REYNATIS Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Gaming is at it’s best when it’s a little janky. As much as I appreciate the advances in tech that a lot of triple-A games have broken ground on, there’s an undeniable charm to a game that’s just a little busted yet full of heart. Double-A JRPGs made on a shoestring budget are some of the strongest soldiers of janky gaming, and for all their flaws they’re still absolute gems to experience. Reynatis will be a love it or hate it game for many, as it falls confidently into that category.

Despite wearing it’s Kingdom Hearts and The World Ends With You inspirations proudly on it’s sleeve, this FuRyu developed modern mage adventure never reaches the same heights as those Tetsuya Nomura classics – but watching it shoot for the stars and seeing where it comes so close is still a hell of a time.

In Reynatis, magic and wizards are real – but only a select few are born with those abilities, and in the modern heavily-sanctioned Tokyo streets you can only use those gifts legally if you’re a member of the police force. Sari Nishijima is a high-ranking member of that magic-enabled police task force. and one of our protagonists. She spends long nights on the streets of Shibuya hunting down rogue wizards and potential magic users who are addicted to the street drug rubrum. Our other main character is Marin Kirizumi, an angsty magic-user who sets out to Shibuya with the incredibly vague and anime-as-hell goal of becoming the strongest magic user ever.

Reynatis tells a really dense story, but I wouldn’t say the overarching beats or twists are all that great. The opening chapters of the game are especially stiff – you’re introduced to two additional party members for each protagonist, and while the police co-workers who join Nishijima are well introduced, the quirky mage girls that end up tagging along with Kirizumi really don’t have any meaningful or well-done reason for doing so.

Despite the flawed story structure, I loved the smaller character moments throughout the game. In an angsty