Fans could hardly believe Game Freak was capable of modern visuals—yet Beast of Reincarnation, revealed at Xbox Games Showcase 2025, finally meets triple-A standards. Nobody saw this coming from the studio behind Pokémon.

While most know Game Freak as the force behind core Pokémon RPGs, the studio isn’t owned by Nintendo and has quietly been developing indie projects for decades. Their latest, Beast of Reincarnation (formerly Project Bloom), stunned fans when it debuted at the Xbox Games Showcase 2025—it looks vastly superior to anything we’ve come to expect from the Japanese developer.

Game Freak has never been considered a technical powerhouse, and recent Pokémon games have drawn sharp criticism from fans: graphics have ranged from merely fair to painfully outdated, often paired with performance issues that only now, with the Switch 2, are starting to improve. Still, disappointment with the past entries lingers.

Is This Game Freak? Fans Can’t Believe It!

The technical gap between the recent 3D Pokémon titles and Beast of Reincarnation is so striking, the community is left in disbelief: “I’m just going to say what everyone is thinking—GAME FREAK DOES THIS?” writes TrashStack on Reddit. “What? Game Freak? Where was this team on the Pokémon releases?” asks Taurus23Silver.

“So Game Freak can make games that don’t look like they did 10 years ago?” says ScottFromScotland. “Since when did Game Freak make decent floor textures?” adds DodgerBaron. Reddit is generally amazed, although a few do point out some FPS drops in gameplay.

YouTube comments echo this sentiment: many suggest that Pokémon’s development cycle prevents Game Freak from meeting these standards. The truth is more nuanced—Beast of Reincarnation is built in Unreal Engine by a special in-house team, while Pokémon titles are made on a legacy engine that’s struggled for years. Of course, this new talent and Unreal experience could also help boost future Pokémon entries.

Source: 3djuegos