Scarlet Nexus

 Xbox Series X
User Score
8.1

Generally favorable reviews- based on 141 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 106 out of 141
  2. Mixed: 20 out of 141
  3. Negative: 15 out of 141
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  1. churros
    May 23, 2022
    6
    Pros:
    + enemies visuals
    + controls well
    + combat powerups
    + fluid combat

    Cons:
    - irritating characters
    - bad story
    - generic music
    - visible walls
    - unnecessary menus and systems
  2. SuperkenGaming
    Jul 10, 2021
    7
    Scarlet Nexus
    One of the Most Boring good games ive ever played
    Scarlet Nexus is a 16 hour long action JRPG where you play as either Kasane or Yuito, I had to look up their nae before I wrote this review, because that’s how little I cared about this games story. The story seems to be very hit and miss, which isn’t necessarily a good thing considered half of the game is voiced dialog    Scarlet Nexus
    One of the Most Boring good games ive ever played
    Scarlet Nexus is a 16 hour long action JRPG where you play as either Kasane or Yuito, I had to look up their nae before I wrote this review, because that’s how little I cared about this games story.
    The story seems to be very hit and miss, which isn’t necessarily a good thing considered half of the game is voiced dialog comic styled cutscenes… Im not exaggerating, you spend just as much time sitting, waiting for the action to happen as you do actually playing.. some seem to love the story, I however was bored out of my mind, basically youre part of a group of people with special powers, the government is after your brains, youre losing or have lost your memories, something about spaghetti noodles coming from the sky, youre on the governments hitlist and you gotta stop these moon people from destroying earth.. I think.. I think that’s the story… if youre not intogovernemnt conspiracy, half this game.. this is now an 8 hour action jrpg that thankfully is a blast to play though.. you have telekenisis and a sword, you cn slic enemies up as well as throw objects and use the environment to do massive damage, as you progress the game youll unlock new abilities.. which seems to never stop, tutorials will pop up literally the entirety of the games campaign, but as you make it through th story, more charcters will join your party and youre able to borrow their powers as you take on these moon cratures known as others, you can use fire powers, invisiblity, dashing, electric, super speed, dashing, and work up your skill tree to the point that you can stack these abilities, all on cool down.. this is when the game is at its best, taking down enemies and bosses… is the gameplay good enough to justify a purchase on its own though? No.
    Scarelt nexus is insaley repeitve, youre just goin around these very Japanese game styled maps, getting locked ito areas, clearing them and moving on.. youll see a lot of repeat areas, not even counting the optional bonding missions you can do with each of this games characters, so youll rarely come to a cool new area being begged to explore and even if you did there is no exploration incetive, the gear and weapons here are awful, you wont find new wepons, you just by them from a shop that thankfully just shows up in these dungeons, you don’t have to fast travel to a hub or wait until a mission is over to buy consumables, but these 5 weapons for each charcter you buy just will show up the deeper you get into the game, and you buy them and equip them, that sabout as deep as the loot system goes..
    If th sound of a government conspiracy trying to steel the brains of these kidswith crazy powers doesn’t excite you, there is no reason to pick this one up..
    While I found the story to be painfully slow, drawn out, and boring, others are liking it, and for those people, scarlet nexus offers a good package, and a 16 plus hours youll really enjoy, you might even enjoy it enough to play it twice for both sides of the story,
    for me, I could barely manage the story the first time around
    I give Scarlet Nexus
    a 7/10    … Expand
  3. Reed618
    Nov 7, 2021
    6
    Although I really enjoyed the combat of the game there's an extremely strong focus on the story and honestly the story is an absolute mess... it's just cluttered with every sci-fi/anime trope you can think of
  4. TheFrog
    Jul 22, 2022
    6
    I'm kind of enjoying the combat in this title. It's more chaotic and less precise than in a souls-like game, but still gripping and more than enjoyable, it never devolves to plain button mashing. You have a lot of different techniques at your disposal, and different situations force you to adapt your strategy. I should mention I'm playing on normal difficulty instead of hard, because II'm kind of enjoying the combat in this title. It's more chaotic and less precise than in a souls-like game, but still gripping and more than enjoyable, it never devolves to plain button mashing. You have a lot of different techniques at your disposal, and different situations force you to adapt your strategy. I should mention I'm playing on normal difficulty instead of hard, because I wanted to relax a bit, and the game is usually very easy at this level.
    The story is not bad, for a videogame, but the huge problem is the way it's told. It's like the developers wanted to create an anime, not a videogame, so they might let you play for a while, and then force you to endure half an hour of terrible dialogs. And it's not really cutscenes either, since 99% of the "animation" boils down to drawing the face of the character currently speaking, and only moving his/her mouth and occasionally the eyelids. So, in the end, it's more like a radio drama than an animated feature, and oh my god, how long do the characters keep droning on and on and on!
    Do the optional bonding encounters, to improve your team's abilities, and it's more pointless dialogue. If it were more concise and poignant, it might work; there have been games able to hook me up with dialog in the past. In this case, it's just so diluted that I've stopped listening to the decent (*) voice acting and just click through each line, once I've read the subtitles.
    Also, I dislike the characters. There is an opponent repeatedly trying to kill the main character, and does he react in the rational way, i.e. snuffing the opponent once and for all, after defeating them? But of course not, so the situation repeats over and over, with the MC never even getting annoyed at the attempts on his life. That's stupid.

