedigree is there. The developer, FURYU, worked on Cry Machina, The Alliance Alive, Caligula Effect, Trinity Trigger. They’re the kind of studio that excels at AA-level games, that maybe don’t hit the top levels of notoriety all of the time but are going to be fun and unique to play.
And the same is here with Reynatis.
This game is weird; it’s hard to explain, but perhaps the best way is to point to Harry Potter, in a way. There are two main characters, a wizard and a cop. The authorities in the game world hunt the wizards because they’re not supposed to use magic. And so the theme of dual identity kind of floods into the mechanics of the game and the story.
During battle action, we can switch to a mode called Suppressed Mode, which makes us able to avoid any attack with a press of one button. So we’ll be attacked, a lot will start to happen, and we’ll go into Suppressed Mode and start moving around and avoiding the direct hits. The game also lets us jump into Liberated Mode, which maxes out our attacks but limits our ability to defend. So we have to time our hits and our defenses and offenses accordingly. It’s an interesting mix, but it can also be a bit rough because the jump back and forth into these modes isn’t always clear and leaves us open to missing opportunities on the other side.
The extension of the theme into the plot focuses on pocket dimensions. In this game they’re known as the Fog, and we hop into and out of them, swapping between the two characters. The male character, the wizard, is the one being hunted by the female lead (the cop). It’s a very anime-feeling idea, with a lot of wild moments that force the characters into situations where they experience true insanity. I imagine that they let Nojima loose to just write the wildest plot possible, and it feels like it. Can it be hard to follow? Yeah. But that’s sort of the purpose, maybe? It’s very exposition heavy, which is indicative of the genre.
Reynatis is a good example of that mid-tier level game. It’s fun to play, there are a few little things that can bug us, but it’s very, very particularly aimed where if someone is going to like it, they’re going to really like it. It’s the kind of game that we need to absolutely be in the mood for, and the developers are expecting a lot of the player coming into this.
This review is based on a PlayStation 5 (PSN) code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on the October 20, 2024 episode of The SideQuest. Images and video courtesy the publisher.
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