Is Beast of Reincarnation a Soulslike? Difficulty Explained

What It Borrows from Soulslikes

• Deliberate, timing-first combat built around reading attack wind-ups.
• Large multi-phase bosses as the structural spine of each region.
• Campsite rest that restores you and respawns regular enemies.

What It Deliberately Drops

• No death penalty: you keep all Amber, XP and items, and respawn at the last campsite — full rules in the death penalty guide. This removes the genre’s defining risk loop.
• Difficulty options, changeable mid-game — the opposite of the one-difficulty soulslike stance.
• A co-protagonist: Koo actively tanks, staggers and follows up, which shifts fights toward coordinated pressure rather than solo endurance.

What the Developers Say

Game Freak’s director has explicitly pushed back on the soulslike framing, describing the game as a partner-action RPG — and saying they’d rather a stuck player lower the difficulty than retry the same section dozens of times. Reviewers most often compare it to Sekiro, Phantom Blade Zero, Mortal Shell and Onimusha.

Update, September 3, 2026 — “is it getting easier?” After patch 1.0.10 made flying and ranged enemies easier to stagger, forum players asked whether the game was being softened patch by patch. Game Freak’s community representative answered directly: the team “don’t expect that any changes in 1.0.10 will make the game significantly easier and that was not the intent, but there are a couple of changes they made for other reasons that may also make certain things slightly easier.” The reply also said that at launch some players found it too hard, some too easy, and most were fine with both Normal and Hard — and that the request from “hardcore players” for more challenge has been passed on: “we’ll see what we can do.” At that point no harder mode was on any official roadmap.

Update, September 8, 2026 — a harder mode is now officially planned. Five days later the answer changed. The 1.0.11 patch notes end with a list of planned changes whose first two items are “Adding a new difficulty mode above Hard” and “Adding increased difficulty options for New Game+” — the first time either has appeared on an official list. The same community representative then returned to the thread that had asked: “new difficulty options are in the works. Devs are planning to implement a new base difficulty above Hard and new difficulty options for NG+.” No name, no date, and nothing about what the new mode changes — enemy health, damage, patterns or all three — so the table below is still the complete set of options today. For the “too easy” crowd, that is the first concrete commitment since launch.

Update, September 17, 2026 — patch 1.0.12 shipped without it. Both items carry over on the sixth patch’s planned list, re-worded but unchanged in substance: “Adding a difficulty mode higher than HARD” and “Adding a higher difficulty mode for NEW GAME+”. Still no name, date or description of what changes. One patch of waiting is not a delay by this team’s standards — the film grain toggle took one patch from listing to shipping, the frame-gen option one, the cutscene skipping three and counting — so the table below remains the complete set of options.

Update, October 1, 2026 — it shipped. Patch 1.1.0 adds two modes above Hard: Very Hard, “more difficult than Hard”, and Ruthless, “where Emma dies instantly in a single hit, as a bonus challenge mode”. New Game+ gets Hard, Very Hard and Ruthless options, and switching remains possible at any time. The same patch “adjusted the difficulty of certain bosses and enemies whose difficulty was lower than intended” and reworked some Nushi variants and Shidou, so the base game got harder too — the opposite of the “is it getting easier?” worry above. The notes say nothing about what Very Hard changes. Players’ first reports ⚠ not official: more enemy stamina on the top setting, unchanged experience gain, and bosses that “feel very good at very hard now” while ordinary enemies in Chapters 8 and 9 are still easy. Full notes on the patch notes page.

The Five Difficulty Settings

You pick one when starting a new game — the screen above appears right after the title menu — and can switch any time afterwards via pause menu → Settings → Gameplay. No trophies or content are difficulty-locked (see the trophy guide), so there’s zero mechanical penalty for adjusting.

Assist Options Beyond Difficulty

The same setup flow offers four auto-targeting toggles — Auto-Target for Attack, Parry, Switch and Aim — all enabled by default. They lock onto enemies for you, which meaningfully lowers the execution burden without changing damage numbers. If Hard mode feels unfair rather than tight, check these are still on before dropping difficulty.

So Should Soulslike Fans Buy It?

If you play soulslikes for parry mastery and boss spectacle, yes — the combat loop (build the Down Gauge, execute, spend Blade Arts) is the game’s strongest system. If you play them for high-stakes tension and loss aversion, this is a gentler game than its surface suggests — start on Hard for something closer to genre pressure.

Frequently Asked Questions