Developed by FURYU Corporation, Reynatis is an action JRPG where we can see two sides: One fighting in search of strength and the other to impose order over the chaos of Shibuya, Tokyo.
M.E.A. vs Owl vs Guild
The story of Reynatis is initially told by switching viewpoints between short chapters. It shows a somewhat dystopian version of Shibuya, where wizards have magical power but face great discrimination.
While the Magic Enforcement Administration (M.E.A.) is officially on the side of the law, they support groups such as the City Watch, who run witch hunts, killing wizards and harassing their families. They throw their own wizards into battle without a second thought of survival.
On the other side, the guild claims to protect wizards, but they run the illegal drug trade which is responsible for turning people into monsters. If your family hasn’t been magical for generations, you’re only worthy of disdain as far as they’re concerned, with only those without magic below them.
Between the two, there’s a very small organization of wizards who don’t belong to either group. Shibuya Owl tries to help everyone, including fulfilling the last wishes of those who are about to succumb to the drug.
Our two protagonist’s stories are initially told by switching every chapter. We get to see Sari’s viewpoint as a member of the M.E.A. and Marin’s as a stray wizard who later gets recruited by Shibuya Owl.
Law and Order
Sari’s story events work well to show how brutal this world is. One of the first events is setting up a new team due to a member from her old one dying by being tossed headfirst into a car. The people in charge are so casual about this that it’s made clear not to be an unusual event. Sari is very much a follower of rules and protector of the people, at least seemingly so at first. Despite making a point of this, we soon see it undermined when she runs into Marin and cajoles him into an illegal fight where she could kill him, along with covering up a few events.
The events Sari is involved in don’t really bring much in the way of surprises. She realizes that the government organization is bad, she loses trust in them relatively early on, and we discover that she has another overarching goal. These scenes are more useful for worldbuilding, showing us the distrust that people have in the government and the ways they manipulate the populace. Between events like encountering an addict who mentions how his whole family will be penalized if he goes in for treatment and a lot of additional content in the background such as phone messages and NPC dialogue, Reynatis sets the scene particularly well.
Sari’s two teammates are always around too, but they’re barely worth mentioning, despite being playable. They don’t really get any significant events of their own, unlike Marin’s teammates.
Becoming the Strongest
While Reynatis has two protagonists, Marin certainly feels like the main character, particularly for the latter half of the story. He’s aiming to become the strongest wizard, and finding a series of portals around Shibuya as part of doing so is a consistent mission throughout the game.
Marin is a rather edgy character. He acts like he’s above others, says he has no need for friends, and even when he gets closer to others, he won’t admit it. He’s quite single-minded about his goal and will even do things like purposely wait around for the enemy to bring reinforcements if it helps him test his strength. As is typical of stories with these types of characters, we do see him lightening up on his standoffish behavior slightly over time through the power of friendship.
His two teammates are Nika and Moa, who are reasonably well-fleshed out, with their own motivations. Nika has an important subplot which shows one of Marin’s more human moments, and Moa becomes quite important to the main plot down the line. There’s also the leader of Shibuya Owl (who they all belong to) who lends his support.
This side of events doesn’t bring any particular surprises either, with a reasonably enjoyable but mostly predictable storyline. I can’t say it was particularly gripping, but it kept me interested as I played. That said, I did feel it was falling apart by the end.
Reynatis took me about 22 hours to reach the end, including the optional scenarios and side quests. It probably should’ve been longer to add in further scenes near the end. As it stands, certain events feel like they come out of nowhere, lacking foreshadowing or having been spoken about as if they’re longstanding issues when their only indication was one scene prior. Certain mysteries involving Marin don’t really get explained fully either. Some well-hidden documents do add a little more background, but it’s not really enough.
Trouble in Shibuya
My opinion on the gameplay in Reynatis is quite mixed. It shows a lot of good ideas, but in several instances it doesn’t quite succeed, sometimes even failing spectacularly.
The basic gameplay loop is running around to objectives, almost always with an indicator on the screen. Usually, it’s a standard case of heading to the next story scene with some fights along the way, but occasionally it throws in more tedious tasks like looking for posters in an area. Various NPCs are around to talk to for some flavor text and enemies wait around to attack if you get too close.
What makes it stand out are a number of extra systems. Ones like the ‘Illegal Wizardry Dispatch App’ which issues a total of 67 very short side quests (mostly kill quests) are fairly standard, but the others are more unique.
You can set yourself to either liberated or suppressed. This is whether you’re letting your magic flow freely and letting people know you’re a wizard, or hiding it. For the most part, if you’re in liberated mode, everyone around you will react badly. It’ll trend on social media and the hashtag will keep rising until M.E.A. comes for you. This is a really interesting idea, not too dissimilar to ideas of being chased by police as seen in games like Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row, but it fails in the implementation.
If you do get attacked by M.E.A., until about halfway through the game, you’ll probably just immediately die. At first, they just one-hit kill you. Eight hours into my playthrough, it was a two-hit kill, but I managed to survive through dodging and grinding their health down. It felt pointless though, as it turns out you can just die then the trending rank goes away without any repercussions. The normal way to remove ranking is just to move areas too, which makes it feel somewhat less important to steer clear of. Crossing the street is enough to get this huge threat off your back. That fast travel is still allowed while trending makes it feel even less important. The other way to remove it is by hiding, but the hiding spaces are in plain sight, like in front of a giant department store.
