Beast of Reincarnation Difficulty & Combat Feel: Is It Really a Soulslike?

“Is this a Soulslike?” and “is it hard?” were the two questions players asked most in the first day of Beast of Reincarnation’s launch, and the answers from people who’d actually played were surprisingly consistent — even when they disagreed on the label. This page collects what launch-week players said in the official Steam forums, so you can decide whether the combat is for you before spending $59.99.

Nothing here is our own verdict on a full clear. Every claim is attributed to the player who made it. The game shipped at version 1.0.6 on 4 August 2026.

The short answer: it borrows the look, not the brutality

The most-agreed-upon take, from players a few hours in: it has Soulslike furniture — campfire-style rest points, parrying, stamina-like gauges — but not Soulslike difficulty. One player put it directly:

“I don’t think this should be considered a Souls-like because the difficulty is more on par with typical action games and action RPGs. The controls are very responsive, a good amount of animation cancelling, no corpse-running, and healing is very generous… this is way easier than Lies of P or Sekiro, and there are difficulty settings.”

Another suspected the “Soulslike” user tag came from people who “saw the bonfires and couldn’t help themselves.” The comparisons players reach for repeatedly are NieR: Automata, Stellar Blade, and Sekiro — not Dark Souls or Elden Ring. If you want the tone in one line: a stylish action-RPG that lets you parry, with the difficulty dialled down and made optional.

That said, it’s not unanimous — a minority argue that if Elden Ring gets the tag, this does too, and that spamming the attack button won’t carry you. Both things can be true: the systems rhyme with Souls, the difficulty doesn’t.

Yes, there’s an easy mode — three difficulties, switchable any time

The game has three difficulties: Story, Normal, and Hard, and you can change between them on the fly. Player descriptions:

• Story — explicitly for people who want the world and visuals and to “hack-n-slash through.” One player called it the “story / twitch streamer mode.” It sharply reduces incoming damage but, per post-launch coverage, still expects you to parry and dodge.
• Normal — the default, and players call it “easy enough.” A conventional action-game challenge, not a brick wall.
• Hard — the in-game description says only that enemies become stronger (more HP, harder hits), not that their behaviour changes.

If you were worried this was another Sekiro-style single-fixed-difficulty wall: it isn’t. Multiple players stress the game was designed to be accessible, and note the developers said as much themselves.

The parry window is generous — and rewards early inputs

This is the detail that reassured the most people. Players describe the parry timing as “insanely long,” “extremely forgiving,” and “much easier than your typical Souls game.” One specific, useful nuance from a player:

“Parry timing is incredibly generous, and tuned for earlier input.”

In other words, if you’re mistiming parries, you’re probably pressing too late — lead the attack rather than reacting to the last frame. On PC the parry is Q (LB/L1 on controller); press it too early and it degrades into a normal guard rather than whiffing entirely.

Guard vs parry vs dodge — the one rule that stops you dying

New players kept dying because they treated blocking like a Souls shield. Here’s how players describe the actual rules:

• Guarding costs gauge. Every attack you block drains a chunk of your gauge. Empty it and you take full damage even while holding block.
• Parrying refunds gauge. A successful parry gives it back — so parrying isn’t just defense, it’s how you afford to keep fighting.
• Red attacks cannot be parried or blocked — dodge them. When an enemy flashes red, you must dodge; the dodge gives you i-frames against that specific attack. As one player summarised: “you cannot dodge-roll invincibility out of any attack” — the i-frames are tied to dodging the red telegraphs, not a general get-out.

So the loop is: parry normal attacks to keep your gauge up, dodge the red ones, and don’t lean on holding block.

You can out-level the difficulty

A genuinely important point for anyone nervous about execution: you can power-level. Unlike Souls games with aggressive enemy scaling, one experienced player noted:

“You can totally power level in this… so if anyone is willing to put in the time, parrying isn’t completely necessary to survival.”

Enemies — including the elites that wall early players — mostly just have a lot of HP rather than tricky movesets. A player who called the combat “not hard” got pushback from someone getting beaten up by elites, and the resolution was telling: the elites are beatable on a first try without upgrades, they just take a while to chew through. If a fight feels impossible, grind a few levels and gear, and it becomes manageable.

Combat depth: it opens up later

Several players cautioned that the first 30–60 minutes undersell the combat. Early complaints — “movement feels clunky/static,” “it just throws you in without a tutorial,” fights are “the same 3–4 parries over and over” — soften as skills unlock. From a player 12 hours in:

“Combat gets really fun once you unlock more skills and combo finishers. Your character feels fast and agile, similar to Nioh.”

There are combos and finishers the game doesn’t spell out: players found you can press attack after a combo string for a finisher, and that Koo’s second skill + Emma’s aerial attacks chain into air combos (“like Marvel vs Capcom arcade air combos,” per one player). Koo also gains multiple QTEs as you climb his skill tree, adding variety. If your first impression is “stiff,” the consensus is to push past the intro before judging it.

Common friction points (so you know going in)

Players who like the game still flag these honestly:

• Camera gets messy in crowds and can dip too close, and there’s no FOV slider — one player reported nausea from it.
• Movement outside combat feels stiff/clunky to several people, even those enjoying the game.
• The dog spots everything. Koo highlights enemies and items through walls and off-screen, which some players feel removes the fun of exploration and surprise. There’s no toggle for it. Others say you can just ignore his barks. See our note on this in the beginner’s guide.
• Bosses are predictable. A common criticism even from players enjoying the game: bosses hit hard but telegraph clearly, and many follow a “fight, they flee, refight with one or two new attacks” pattern.

Bottom line for buyers

If you want a brutal, Sekiro-hard test, this isn’t it, and the parry-focused crowd who do want that are split on whether it goes far enough. If you want a good-looking action-RPG you can tune to your comfort level, with a forgiving parry, an easy mode, and the option to grind past anything that stops you — players broadly say yes, especially once the skill tree opens up. Give it more than the rocky first hour.

For the exact mechanics behind parrying, florescence points and bloom arts, see the beginner’s guide. For whether it’s worth buying at all right now, see should you buy it.

Where these details come from

• Player discussion, shipped game. Beast of Reincarnation General Discussions (3–4 August 2026): the “not a Soulslike” thread and the “easy mode” thread (difficulties, generous parry, early-input tuning, power-leveling — players “naomha”, “vault2049”, “Lestrad”), the guard-vs-parry-vs-dodge rules (“Flannaz”), the combo/air-combo and 12-hour impressions (“YoLo”, a 12-hour Game Pass player), and camera/FOV/movement friction across the “refunding?” and “1st hour impressions” threads.
• Official framing. The developers’ stated intent that the game be accessible to everyone, relayed by players citing earlier developer comments, and the three named difficulty settings corroborated by post-launch coverage.