Scarlet Nexus

(The following is based on a save file of 62 hours, 20 minutes and 9 seconds. Played with Steam Deck in Japanese on Easy.)

Back in the summer days of 2021, Scarlet Nexus seemed like the poster child for Steam Deck. Playable across all 3 Xboxes (One, S and X), both Playstations (4 and 5) and Window PC, this cross-gen release is what Valve’s gaming tablets are built for. Sadly, it, along with its “Keighley’s” winning sibling Tales of Arise got their lunch eaten by Atlus when it comes to player count on the Deck. Yours truly wrote an unscored review shortly after the game’s launch. Now as a newly initiated Persona sicko (Put 93 hours into Persona 5 Royal and 74 into Persona 3 Reload within 3 months.), I am ready to put a score on Bandai Namco’s 2021 “summer blockbuster” after I dipped into its DLC as well.

While the game plays perfectly well on the Deck, the Cloud Save is well, cloudy. My playthrough as the standing lass back in 2021 did not come through for some reason. So, I restarted as the sitting lad then the standing lass and eventually arrived at what the game calls “endgame” by the 45 hours mark. In this endgame, one can switch between the lad and the lass by talking to them as NPC. It’s also where the paid DLC of this game is accessible. But I am getting ahead of myself, first story and characters.

Pe Ru So Na!

In a very distant future, humanity has evolved, by hook or crook, to the point where psi power is the norm and those without it are considered disabled. People with weaponizable psi powers are put into an elite unit to fight a threat only known as Others. Those capital O Others are weird looking monsters from outer space. What seems to be a straight forward XCOM story gets turned on its head when the sitting lad and the standing lass officially join the force. From there, dead friends, skeletons in the force’s closet, time travel and other weird follow.

From the inside out, Scarlet Nexus is a product made in this post Attack On Titan era we have the misfortune to live in. On the Japanese voice cast front, the 3 behind the trio in Jujitsu Kaizen, an action comic for boys that is as post Attack On Titan as post Attack On Titan can be, were cast to play the standing lass, the sitting lad and his best friend. Actually, the only scene those 3 have to themselves is locked behind DLC. Oh, Bandai Namco knows how to make assholes like yours truly to pay extra.

While the plot is underwhelming, Scarlet Nexus does make up on the “friends you make along the way” front. The sitting lad’s party is almost a carbon copy of Persona 3’s SEES. There is the warm and cute enough “plain Jane” fire breather Hanabi just like Yukari. There is a quiet shorty Tsugumi like P3’s Fukka, player of these 2 games has to ask those 2 lasses about enemy weakness. There is shorts-wearing and long weapon wielding wee-lad Luka, though this one in Scarlet Nexus is far from the youngest of the team, he is older than he looks. Last but not least there is the stoic old-timer Kenma who prefers bare-hand combat like Akihiko. No counterpart to Junpei though, this is an elite unit after all. No animal companion since this one aims to be capital A Anime rather than capital C Cartoon. No Aigis counterpart either, weird how psi power and machine intelligence rarely co-exist in science fiction world building.

The standing lass herself is a more stoic counterpart to Persona 3’s Mitsuru while her party members is bit like Person 4, if only because there are 2 P4 cast members here. There is the James Bond like spy (Well, this one’s psi power is going invisible, as long as not taking hits from enemies.) assassin Kakero, sharing Daisuke Namikawa with P4’s player character. Guess Kakero’s voice is just what P4’s player character sounds like if one decides to play the fuck boy. Then there is Yui Horie voicing fast-moving Arashi in Scarlet Nexus and fan favorite jock girl Chie in Persona 4. The rest 2 of the standing lass’ party are one overly warm lady who replicates and one stereotypical tsuntere lad who electrifies.

The game’s focus on hanging out with party members is very obvious in the post-credits front. The final boss is defeated, credits roll and you can choose to have heart-to-heart farewells before the game let you make an exportable to new game plus save file. The endgame and the paid DLC are mostly about hanging out and bonding. And did I mention that the cut scenes are mainly made in visual novel style? Very little animation and lots of sprite like snapshots with polygonal models in them. For an “anime” game, this one actually has no pre-rendered cut scenes made in the hand-drawn animation style. Guess they were too busy with that animated series back then to make cut scenes for the game.

