Reigns: Beyond (Nintendo Switch) – The review

Does the license Reigns is in decline? We loved the first opuses, in 2016 and 2018. Besides, you can read our test of Kings & Queens here. These games brought an innovative and well-mastered concept. The license then disappeared to return six years later with two new opuses: the very mixed Three Kingdomsthe test of which can be read here, and Beyond. Reigns: Beyond is, like the others, developed by the English from Nerial, and it is on sale on theeShop of the Nintendo Switch at the price of five euros. What to restart the license?

A game with an original concept

Reigns: Beyond puts us in the shoes of a space pilot who wakes up with amnesia. The other members of the crew are dead and only an AI is present to guide us.

Our ship crashes and we land on the guitarist of a music group in the middle of a concert. While the audience is getting impatient, we decide to pick up the guitar to play a wild riff!

Here we are in Reigns: Beyondthis survival game in which we must succeed in setting up an intergalactic music group that will shine brightly.

The concept and handling are very simple. Overall, like all the other games in the license, you will have random events and you will have, like a famous dating application, to swipe the card left or right to make decisions.

These events are numerous, varied, and above all absurd. Are you going to kill the cute rabbits that are eating the ship's cables? Will you free the bear sleeping in its cage? Will you welcome this mysterious character who looks like Elon Musk?

Our decisions will have an impact on the progress of the game and they will also influence the available oxygen, the power and solidity of the ship as well as the morale of the crew.

If one of these variables reaches zero or if you make a bad decision, which will happen (very) very often, your character dies and you will have to restart with a clone who will pick up the story where you left off.

In Reigns: Beyondyou choose your route and sail from planet to planet to become an intergalactic rock legend.

Each planet is at a distance calculated in light years which defines your score at the end of the game. The longer you survive, the higher your score will be.

When you land on a planet, you can buy items on the black market that will be useful for the adventure, you can go to the bar to chat and meet new people, but above all you can do a concert to gain fans.

Flashes that our retinas do not forgive

And if we don't mind giving a concert, the realization of this idea is certainly the worst possible for console use.

There are several guitars that each have their own song. During the songs, notes will appear and you will have to manage to place your guitar in the right place at the right time. The more ratings we succeed in, the more money and fans we will gain.

The concept is interesting. But you should know that during the songs, light decorations and flashes appear at all times. And what could have been a nice mini-game then becomes, even for us who are not particularly photosensitive, an ordeal.

We have searched, checked, but there is no way to deactivate these aggressive colors which damage our retina. We therefore made the choice to play without these passages and therefore to play without part of the game… which is obviously a shame.

And if not, what gives us Reigns: Beyond if we remove this musical aspect? The gameplay is still just as nice and some funny situations manage to make us smile, however, we come away from this test with a very mixed impression.

The pace of the game is quite disjointed and the omnipresent death doesn't help. If in the first games, this made sense, particularly with the idea of ​​reigning as long as possible, in Reigns: Beyond¸ it is poorly integrated.

If we return to each death with a clone that picks up where we left off, certain events repeat themselves in an incomprehensible way.

Boredom sets in very quickly

The bear that we inadvertently released five deaths earlier will, as it happens, return to its cage. Characters who reveal their secrets come back to tell us their problem (like an illness) even after having resolved the event in other deaths.

The events are also far too random and there is a combat section against other ships that is quite illegible in which we die almost every time.

Reigns: Beyond remains a game with a good basis, an interesting concept and a good companion for short sessions (ten to twenty minutes).

For five euros, the lifespan is immense: if you don't mind the repetitiveness, you could have dozens of hours on the program. The game is tactile and entirely playable by hand. It's quite nice and intuitive.

The graphics are quite average, and the musical passage is a disaster of production (we have already talked about it). The soundtrack is nice, not exceptional but it is easy to listen to. Unfortunately, this soundtrack is appreciable during the musical passages and repeat…

We are attaching a twenty-five minute video in which you can see for yourself the flashes of light around the fourth minute (knowing that you have to concentrate to get the notes).