SCARLET NEXUS

Scarlet Nexus puts you in control of Yuito or Kasane, elite psionics wielding psychokinesis and a roster of teammates' own powers, fighting monstrous creatures called Others across an alternate-2020 setting Bandai Namco brands "brain punk" — bright, stylish, technologically advanced, and built around the idea that mental illness and psychic ability are entangled at a societal scale. It launched on 24 June 2021 to Very Positive reviews, roughly 80% of 18,138 total, and five years on that headline number tells only part of the story — a remarkably consistent pattern in the review sample describes a game that's noticeably stronger in its first half than its second, regardless of whether the reviewer ultimately recommends it.

What draws people in

The presentation is close to universally praised. Reviewers across the entire sample, positive and negative, single out the character design, visual style and combat feel as Scarlet Nexus's clearest strengths — fast, psychic-powers-augmented hack-and-slash action that several describe as genuinely addictive across the opening hours. "The first 10 hours or so was truly addicting," reads one representative review, "getting to know a new world, getting used to all the fighting mechanics and following along with the characters' stories, I honestly couldn't put this game down." The "brain punk" setting itself draws credit as a genuinely distinctive sci-fi hook, and the dual-protagonist structure — Yuito and Kasane's campaigns cover overlapping events from different angles — gives the game a built-in reason to play through twice that several reviewers say they did specifically because the first campaign left them wanting the other perspective.

A game that runs out of ideas

Set against that early enthusiasm, one complaint recurs with unusual consistency across years of reviews, independent of whether the final verdict lands positive or negative: the second half is markedly weaker than the first. "I will give a solid 8/10 for the first 9 chapters. Chapter 10 to 12 are literal disasters," reads a 135-vote review, describing "extremely large amounts of unskippable repetitive mobs and continuously re-using scenes." Another, with 128 votes: "Extremely fun and promising start that falls flat in the second half... The story starts up asking some interesting questions and mysteries but then quickly falls apart." A third puts it more bluntly: "I think Scarlet Nexus makes a decent first impression, then runs out of gas, then becomes fairly infuriating. The story is absolute nonsense." What makes this worth naming plainly, rather than filing under ordinary pacing complaints, is how often it shows up inside reviews that ultimately still recommend the game — this isn't a fringe reading, it's close to the consensus shape of the entire review history.

A related, quieter complaint concerns the RPG systems the genre tag promises. "It feels like a linear action game where everything RPG-related has been slapped on top as an afterthought," reads one review, and a recent 2026 review scoring the game a lukewarm 6/10 makes a near-identical point: "whoever designed those side quests and crafting system" gets specific, pointed criticism. This pattern — genuinely fun combat wrapped around thin, secondary RPG trappings — recurs often enough that it's worth setting buyer expectations around: this plays and rewards like an action game with RPG dressing, not a deep RPG with action combat.

An unresolved technical complaint

A separate, more concrete issue sits alongside the pacing and structure complaints: a misconfigured cloud-save system that reviewers describe wiping progress, reported as recently as mid-2025. "This game has a misconfigured cloud save configuration which wiped my progress after an early point," reads a 78-vote review from June 2025. "This is literally something Bandai Namco could fix in 5 minutes but apparently they don't care, as it has been known for years and is still present." A separate 2026 review, unrelated to the save issue, describes a distinct game-breaking bug blocking progress entirely in a specific Chapter 5 encounter. Together, these reports — years apart, describing different specific failures — paint a picture of minimal ongoing technical support since launch, worth flagging directly to anyone planning a long playthrough: back up save data manually rather than relying on cloud sync alone.

How it has aged

The achievement data is consistent with the "strong start, weaker finish" pattern found throughout the reviews: a top achievement around 76%, but a median across 53 achievements of just 13.2%, a steeper drop-off than several other action RPGs in this batch — plausible evidence that a real share of buyers who start strong don't carry all the way through to full completion. Reviews have kept arriving steadily through 2026 rather than tapering into obscurity, and the tone of those recent reviews — several explicitly scoring the game a "6/10" or calling it "mid" while still tapping thumbs-up — suggests Scarlet Nexus has settled into a stable, moderate reputation: liked enough for its combat and presentation to stay recommended, without the pacing, RPG-system and technical complaints from launch ever having been meaningfully resolved.

7 out of 10. Scarlet Nexus remains a stylish, genuinely fun action RPG for its opening hours, undercut by a back half that a striking share of its own reviewers — across five years, regardless of their final verdict — describe as repetitive and narratively incoherent, RPG systems that feel more decorative than substantive, and a cloud-save bug reviewers say has gone unaddressed since launch. Buy it on sale for the combat and the world, and calibrate your expectations for the story before you get past the midpoint.