Announced barely a year ago and scheduled for June 25, Scarlet Nexus was approached by us for a few hours. This game session took place online (via the Shadow cloud computing platform) and allowed us to discover the first chapters of the adventure. Enough to lift the veil on a game that was still very mysterious until today. If you want to know more about the scenario, the universe, the artistic direction or the gameplay, this is where it happens!
The game takes place in a futuristic and fantasized Japan, where high technology and extra-sensory powers go hand in hand. So much so that the real and the virtual seem to merge permanently, and that it is sometimes very difficult to disentangle one from the other. This context, described by the developers themselves as “brain punk”, offers players the possibility of controlling a hero endowed with psychokinesis (or telekinesis if you prefer). To tell the truth, the choice is even given to us between two characters: the young Yuito Sumeragi, follower of the sword, and the taciturn Kasane Randall, who handles throwing knives like no one else. Each of them has its own history, but their paths are brought to cross very early in the adventure, since they are both recruited by the OSF (Other Suppression Force), in order to fight against the “Others”. “, creatures as aggressive as they are mysterious. Yuito and Kasane also have an additional point in common, since they are regularly haunted by visions of which they cannot identify the exact nature (dreams, memories, premonitions …?).
This scenario is expressed through an artistic direction that is both classic and unique. Classic because it takes all the codes of manga and other animes (large eyes, triangular faces, colored hair, cel-shading effect on the characters as on the sets …), and unique by its tendency to favor monochromatic atmospheres and to mix real and virtual elements. The red hue is also omnipresent, which is obviously not unrelated to the “scarlet” title of the game. These artistic choices are interesting but, as regards the graphics strictly speaking, we reserve all the same our final judgment for the test, due to the “cloudy” nature of this online preview and the drop in graphic quality that necessarily goes with it. One thing is certain, however: the creatures we face are out of the ordinary and clearly have class. Between bipeds, half-women, half-vases of flowers (yes, yes …), giant goats with visible skulls, half-metallic, half-plant crocodiles, and many other misshapen monsters whose exact location is not known. head, there is something to have fun.
PSYCHOKINESIA THERAPY
When it comes to gameplay, it’s all about the power of psychokinesis. Concretely, the latter allows Yuito and Kasane to regularly swing heavy objects lying around in the scenery (barrels, cars, concrete blocks, public benches, metal beams, etc.) on their opponents. The right trigger is dedicated to this effect, while the left trigger is used to move special and rarer items, the launch of which is followed by a sequence of QTE intended to maximize damage. All the salt of this combat system comes from the need to fill the psychokinesis gauge as much as possible, thanks to combos combining standard blows (with the sword or knives depending on the hero) and extra-sensory attacks. But that’s not all. The protagonist you control does not usually walk alone, and each of his teammates also has a special power! If our partners act autonomously, it is still possible to regularly and temporarily link their special abilities to ours, in order to multiply the effects of our attacks.
Thus, mentally connecting with a character endowed with electrokinesis, duplication, invisibility, pyrokinesia or even sclerokinesis allows respectively to add electricity to our attacks, to multiply the objects to be thrown, to become undetectable by enemies in order to place sneak attacks, inflict a flaming status, or benefit from an armor that protects us from all damage for a certain time. It is even possible to associate psychokinesis and … psychokinesis (!) When Kasana and Yuito are part of the same team. This allows in particular to carry out psychic attacks without consuming the dedicated gauge, and even to unlock a special move thanks to which you can swing all the objects lying around in the corner at once on all the surrounding enemies. History to enrich the gameplay even more, the game also offers us a talent tree allowing us to unlock additional active or passive abilities using experience points, a “brain crush” system to decrease the bar. spiritual armor of certain enemies and finish them off in one hit, as well as a “Brain Drive Effect” gauge that automatically increases our abilities tenfold. In short, the combat system is a priori sufficiently rich so that the player never gets bored.
