Both of them are ripe for an epic adventure by the end of their respective demo levels, and both feel the right kind of familiar. Yuito is the bright-eyed naive action boy, and Kasane is the more reserved, introspective soldier. agility.īoth of these characters are archetypes, as many anime protagonists are. It’s a fairly standard video game binary, both in gender and in play style: physical attacks or magic, brute force vs. The two have distinctly different styles of combat: Yuito’s sword has a really strong sense of weight when you swing it, but Kasane can chain combos together with a lot more ease and fluidity. Narratively, Scarlet Nexus presents players with a choice of two protagonists: Kasane, a young woman who fights with some distance, or Yuito, who swings a katana and works better up close against enemies. The game’s ornate half-steampunk, half-body horror enemies (opaquely referred to as Others) looks cool, the game knows they looks cool, and the game wants you to have plenty of opportunities to drink in the detail of how cool it is to tear them apart with psychic powers. Combat has a very brisk flow to it, with action slowing down or briefly freezing to luxuriate in a splashy finishing move - like stopping to appreciate the art on a particularly impressive splash page while reading comics. But that familiarity is part of the cultural resonance of anime/manga-inspired stories, and if players couldn’t instantly pinpoint who in their team of augmented super-soldiers was the Sasuke of the group, then the game would be doing itself a disservice.īeyond its looks, Scarlet Nexus also strives to capture the feeling of its influences in gameplay. Scarlet NexusĮvery character has a distinct design and, in the brief time we spend with them in the demo, enough of a personality to be summed up in a word or two, like “timid mage,” or “hot-headed rival.” Is it familiar? Yes. Characters’ facial expressions and body language are visible in close-up and at a distance simultaneously in two separate “panels,” and while this choice in presentation might break immersion for some players, it also teaches you what kind of game you’re playing: a game that has read Berserk. The game’s visual flourishes move beyond the eastern influence in character design, as cutscenes play out in panels, mirroring the layout of a manga page. Scarlet Nexus, in its gameplay flow and visual storytelling, also wants to feel like a manga. Scarlet Nexus picking up the visual playbook of popular series like Ghost in the Shell or the recent Akudama Drive isn’t anything new in video games, but the game, which recently released a playable demo on Xbox and PlayStation, doesn’t seem content to stick with an aesthetic. Outside of direct anime adaptations, it’s the most overtly anime-inspired AAA game since 2019’s Souls-like Code Vein, or the action-RPG Astral Chain of that same year. The game’s influence from Japanese action animation and manga is immediately apparent in its art style: stylized characters with geometrically impossible hair, swinging massive weapons and throwing variously colored waves of energy at each other. Tose and Bandai Namco’s upcoming action-RPG Scarlet Nexus is a big, audacious, shonen anime-inspired affair.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |