Bandai’s highly anticipated JRPG Scarlet Nexus is finally out, meaning you can now venture into an alternate futuristic ‘punk brain’ world and defend humanity against grotesque alien creatures. Your battle companion?

Your own extra-sensory psionic abilities (hence the expression, brain punk) and other trusted members of the group.

Along with a compelling storytelling and authentic JRPG experience, it also brings stunning visuals and immersive gameplay to the table.

Every journey, however, has to start somewhere. If you’ve bought Scarlet Nexus and are looking for some advice before you dive into it, this is where you can take your first steps. We’ve put together a Beginner’s Guide to share several quick tips so you can jumpstart your experience and get through enemies.

If you’re looking for a more comprehensive guide to what exactly Scarlet Nexus is, our What the FAQ guide will help you understand and decide if Bandai’s latest JRPG title is right for you.

Choosing your character in Scarlet Nexus

To start, you can choose two characters for your game: Yuito Sumeragi and Kasane Randall. We won’t go into too much detail about their campaigns and storyline, but each character will feature different movement sets and party members.

If you are a fan of melee attacks, Yuito Sumeragi would be the ideal route. Members of his party include Hanabi Ichijo, Gemma Garrison, Tsugumi Nazar, and Luka Travers, who are respectively armed with the powers of pyrokinesis, sclerokinesis, clairvoyance, and teleportation.

Kasane Randall, meanwhile, will have a ranged projectile attack in addition to the basic psychokinesis ability, with Shiden Ritter, Arashi Spring, Kyoka Eden, and Kagero Donne being part of his party. Their powers include electrokinesis, hypervelocity, duplication, and invisibility, respectively.

While the squad setup is set for each protagonist, selected characters from the other party may appear to join you in some quests along the way.

Exploration and objects

Scarlet Nexus isn’t an open-world RPG, but you’ll still be able to explore a good chunk of its available map. This is extremely useful because as you progress through the areas you will be able to pick up random drops (they look bright and green) along the way.

These items consist of environmental data points and resources, including money and potions. The former, in particular, can come in handy as they can be used to trade items later in the game.

The drops you collect will reappear after a while in new random locations, so make sure you don’t miss them, as nothing helps more than having an abundance of health jars for boss fights.

Here’s a bonus tip: If you’ve played the demo, don’t forget to unlock and collect two of your cosmetic accessories and wearable plugins for extra stats!

Although you can sell them for 3000 gold, we believe this is not necessary as the gold in the game is not that hard to find – you will only have to grind a little more if you want more moolah!

Fight in Scarlet Nexus

When it comes to combat, Scarlet Nexus’ combat mechanics are similar to most JRPG titles, so the experience won’t be hugely new if you’re familiar with the genre.

Most of the early game monsters are relatively easy to beat, but there are a few difficult ones, such as the Flying Hanged Plateau and the Charging Wither Sabbat, which pose a challenge with their specialized move sets.

These monsters will prevent you from focusing your hits and stacking your damage due to their evasive nature. So you’ll have to stay patient and kill when they’re open, instead of mashing the attack button.

Since blocking is not present in the game, dodging is the only move you can rely on to avoid being attacked. After you gain a few levels, you will be able to unlock more skills like double jump or dashes.

With Yuito and Kasane’s psychokinesis abilities, taking full advantage of your surroundings is the key to victory.

Since there will be a lot of objects lying around during the fight, you will need to be more careful with surrounding objects that are strategically placed, especially in the case of boss fights, where brute force is not necessarily enough.

Allies / party members

The game revolves heavily around you and your team, so it is clear that you will need to choose two of your companions wisely.

Depending on who you choose, they will bring different techniques and abilities that will have a significant impact on your fights.

Early in the game, Hanabi Ichijo, for example, offers great fire prowess and damage while Gemma Garrison provides the ultimate defense. Kagero Donne, meanwhile, gives you invisibility to deal a massive amount of stab damage to your enemies.

Plus, don’t be afraid to spin your limbs around to get a glimpse of their attacks before deciding if they suit your playstyle.

If you want a shorter explanation of your party’s skills and some of the game’s special environment items, here’s a clear breakdown for your reference.

Another key point that has helped us make full use of our party members is configuring their instructions in the party menu. Selecting “target same enemy” will instruct your party to focus their attacks on a single target, increasing your maximum damage.

This is useful in situations where you want to end fights more effectively.

Outside of combat, Scarlet Nexus also features a bonding system that allows you to advance your relationship with your party members through a mix of cutscenes and gameplay combat.

By increasing your relationships with these characters, you will unlock even stronger character abilities to use in your battles.

We recommend that you choose these Bonding Quests as much as possible whenever they are available – in addition to improving your relationship, they also give you an interesting slice of character development and history in the grand scheme of things. .

Leveling

Leveling through the game is done naturally like any other JRPG, and so far there doesn’t seem to be any need to go the extra mile for extra experience points.

However, if you find yourself facing certain challenges early on, Scarlet Nexus lets you explore unlocked areas over and over again to achieve the levels you need.

As you explore the town of New Himuka, you’ll find opportunities to talk to non-playable characters (NPCs), some of whom will feature side quests, so you can earn experience points and bonus items. As such, watch out for NPCs with bubbles above their heads.

Now go ahead and save humanity from these brain-eating monstrosities – we hope some of these tips can help you on your starting journey into Scarlet Nexus.

From the story of the game to the stories of secondary characters, there is plenty of content awaiting adventurers, and the only way to unlock them all is to take that first step and fulfill your destiny as a hero of the world.

Scarlet Nexus releases June 24 for PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series X | S, Xbox One, and June 25 for PC via Steam.

This article first appeared in Geek Culture.