I'm not a Pokémon player, but I know the memes surrounding GAME FREAK. Whether it's the rough graphics or the lackluster technical prowess, this company, which created what is arguably the world's number one game IP, has always suffered from a reputation of being "unworthy of its status."
It is precisely because of these preconceived notions that everyone was so surprised when the first trailer for "Beasts of Maravilla Island" appeared. Whether it was the more realistic and aesthetically pleasing art style or the solid sword-and-blade interaction combat gameplay, both were vastly different from the style of previous GAME FREAK works, truly unexpected in every sense.
A year has passed, and the game's official channels have disclosed a lot of information about the title through social media... But honestly, this information has not dispelled my confusion about this work, namely, "What kind of game is it exactly?"
The main spectacle shaped by the game is the twisted fusion of modern civilization and natural landscapes caused by the appearance of the "Corrupted Beasts," along with the giant monsters formed by the merging of beasts and plants. In terms of presentation, it recalls "Wild Hearts," once seen as a challenger to "Monster Hunter." Furthermore, the gameplay shown in the trailer, involving temporarily creating plants and using interactions with them to derive new actions, suggests the possibility of developing mechanics similar to the "Karakuri" system in "Wild Hearts."
However, the combat interaction between the female protagonist "Emma" and her enemies diverges from this "Monster Hunter-like" style emphasizing the struggle between humans and giant foes. Instead, it shifts towards the finer, blade-clashing combat reminiscent of "Sekiro." Especially the crisp sound of parrying when "Emma" faces robots makes one not doubt its potential as a "new generation rhythm game."
And just when you think that, the time-stop commands when "Emma's" animal companion "Kuu" releases skills will make you hallucinate modern JRPGs represented by the "Final Fantasy VII Remake" trilogy, which combine action with ATB commands.
Although we can roughly see what the specific gameplay of "Beasts of Maravilla Island" looks like, it remains shrouded in mystery and ambiguity, making one curious about which direction it will ultimately take.
So, thanks to the invitation from Bilibili's "Youxiankan," we were able to be among the first batch of people worldwide to personally unravel this mystery.
We experienced two hours during this demo event. The specific content played should correspond to the opening chapter of the full version, featuring a large box-garden map, including flashback battles within the story, and three major boss fights.
To be fair, although two hours seems enough to thoroughly play through a game's demo, compared to the generous amount of content officially released, I still felt pressed for time. In the latter half of the demo, I almost had to resort to copying assets just to barely finish the second boss battle.
And after this race against time ended, my confusion wasn't really resolved much; in fact, some new questions arose.
Because it's hard to imagine that the guesses mentioned earlier are all presented in the specific gameplay process, and all have concrete gameplay extensions. The variety of gameplay systems stuffed into this work by GAME FREAK made these two hours of play feel like a large-scale "tutorial."
If we were to pull out the "thread" from this tangled mess of complexities, I believe it would be everyone's initial and most direct impression of this work—"Combat."
The combat experience in "Beasts of Maravilla Island" is quite composite, composed of several systems, exhibiting a strong sense of hierarchy and room for deep study.
The foundation of this combat system is a very intuitive concept—"clashing blades."
This is a combat system based on the most fundamental offensive and defensive interactions. There's no need for much introduction to such systems; the feedback is very direct: parry when enemies attack, execute when their posture bar breaks, dodge unparriable red-light attacks. It tests the player's timing and familiarity with enemy moves more than anything else.
Judging from the demo version's performance, the parry and dodge mechanics in this title have very lenient hitboxes and are quite powerful. This game does not use a stamina system, so counterattacks and dodging are low-risk behaviors. Furthermore, "Beasts of Maravilla Island" does not attempt to become "Sekiro II." In terms of combat intensity, players can choose difficulty levels, and the damage pressure faced by players isn't that severe—in other words, you won't die just from taking a few hits.
For typical action games, this underlying system would be enough to fill the action needs of an entire title. But in "Beasts of Maravilla Island," this is merely the foundation; the subsequent gameplay expansions are the true main body. These expansions are mainly reflected in the human-pet cooperative combat and RPG systems.