“NieR” Not quite automata

2017’s NieR Automata would come to people’s minds when they play “action game with cops as player characters and role-playing elements made in Japan”. Scarlet Nexus is no different. Flashes in the middle of combat would remind players that they level up. Of course, the player characters’ movement suite is like Automata as well, like double jump, mid-air dash and sprint on the ground after a dash. Though unlike Androids in Automata getting the movement suite from the get-go, movement suite in Scarlet Nexus has to be unlocked on that skill tree the game calls Brain Map.

The button mapping is not the same, either. Automata, like Platinum’s Bayonetta games, maps dodge/dash to the right trigger while Scarlet Nexus maps it to the right face button. Triggers in Scarlet Nexus are for throwing objects at enemies, right for light and left for heavy, on top of the usually left fact button for light whack and up face for heavy whack. Left trigger’s heavy throw often leads to quick-time events that increase damage, other times it leads to limited vehicular mayhem and more elaborate finish moves when enemies’ other hit point bars run out. In short, after some whack and throw, left trigger can offer some break to prevent things from being stale.

Unlike Automata or even its predecessor, Scarlet Nexus takes its party-based RPG elements more seriously on the mechanic front. Earlier in the game, right bumper plus face buttons allow player to access party members’ elemental psi powers through SAS, burning through Hanabi for the sitting lad and electrifying through Shiden for the standing lass are the earliest examples. Later in the game, left bumper plus face buttons allow player access to Combine Vision, where player can really gang on some damage sponge with their virtual friends.

The melee with telekinesis combat is not perfect. The lock-on with clicking right stick can lead one down the wrong way, leading to overkilling some weaker foes while not enough firepower on tougher enemies. While not as frequent as it would in a Platinum game, the camera can be a foe here. At least there are not as many invisible walls here as there are in Platinum games either.

Being “sugar parents” to friends made along the way

Structure wise, Scarlet Nexus is very similar to another Atlus RPG titled Tokyo Mirage Sessions, aka the Persona like Fire Emblem crossover on Wii U and Switch. There are numbered chapters called Phases and downtime segments called Standby Phases in-between. Standby Phases are for side-quest like Bond Episodes with party members. The difference from the schedule-based Persona games is obviously since player can go through all available Bond Episodes in the Standby Phases.

Bond Episodes are about building well, bonds between player character and party members, 5 with those starting at phase 4 and 4 with those starting with phase 9 for both the sitting lad and standing lass. By the time endgame is reached, the bond levels are usually at 5 out of 6. To reach that max 6, one got to shower party members with gifts like a sugar daddy or sugar mummy.

To access DLC, one has to reach 6s, take on challenges, exchange for particular gifts and give those to particular pair of party members. The DLC itself contains mostly what can be seen as filler episodes, a trio getting into hijinks and clubbing some Others to oblivious. It's consistently farcical. Of course there is melodrama as well, like cut scenes seeing the game’s event from the final boss’ point of view. One big roadblock is fighting a 99 level, the highest in the game, final boss again.

As a game with many tutorials, some mechanics simply get no tutorial at all. Like the more fetch-questy side things called Quests. I got the Steam achievement for finishing first of those during my Deck playthrough in 2024 because I just figured it out. One does not meet Quest Givers to finish those, one goes to the menu and mails things to Quest Givers. Same to the Exchange in shops, I looked it up on IGN’s guide.

Overall, as far as first draft in this roaring twenties goes, Scarlet Nexus is impressive enough on its own. Interesting enough world building, weird enough creature design, variable enough action and likeable enough characters. Bandai Namco had since “threated” to make a bigger, badder sequel. Though it might be doubtable after Blue Protocol underperformed and the company reconstructed. Still, as far as debuts in an era that is increasingly harder on debuts goes, those brain storm troopers’ adventure is good enough to leave an impression.