You'll Need to Play Pokémon Dev's Beast of Reincarnation Twice for All the PS5 Trophies

The Trophy list for Beast of Reincarnation dropped on PSNProfiles this week, and if you're the kind of person who reads Trophy lists before a game is out — and I am, don't judge — you already know the headline: you're going to need at least two playthroughs to see everything.

This is not unusual for an action RPG. Most of them ask for multiple runs, usually on higher difficulties or with different builds. But something about Game Freak doing it on their first non-Nintendo console game makes me stop and think. Because Game Freak isn't just any developer. They're the people who taught an entire generation that catching everything is the point.

Let me rewind for a second. Beast of Reincarnation is an action RPG coming to PS5 on August 4th, 2026. It's not Pokémon. It's not even close to Pokémon. The trailers show a darker, more deliberate combat system — think Dark Souls with fur and fewer shields — and a world that seems to be about cycles of death and rebirth. The beasts in question are not pocket-sized. They are enormous. They will kill you.

And yet the Trophy list reveals something familiar: a branching narrative where your choices matter, and a New Game+ mode that isn't just a stat boost but a genuine second perspective. One Trophy is called "The Other Side of the Coin." Another is "What You Missed the First Time." The game is explicitly designed to be played twice.

This is where the unexpected connection comes in. Beast of Reincarnation shares DNA with Nier: Automata, not mechanically but structurally. In Nier, you don't get the full story until you've seen it from multiple angles. The second playthrough isn't a chore — it's a revelation. The same character, the same scenes, but now you know what you didn't know before. Game Freak seems to be borrowing that philosophy here, and it's a smart move for a studio that has spent decades making games where the second playthrough is usually just a harder version of the first.

The difference is that Game Freak is also the studio that made Pokémon, where the second playthrough doesn't exist unless you buy the other version. That's not a criticism — it's just a different design language. Pokémon is about collection and completion in a single file. Beast of Reincarnation is about understanding, and understanding takes time.

So who is this for? It's for people who played Nier and thought, "I wish more games did that." It's for people who have a Pokémon living dex but also own a copy of Elden Ring and have thought about the overlap between those two experiences. It's for people who don't mind replaying a game if the replay teaches them something new.

Will the second playthrough feel justified, or will it be padding? That depends entirely on how Game Freak handles the New Game+ content. If it's just higher numbers and a different ending, it'll feel like work. If it reframes the entire narrative — if you meet characters you didn't know existed, if the beasts you fought the first time become allies the second — then it'll be the kind of game people talk about for years.

I'm betting on the latter. Game Freak has been making games for thirty years. They know how to pace discovery. They just usually do it across two $60 cartridges. On PS5, with one purchase and a Trophy list that asks for commitment, they might finally let us see what they can do when they're not working within Pokémon's constraints.

Is it worth two playthroughs? Ask me again in August. But I'm already thinking about which beast I'll miss first, just so I can find it again.