Human-pet cooperation is a highlight of this game's combat presentation. Many action games in the past have attempted to design such systems, but most manage teammate behavior logic through strong autonomous AI, such as Atreus in "God of War," the Palicos and Palamutes in the "Monster Hunter" series, and NPC teammates in the "Code Vein" series. Perhaps the most differentiated example worth mentioning is "Astral Chain"—this work used the concept of "chains" to connect the player and the supporter into a whole, making the supporter exist as a kind of alternative weapon.
In "Beasts of Maravilla Island," "Kuu" generally operates under autonomous AI, but GAME FREAK uses a real-time ATB command system allowing "Emma" and "Kuu" to fight with "unified minds."
This command system is just as seen in previous trailers: "Emma" can summon a skill interface to enter a time-stop state and release skills called "Bloom Skills." Lore-wise, these are "Kuu's" exclusive abilities, decided by the player. "Bloom Skills" have a massive impact on actual combat, combining damage, debuffs, crowd control, and more. More importantly, the QTE after issuing the command is one of the main ways for "Emma" to recover health.
Therefore, from the very beginning, players must recognize the role "Kuu" plays in combat and learn to coordinate with "Emma."
But if that were all, "Kuu" would essentially just be an alternative skill-release machine, making it difficult to establish a sense of "companionship."
In many previous works, the way to establish this feeling relied on narrative development, such as the father-son relationship in "God of War." However, once entering combat sequences, this often leads to some degree of perceptual dissonance, such as "Kratos and his aging son Atreus."
"Beasts of Maravilla Island" also emphasizes narrative development. The demo chapter features a complete storyline depicting the meeting of "Emma" and "Kuu." However, what truly establishes the feeling of "companionship" in the actual gameplay isn't just the story—the development team also incorporated many elements into the combat system design to make the two characters "interlock" more tightly.
First, "Kuu" responds in real-time to "Emma's" key actions. In the game trailer, you can see a demonstration where "Kuu" launches an enemy into the air, followed by "Emma" executing an aerial combo finisher. As a regular action, this can be triggered consistently. Its trigger logic is that when the player fills and breaks the enemy's posture bar within a short time, "Kuu" follows up with a pursuit move that launches the enemy into the air, allowing the player to trigger an aerial follow-up.
There are many such corresponding actions; basically, "Kuu" will be shuttling back and forth throughout the player's entire combat sequence. When damage isn't high enough, "Kuu" will help build up the "posture bar" and deploy status effect items to amplify output. When "Emma" falls into crisis, "Kuu" will promptly come out to heal her a bit, and it can even help sneak attack enemies before the battle begins.
Secondly, and crucially, it binds the combat resources of both "Emma" and "Kuu" into the same combat logic.
In the game, players need to manage two sets of combat resources. One is "Resonance Energy," used to release combat skills and "Resonance Overload"; the other is "Bloom Energy," used for "Kuu" to release "Bloom Skills." These two resources are generated based on different actions by "Emma." Offensive actions and waiting restore "Resonance Energy," while precise parries accumulate "Bloom Energy."
In other words, under the management of this resource system, "Emma's" combat actions not only support her own offensive but also accumulate means of attack for "Kuu," who then converts this assistance into actual actions, joining the battle.
Throughout the entire process, the main perspective of combat constantly switches, with "Emma" and "Kuu" always fighting closely together.
In previous trailers for "Beasts of Maravilla Island," director Kota Konoshima stated that "this work aims to convey a sense of warmth, trust, and loneliness." These three emotions all point towards the journey of companionship and shared adventure between "Emma" and "Kuu," who are both outsiders.
To allow the emotions between them to be perceived and conveyed, GAME FREAK chose not only to emphasize this through the storyline but also to present it through gameplay during combat.
This is the most interesting part of "Beasts of Maravilla Island's" cooperative combat system. From it, you can see why the action systems for "Emma" and "Kuu" are designed as they are. Because they only become a complete combat unit when closely nestled together, the development team deliberately split the combat roles of the two characters in the specific combat system. The reason "Emma's" action system is so concise is that the parts she lacks need to be supplemented by "Kuu." This is true in the storyline, and players can indeed feel this during actual gameplay.