    (*) One unforgivable thing related to voice acting is using an adult voice talent to voice a child. It only happens during a few sections but it's creepy, it's obvious that's an adult constraining his throat, it sucks.    … Expand
  5. MiddleMufo
    Mar 6, 2022
    7
    El combate es super adictivo, es de lo mejor que he probado en ese sentido pero considero que el exceso de narrativa hace que el titulo de pereza jugarlo. Lo he terminado casi por obligación. Quizá a quien le guste mucho el manga y el anime este juego le encante pero a mi me sobra texto. Otra cosa que no entiendo es que para mejorar a tus personajes tengas que dar regalos a otrosEl combate es super adictivo, es de lo mejor que he probado en ese sentido pero considero que el exceso de narrativa hace que el titulo de pereza jugarlo. Lo he terminado casi por obligación. Quizá a quien le guste mucho el manga y el anime este juego le encante pero a mi me sobra texto. Otra cosa que no entiendo es que para mejorar a tus personajes tengas que dar regalos a otros personajes y te den la chapa.… Expand
  6. DrZomboid
    Nov 26, 2022
    5
    Low budget jrpg where only characters look good. Environment and dungeons are bit ugly, story is so-so, combat is ok. Finished half game and deleted.
  7. Phuz
    Sep 7, 2023
    7
    Very average game but quite good.

    It feels like a bit of a cross between Hollow Realisation, Tokyo Xanadu and Toukiden gameplay wise with a Cybersleuth style game world. For me it has everything that should make a 10/10 game but something just feels a miss. A bit generic almost. The characters, design, delivery and especially the sound, all very average. Combat is fun and I have been    Very average game but quite good.

    It feels like a bit of a cross between Hollow Realisation, Tokyo Xanadu and Toukiden gameplay wise with a Cybersleuth style game world.

    For me it has everything that should make a 10/10 game but something just feels a miss. A bit generic almost. The characters, design, delivery and especially the sound, all very average. Combat is fun and I have been enjoying this a lot more than similar games that are highly ranked such as Ys 8 and Tales of Arise. The mediocrity just pulls it down. I'm not usually a fan of utilising every button and doing finger gymnastics but it feels nice to use here and reasonably simple to grasp.

    The combat is fluid. It does mess you around sometimes such as holding LT sometimes won't register, you have to do it at a certain time, which is a bit frustrating. It's also not automatically clear if your guage is topped up and I'm trying to use my move not realising this and then getting smacked up. It might have been nice to have a more noticeable representation than having to keep checking the guage. That's nit picking though.

    The American voice cast is useless as usual, if I hadn't had an option to switch to Japanese, it was getting pretty annoying and would have probably led to me stopping playing. I did literally hit a point where I shut down play specifically to swap this because the shoddy, Yankee VA was grating on me.

    All that said, it's fun. Going to get more hours out of this than I do a lot of other games and it definitely values your time. I feel like my time playing is mostly playing and not sat waiting for begin and end battle animations like a number of turn based RPGs have had me cursing at the screen for recently.

    I do like anime so it is easy for me to appreciate from that aspect but I am also heavily persuaded by a good OST and for me that is lacking. If the game has an excitement dip, the music can often make up for that, it isn't going to do that here but the constant fun, action combat has not let the excitement drop yet.

    This is potentially one I will come back and up the score on as the game advances. See if it changes much as time goes on.

    If they dialled back a bit on some bits and expanded on others for a sequel, it could easy be a 10. By this I mean ditch the cheesy Japanese dialogue. The characters, especially the way they are around girls just seems dumb and childish. You would have to be 11 years old and realising you have a dick for the first time to be all shy like that. I don't for one minute believe all Japanese men are testosterone deficient and making save the world characters talk like a bunch of **** doesn't work. Also the OST. They need to up this. It's minor things to change but those minor things would be game changers.    … Expand
  8. GamesPlayer
    Sep 8, 2023
    6
    It's an impressive game at first, but time passes and you see that it drags on a lot, a game that could be much shorter if you look at its proposal.

Awards & Rankings

37
#37 Best Xbox Series X Game of 2021
28
#28 Most Discussed Xbox Series X Game of 2021

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
77

Generally favorable reviews - based on 22 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 22
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 22
  3. Negative: 0 out of 22
  1. Vgames
    Dec 27, 2021
    85
    Scarlet Nexus is an amazing Japanese action RPG game, at the start it could give a feeling of an average anime game, but the amazing designs, blend of action and RPG, interesting story are a great blend to one of 2021 games you don't want to miss.
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  2. Gamers' Temple
    Jul 19, 2021
    76
    While I did have some fun with Scarlet Nexus, I am left with the feeling that it could have been more. If there was more life to the city, and any life at all to the frequently drab mission locations, all of the traversal in the game would have felt a lot less like traversal and the world would have felt more immersive and fleshed-out. The combat has its unique aspects, but there is a repetition to it that is exposed by the volume of battles that you will fight against the same enemy types. While it is a plus that the game essentially gives you two campaigns, you may find yourself having had enough after making it through one.
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  3. SomosXbox
    Jul 8, 2021
    88
    Scarlet Nexus is arguably one of Bandai Namco's best games. Its deep combat system and a plot that makes you want to know more at every turn make the game a highly recommended product for fans of the ARPG genre.
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