REYNATIS

REYNATIS was provided by NIS America for review. Thank you!

When I see a game coming from NIS America, I know it is going to be one worth playing. Ever since I discovered Disgaea, I have followed along and loved all of the games they have published. REYNATIS gave me the same feeling that their other titles do and made me extremely interested when I saw its gorgeous world and flashy combat. Now that I have played it, I can say that a lot of the game does hold up from how I felt from the trailers, though it takes a little too long to really get it fleshed out into the enjoyable experience it ends up becoming.

Let me get this out of the way first: the visuals are a high point. There are multiple different landscapes in the game, and each one has a certain charm to it. The metropolis shines with its beautiful lighting and neon signs, while the forest has an eery sense of gloom to its greenish-hue atmosphere. This translates wonderfully to the flashy combat where the effects fly out all over the screen and create a melting pot of beauty for your eyes. The environments aren't as detailed, but they still work wonderfully together to make the game look extremely appealing. It does look a little bit dated when you look closer, and some crude geometry can stick out, but if you just look at the big picture, it's quite lovely, especially when paired with the fantastic soundtrack.

The story itself also complements the game well. REYNATIS tells the tale of wizards who exist in the modern world, though they are forced to stay hidden. To combat this, there are two forces, The M.E.A. and The Guild, who are at war with each other. The M.E.A. is like a police force that employs wizards to combat other wizards who use their powers publicly, while The Guild is fighting for a change to the status quo where they don't have to submit or hide from non-wizards. You play as a group of wizards who all have different goals, but all come to the same conclusion to try to work for a peaceful co-existence with wizards and non-wizards.

While the bulk of the story is very interesting, and I love the setting, it was hard for me to get fully invested in the characters. There are two main protagonists you will focus on: Marin and Sari. The former wants to be the strongest wizard to be set free from oppression, while the latter wants to rid the world of a highly addictive drug (made from Wizard blood) peddled by The Guild to create new wizards, but it can also make people go insane and crazy. I really like the overarching story, and I am a sucker for how magic could integrate into modern life, but the characters never sold it to me.

Some scenes felt a little too forced, whereas some lines didn't make a ton of sense when they hit. This could be, in part, a translation issue, and the voice-over is only in Japanese, but it still felt like something was missing. I never fully felt the gravity of what was happening in the world, and I didn't feel like the characters did either. I wanted to really like the story, but the bland characters and delivery, along with some stiffness in their animations and camera angles, really didn't help.

The combat is REYNATIS' saving grace, though, even if it takes a little bit too long to get to the progression I wanted to see. In combat, you will use your magical powers to take down enemies. This consists of one attack button and two different abilities that you can utilize. As you fight, you will drain your MP, and the only way to bring it back up is to go into your "Suppressed" mode, where you can't use any magic. However, in this mode, you can dodge to refill your MP quicker, allowing you to go back into "Liberated" mode and use magic again.

The way the game forces you to switch from the two modes to effectively take down enemies is fantastic, and easily one of the most enjoyable parts of combat. Having to pick and choose when to switch to dodge and attack is a dance I loved moving to, and it stuck with me throughout the rest of the game. There are other mechanics as well, like swapping party members out, using ultimate attacks, and unlocking new abilities, but I felt all of this happened too slowly, with one of the few bigger elements to combat not really coming in until around Chapter 14. The chapters can go by fast, but if you are completing side quests as well, it could take longer than expected. But once everything is unlocked, it's a damn good time.

To get new abilities and moves, you will find something called "Wizart" around the world, which is essentially graffiti imbued with magic that can give wizards new powers. It's an interesting mechanic, though locking some of them until you cleanse enough of the city, which can happen slowly, was a drain. You can also upgrade certain moves and abilities to make them even more powerful, but even when I was looking for more Wizart, it was hard to find the specific ones I needed to upgrade and it made it feel like more of a slog.

Some of the exploration mechanics were a bit of a nuisance, too. I was not a fan of the one where you can't go into Liberated mode at all when in public, or the M.E.A. would send special forces to take you down. This also included battling in public, which you could just be pulled into for getting too close to a druggie who wants your blood. This forces you to go back into Suppressed mode and run into a different area so the heat dies down. I had this happen a couple of times when trying to complete objectives, and it made the quest take twice as long as it should have.

But apart from all of these issues, REYNATIS is just a joy to play on the Steam Deck.

REYNATIS - Steam Deck Performance

REYNATIS is an odd but enjoyable game that has some weird quirks, but playing on the Steam Deck is one thing you won't have to worry about. Without making any changes, the game can hit 60 FPS and does so most of the time, which is awesome. The game feels best when it's very smooth, especially with how fast and flashy the combat can be. Even though it's almost perfect, there are some changes we can make to enhance the experience with better battery life with some sacrifices. So, because of this, I have two different builds for today.

Recommended Settings

In the end, with how great the game runs without making any changes, it feels just perfect to play as it is without making almost any changes. With the settings on High, except for anti-aliasing on Medium, the game will stick to an average 10W - 14W battery drain at 60 FPS. There are some little dips here and there in certain battles where you are close up to a lot of effects happening, but even then, I never saw battery drain cross the 18W mark, and any framerate drops corrected themselves almost immediately.

I did end up changing the anti-aliasing because it does help battery life a little while not really impacting visual quality. The most I saw was some road signage or marks on the ground becoming slightly blurry further away, but the bulk of the world still looked the same, and while running around, you probably wouldn't notice the change.

This is easily the best way to play the game and would be an easy recommendation.

Battery Life Settings

Personally, I think the recommended settings are perfect and worth the higher drain, but for those who want to save as much battery as possible, you can use these settings. With a combo of Medium and Low settings, along with a 40 FPS lock, we can get a TDP limit of 6 to maximize battery life. This gets an average drain of 8W - 11W, which can add an hour of battery life, but compared to how smooth 60 FPS feels and the drain is quite good already, I would say the trade-offs aren't as worthwhile.

Accessibility/Settings

In REYNATIS, you can change audio volume, camera speed and inverted controls, change language, set message speed and progression, toggle confirming purchase/sale, and rebind controls.

The game does support 16:10 resolutions, so no black bars, and has both cloud saves and controller support. There are no HDR settings.

Conclusion

I really wanted to like REYNATIS, and in some ways, I do, but there's too much against it to call it a great experience. The overall story is interesting, the world is nice to look at, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the combat is enjoyable, but there's too much pushing against it to really win me over. It takes too long for combat to be where it should be; the characters themselves hurt the story more than support it, and there are more crude areas of the world than I would have liked to see. Is there something to love here? Yes. But it does take an investment to push through it. Then we have performance on Steam Deck, which is just fantastic. If you are going to play, this is definitely the way to do it.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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