Under this gameplay framework, the player becomes the substantive bond between "Emma" and "Kuu." The player does not扮演 either character individually but rather serves as a witness to their coordinated combat.
The game design of combat itself thus becomes part of the narrative storytelling.
This design philosophy of separation, complementarity, and integration is also reflected in the game's RPG systems.
This title features an upgrade system that changes combat builds based on player attribute choices and talent selections. Accumulated experience points convert into attribute points, while combat results convert into skill points. Attribute points increase base stats and the effects of specific actions, also serving as prerequisites for unlocking certain skills. After meeting attribute requirements, players can select their preferred skill paths on the skill tree to complete character building.
In the game, the skill trees for "Emma" and "Kuu" have huge stylistic differences.
"Emma's" skill tree leans more towards unlocking actions, enhancing action damage, and providing specific buffs.
Meanwhile, "Kuu's" skill tree leans more towards applying negative effects, granting buffs, and assisting with damage enhancement.
Among these two skill trees, "Emma's" is very much in the style of action games, pursuing motion presentation, combo derivations, and additional "solutions" during battles. Meanwhile, "Kuu's" is quite RPG-styled, acting as a purely supportive damage-dealing character. This difference in skill styles is an extension of the combat system's design itself and further reinforces the roles they each play in the game. As an ARPG, "Emma" remains the main body of combat, while "Kuu" is an indispensable part.
From the initial impression of a pure action game to the subsequent coupling of various systems shaping different experiences, the perception of "Beasts of Maravilla Island" has changed significantly. GAME FREAK remains adept at presenting the bond between human and beast partners. The incredibly tight relationship displayed by "Emma" and "Kuu" in the game is quite rare among action games. They have also found an excellent differentiated path upon the gameplay models established by many action games—this point makes one quite eager to see how deeply this cooperative combat gameplay will be explored in the subsequent full release.
However, compared to the combat, what impacted me more during this demo was the experience of map exploration—this was the truly unexpected aspect, a direction previously unimagined. In our initial impressions, most people generally assumed "Beasts of Maravilla Island" was a pure ARPG, focusing on linear storytelling and exhilarating combat.
But in actual gameplay, what truly occupies the majority of playtime is actually map exploration, information gathering, and route selection—yes, "Beasts of Maravilla Island" is actually a game heavily focused on exploration.
The reason this part feels impactful lies in the design of exploration abilities in this title.
The abilities showcased in the demo mainly consist of three types: grappling hooks, growing vines to lift "Emma" upwards, and growing a long, walkable vine bridge forward from beneath "Emma's" feet.
Explaining this directly with text is somewhat abstract, so I drew an abstract diagram to demonstrate to everyone how exaggerated "Emma's" map traversal capabilities become when these abilities are combined.
Since "Emma" can set up vine bridges at any location, and after crossing a vine bridge she can generate another vine at the terminal to elevate her position significantly—the combination of these two abilities means that a huge cylindrical area centered on "Emma" becomes accessible through her standard movement capabilities.
And if a map-native grapple point happens to appear in the distance at the maximum height of ascent, "Emma" can continue to leap forward even further.
In any game, this degree of movement freedom would be enough to destroy map design, but placed within the post-apocalyptic scenes of collapsed civilization in this title, it perfectly fits the game's "spectacle-filled" scene design style—giant abandoned robots, remnants of city walls, towering spires everywhere, colossal trees reaching into the clouds, and countless cliffs. If players only had conventional exploration abilities lacking vertical mobility, these spectacles would inevitably become mere background scenery. But when players possess abilities comparable to jumping off their own left foot onto their right foot to ascend, viewing these numerous spectacles becomes as easy as walking on flat ground.
Thus, the map exploration in this game has a tendency of "adding water when there's too much dough, and adding dough when there's too much water." To match "Emma's" vine abilities that allow her to traverse sky and earth, players spend most of the exploration time looking for paths in mid-air.
