It’s a beautiful looking game colours pop off the screen and the 2D hand-drawn animations instantly suck you in. There’s all the charm of an old-school RPG adventure here. Balancing both can feel like a chore.ĭespite these nitpicks though, there’s a lot to love about Nexomon: Extinction. You also won’t gain XP in a fight where you’ve caught a wild Nexomon, so you’ll constantly choose whether you want to add a new monster to your collection or bolster the strengths of your current party. To keep your party members equally useful, you’ll have to make a concerted effort to use each of them fairly. But you’ll likely find yourself in a situation where some members of your party have been under-utilised and are therefore very low level. You can equip ‘cores’ to your party, which means an inactive creature will also gain a small amount of XP for completing a fight. Despite your party being made up of six Nexomon, only creatures who have actively fought will gain experience. But they serve their purpose well most are obscure and cute enough to get you somewhat attached to your party.Ĭombat is perfectly adequate, but it has a few annoyances. You’re hardly likely to excitedly exclaim “I just caught a Branipus!” after a battle. Some are much better than others, but they lack the iconic allure of the likes of Pikachu, Jigglypuff and Charizard. The monster designs themselves are a mixed bag. You’ll also ascend the ranks of the tamer guild, just like Pokémon, and you’ll be imbued with the same sort of desire to catch ’em all.
Your Nexomon evolve, just like Pokémon do, and you’ll find other trainers – sorry, tamers – dotted around the map, itching to take you down in battle.
It’s exhaustingly similar, from how combat plays out, to monster types and everything in between. In terms of gameplay, if you’ve ever played a Pokémon game, you’ll pretty much be able to hit the ground running in Nexomon: Extinction.