Another way this doesn’t work is when story scenes and side quests require fighting, then the next stage is to talk to an NPC in the same area. Unfortunately, you need to leave the area and then return to start interacting with people and objectives first.
There are other systems like stress building up until you can’t suppress magic which link into the liberation/suppression mechanic, but again it feels like the implementation isn’t there as it is rarely relevant.
There are also a lot of minor annoyances. For example, messages appear on the phone every so often. These are great for adding detail, getting to know the characters, and seeing some lighter moments. Unfortunately, messages appear out of order, so it can be a case of scrolling through 50 old messages before finding the unread one.
Wizart and Malice
There are more positive elements of course. I really enjoyed the implementation of Wizart and how it links into the Malice system.
Wizart (Wizard Art) is dotted around Shibuya, sometimes in plain sight and sometimes a little more hidden away. Activating it unlocks skills for combat, both types of attacks and passive abilities. There’s quite a good variety of both of these and they can be upgraded twice each by finding repeats of the same type. This creates an incentive to explore and look around instead of fast-traveling everywhere, especially with how Malice works.
The city has a Malice level, which is essentially how the people are feeling overall. Helping people out lowers it, which is done by completing the side quests. You can find Wizart around town, but if the Malice level isn’t low enough, it’s grayed out, so all you can do is make a note of where it is and what level you need to reduce the Malice to before coming back. It gave me a nice feeling of achievement to finally unlock the third level of Wizart I was using and to discover all of the spells. They still have to be leveled up to use the higher levels, but skill points were plentiful, so I never found I was unable to try out new skills.
Dodging and Slicing
Another area where I felt Reynatis succeeds is in the feel of the combat. It’s fast-paced in most instances, with a strong focus on watching the enemy, dodging with the right timing, and using that to create an opening to hack and slash away at the enemy. Later on in the game, creating combos becomes more important too.
Switching between suppressed and liberated is frequent in battle, with suppressed creating more dodge chances and liberated allowing attacks. Pulling off a big dodge grants both magic, the chance to slow down time, and sometimes absorption of an enemy shield so holding back from attacking to watch the enemy and create that opportunity can be very worth it.
Along with regular attacks, you can use spells. Magic builds up in suppressed mode automatically over time, and you can gain bursts of it by dodging in either mode, though it burns away quickly when liberated. Keeping an eye on this and planning out usage kept me thinking during harder fights. Switching to other characters to help manage magic is another tactic too. You can bring three of a total of six characters into battle. Each felt distinct with different speeds and abilities. While most are fast, one is slow and heavy. While five are melee fighters, one uses a gun. On top of this, you can customize abilities and spells, leading to each character feeling very different.
While Reynatis does feel great when it comes to combat, the one major downside is difficulty balancing. It’s mostly a problem for the encounters in Shibuya rather than those exploring areas in a set part of the story, but some enemies can be defeated in a few hits, while others require an actual fight. Some of the side quests suffered from this too, even if done immediately when unlocked with a new chapter.
Atmosphere of the Forest
Reynatis does a great job at recreating Shibuya and creating a very real feeling atmosphere through this. Other areas didn’t seem to get such care and attention.
The most noticeable example of this is the forest. Marin explores a lot of forests through portals while looking to become stronger, and every single one of them looks almost exactly the same except for minor layout changes and the enemies hidden within. From a story perspective, this makes sense to an extent, but it certainly looks boring. There are a small number of other environments to explore, but none aside from Shibuya really stood out.
It doesn’t help that in many ways the graphics look like they’re a few console generations behind. It’s not just the undetailed models of random NPCs and boxy vehicles, but also characters with multiple speaking parts. The aesthetic and certain character designs are great in some ways, but the visuals in general make Reynatis feel very much like a budget title. It feels like a pity after seeing just how great Furyu’s release of Crymachina looks.
The music (by Yoko Shimomura of Kingdom Hearts fame who we speak to in this interview) on the other hand sounds good enough if forgettable, aside from a few standout parts. Right from the title menu, I had to put on my good headphones to get the full impact of the orchestral music, but it sadly never reached quite those heights again. In the game, it has a variety of tracks that fit the scene well. The voice acting works well enough too, with the Japanese voice actors giving appropriate performances for the characters.
Verdict
Reynatis is a rather curious experience. Its story is enjoyable, but it has its issues. The gameplay has some great ideas but it sometimes fails to realize them properly. Luckily the combat is frequent and fun.
While it’s certainly not perfect, I did enjoy playing through Reynatis and I believe others will too. I just wonder about the reasons behind some of the game design decisions made.
REYNATIS IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another Japanese Action RPG, you might want to check out Visions of Mana. Or maybe check out our interview with the creators of REYNATIS, TAKUMI (Director), Kazushige Nojima (Scenario), and Yoko Shimomura (Composer).
Many thanks go to Reef Entertainment for a PlayStation 5 review code for Reynatis.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