But the experience brought by this freedom is excellent because it achieves the simplest kind of "intuitiveness." No matter where the player stands on the map, they can always find a way to reach the place before their eyes. By extending vines from their feet and exploring a bit, gaining sufficient visual information, the path will naturally appear.
At the same time, it largely avoids the risk of getting lost, even turning the process of finding your way back into a pleasure. When a game restricts player exploration capabilities, moving from point A to B to C and finally to D becomes an unavoidable repetitive process. How to construct worry-free routes for players in winding maps is also a huge test of the development team's level design skills.
In "Beasts of Maravilla Island," this pressure is greatly diminished—because the abilities mastered by the player are essentially capabilities to build "shortcuts" anytime, anywhere. During the demo, I achieved direct leaps from point A to point D many times, relying on my understanding of the map and the grapple points left by the developers. Previous failed explorations became excellent learning experiences, and memories of routes were constantly reorganized during my gameplay.
Discovering a unfamiliar area and fully mastering its flow during gameplay is a unique sense of "growth" inherent to box-garden exploration games, and one of the reasons these games are so captivating. What makes "Beasts of Maravilla Island" outstanding is that it presents all of this naturally to every player.
At the same time, in this chapter, GAME FREAK demonstrated considerable skill in box-garden (contained level) design. The control of distances between various platforms and the placement of map grapple points were all exactly where players could naturally reach them with their abilities. After repeated exploration, those grapple points naturally appeared in places players could have accessed long ago, serving the purpose of creating "shortcuts."
It was precisely because this smooth and fluid experience of "exploring the map to find treasures" was so immersive that for a considerable portion of the first half of my demo, I didn't want to fight bosses at all, and thus never even saw the final boss.
But a blessing in disguise was discovering that under this gameplay mode, the combat玩法 of this title presents another facet—stealth combat. When standing on a high platform looking down, players will find that most enemies in the map are arranged in certain formations. Although time was limited and I didn't figure out the exact assassination routes for these enemies, I did manage to eliminate all enemies in certain sections before they could react. Furthermore, in the subsequent equipment attribute descriptions, it's evident that this playstyle is definitely within GAME FREAK's design framework—the protagonist's various outfits have differences in ease of detection.
Being able to implement stealth assassination tactics in an open map is largely due to the protagonist's free movement capabilities. Take a simple example: if a player sees an enemy in the distance from a high platform but there are no suitable assassination spots in the open area, they can simply grow a vine overhead to perform an aerial drop assassination. Therefore, if the player wishes, this game offers the complete freedom to become either an "Assassin" or a "Dynasty Warrior."
The design of this map exploration capability is so strong that it can change the experience of the entire game flow, indicating that the polishing of gameplay in this title has reached a certain level, which is also a sign of high game completion. I hope they can maintain the same standard in subsequent levels.
Therefore, after the demo ended, I believe the impression given by "Beasts of Maravilla Island" remains surprising. But this surprise is no longer limited to the initial stereotypes about GAME FREAK; instead, it lies in the solid and interesting gameplay presented by the game itself—even setting aside the gimmick of being made by GAME FREAK, this title is still an ARPG worth looking forward to.
Admittedly, if you look at the demo footage, you'll likely notice that even using Unreal Engine 5, this title is not a traditional high-spec AAA work, with gaps remaining in modeling precision. However, I still highly approve of the explorations made in its gameplay.
Kota Konoshima once said that their original intention in creating this work was their desire to explore new forms of games. Judging solely from the demo experience, they have indeed made a great start. You can see shadows of many mature titles in "Beasts of Maravilla Island," but the game industry has never shied away from borrowing ideas. The key lies in whether the work itself can grow its own unique characteristics.
Just as the ability designs for "Emma" and "Kuu" revolve around the concept of "growth" from start to finish, "Beasts of Maravilla Island" also combines many familiar elements, weaving them together into an uncommonly interesting form.
As for whether GAME FREAK can truly sustain this ultimate hybrid gameplay style and fully挖掘 its potential, we cannot know from just a two-hour demo. Fortunately, the game is scheduled for release in August, so we won't have to wait long to verify this.