There are lots of different ways to use squadmate powers in video games, but Scarlet Nexus is up there with the best of them. Turn-based RPGs like Persona 5 let you control each party member when it’s their turn, but you only lose the battle once protagonist (and all-round daftie) Joker falls. In Mass Effect, you can pause firefights or tap specific buttons to order your squadmates to use a specific power in a specific direction at a specific time. Other games use a similar ‘order them’ system, but with less control – you can tell a squadmate to do it, but you won’t necessarily be able to control how or where this power goes. BioWare’s other powerhouse, Dragon Age, allows you to take direct control of each squadmate, playing as them in combat for as long as you like – if the main character falls, you can even take control of a party member to revive them.
Genshin Impact offers a new spin on the Dragon Age model. In Mihoyo’s title, you can switch between your party of four freely, which allows you to set up and detonate spectacular elemental combos while always being in control of proceedings. However, unlike in Dragon Age, you aren’t flicking between various members across the battlefield – you play as one distinct fighter, and choose at a moment’s notice which of your four party members’ forms it will take. Scarlet Nexus blurs this idea together with Mass Effect’s interpretation of squadmate powers. You fight with (up to) three companions in the game, and they all have different abilities.
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You have psychokinesis – one of the best uses of it in gaming – freely throwing the husks of cars and rubbish bins around with your mind. Other characters possess superspeed, electricity manipulation, and a whole bunch more. As long as they’re in your party, you’re free to borrow these powers – all the characters are linked by brain magic I’m not even sure the game fully understands – and use them for a brief time or combine them with your own skills.
Unsurprisingly, as a huge BioWare fan, I’m enjoying this mix of Mass Effect and Dragon Age stylings. It lacks the fluidity of Genshin Impact, but in exchange, it feels far more narratively cohesive. In Genshin Impact, it’s your Traveler plus three, and whichever three are not active simply pop out of existence whenever you’re not actively using them. In fact, you don’t even need to use the Traveler. They’ll still appear in cutscenes, but you can run a party of four other heroes if you wish. In terms of moment-to-moment combat, I can see the appeal of Genshin. I loved setting fire to the grass with Xiangling before swapping in the Traveler to launch a fiery tornado at my foes.
You feel more in control in Genshin and the switching brings more variety, and that’s before you get into the range of weapons at your disposal. Genshin Impact is a great game, no doubt about that. But a lot of the time, it feels like you’re aimlessly stumbling across bad guys, pummelling them, then wandering off elsewhere. Even when you’re actually playing the main story quests instead of working on pointless dailies to grind for a sliver of progression, you never feel all that involved. Scarlet Nexus changes all that.
In sharing out their powers, there's a real sense of teamwork throughout each encounter. Scarlet Nexus goes hard on narrative – it's basically part visual novel – and even though it doesn't quite stick the landing, the importance it places on plot seeps through into the combat. It also gives each squadmate value. Genshin Impact is a gacha game, so it inherently relies on a tier system; the weaker characters are easy to get, making it all the more important to spend a lot of money pulling for some good ones. Genshin's fluid switching is great, but once you've got Diluc or Childe, you're probably never using it, are you?
Scarlet Nexus doesn’t just excel narratively though – it works tactically too. There's strategy in Genshin, when it comes to switching party members and creating combos, but Genshin is more open because you can take any possible combination of characters into battle with you. Certain parties may have an advantage, and it pays to have four unique elements for coverage, but aside from puzzles, there's never an enemy that can only be defeated in one specific way, leaving you completely powerless if your party is currently lacking. Oceanid Birds, maybe, but even then you need a bow rather than any specific power. Because Scarlet Nexus' party is chosen by the game before each mission, it can construct challenges for you in the full knowledge that you have the tools to address them. For example, you'll need to borrow superspeed if you wish to take on certain enemies that blink away from you. Facing an enemy that constantly blocks? Borrow invisibility and get the drop.
In terms of snapshots of battles, you'll have more fun in any given fight in Genshin, more than likely. But as a collective experience, Scarlet Nexus does a lot more with far fewer tools, and across the whole game offers much more engaging combat.
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