Nexomon: Extinction

A monster taming game for people who want pokemon, but a bit different.
Reviewed after getting 100% achievements.
Pros:
- Tons of monsters with unique designs to collect and train
- The game opens up quickly and does not railroad you into the critical path too heavily
- A surprisingly engaging story with a few really great moments
- Early monster variety is huge. No being stuck with an early rat and bird here!
- Most monster designs feel creative, while a few do feel like bootleg versions of existing pokemon
Mixed:
- The story treats Nexomon like tools and never gives them any personality. If you enjoyed bonding with your pokemon friends in those games, you will find absolutely none of that here.
- Coco, your travelling companion loves to drop fourth wall breaking jokes in almost every cutscene. Some land, some don't.
- Battles scale their level based on your highest level nexomon. This includes wild encounters.
Cons:
- Every nexomon has basically the same exact stat spread. You won't be seeing speedy glass cannons or slow defensive walls. The giant stone turtle? Just as bulky and just as fast as the little electric lizard.
- Attack priority is mostly based on the move selection rather than the speed stat. More powerful attacks tend to be slower. I have no idea what the speed stat is supposed to do.
- Status moves are mostly useless. The most common stat boosting move gives a tiny 15% boost to attack and defense. For reference, a move in pokemon that boosts a stat by one stage gives a 50% stat boost.
- There is a move so profoundly useless, I couldn't help but laugh. The move in question has a 30% chance to instantly kill a nexomon 15 levels below the user's level. Due to everything scaling in level, this move will never have a valid target. It isn't a major flaw, but I thought it was pretty funny.

Definitly play Nexomon 1 first!
This is a sequel, the story is directly connected and a lot of stuff will go over your head if you dont play the first game before.
It is a lot tougher then the first game, especially in the final stretch it was suprisingly challanging.
Part of the reason why is that the world scales with your level, so you cant really grind to get an advantage, because your opponents will get stronger as well.
A bit of an downgrade from the first game is the combat variety, because each Nexomon can only use attacks of its own type or normal type. In the first game this wasn't the case, so a bit of a weird decision.
The story was pretty strong again, and the game doubled-down on the dry jumor and fourth-wall breaks from the first one, especially with the new sidekick Coco

I've bought the game so my 7 year old nephew could play a "Pokemon" on my Steam Deck.
He has loved the graphics and the general story.
With this game, I've finally made him understand and appreciate the concept of leveling to become "OP" before moving on (with the associated life lesson).
He has played it almost 3 hours straight when he originally wanted to try all my new games, so I know he got hooked.
I'd say it's a success. My plan to replace his Nintendo with a Steam Deck of his own is one step closer to completion (insert evil laugh here)
While watching him play, I've appreciated the art, the music and I'm fond of the cynical "cat" and his perpetually sarcastic comments.
I may play a bit myself as now I'm a bit curious to see where the story goes.
The only remark I'd have is that I only found a way to change the language after the story introduction. Not much of an issue.

Great mon game just like the first Nexomon. The story is really interesting again, taking you on quite a journey. I would give it the edge over the first one too. In every other regard Extinction is a step up as well, the mechanics have been refined and the overworld made more interesting too. It´s also a longer game than the first, so it´s well worth the higher price.

Played 142 hours. Completed all achievements except one that’s broken (still unfixed as of writing).

This is a Pokémon-style monster collector with its own IP. Over 400 Nexomon, decent designs, and a world that feels alive with its own mythology—tyrants, legendaries, ancient factions. It genuinely sets the stage for a great sequel set years later, with this game acting as the legendary past.

But then... it shoots itself in the foot. The story is undermined by constant fourth-wall breaking and meta jokes, which ruin immersion. The writing doesn't commit to the tone it builds.

Combat? Too easy. You can brute-force the entire game with one Nexomon and enough items. No challenge, no scaling, and the AI is paper-thin. For experienced players, this will feel like sleepwalking.

Postgame content is good, not extensive. But the Custom Mode unlocked after the story is excellent—Nuzlocke rules, permadeath, EXP/money tuning, level cap removal, and save carryover. That’s where the real difficulty and replayability kick in.

Now the real flaw: no keybinding support on PC. You're not stuck if you don't have a controller—there are third-party tools—but for a PC release, it's lazy and poorly optimized. It plays like a console port that was never properly adapted.

Still… at €2 or $2, it’s absolutely worth it. If you’re a Pokémon fan, a casual player, or buying for a kid, this is a solid pickup. Just don’t expect polish or challenge.

Score: 7/10
Flawed but full of potential. Buy it on sale. Watch for a sequel—it could be great.

It's like Pokemon but less complex. There's a lot of monsters and they're all pretty well designed. It's also nice that you can see catch rates in battle. The story is alright, even if you never played the original, and some of the dialogue is pretty funny. There is level scaling, but if you overlevel too much the game won't catch up. However, It suffers from quite a bit of padding. There's quite a few Nexomon that have low spawn rates and only appear in one section of one patch of grass in the entire game. Also the mining for shards sucks since it's totally random what type you get and the pickaxe upgrade doesn't even guarantee multiple shards, plus they add a 4th tier of cores that doesn't show up until you beat the game. And you can't even use low level cores to upgrade to stronger versions so if you ever build a level 1-3 core you're out of luck for crafting the tier 4 ones. Cores are a massive time waster as well, since if you ever change your party out you have to reequip cores one at a time. This is especially annoying if you ever want to cheese heals with the portable storage if there aren't any healing rocks nearby. And aside from those time wasters, my biggest issue is that the music blows. There aren't many tracks and most of them are generic and/or bad. Mainly giving a positive review since it was like $2 on sale.

Nexomon Extinction is definitely a MUST for those who are into monster tamer/creature collector genre! the designs of the character/NPCs sprites are so stunning and are distinct from one another! the monsters in Nexomon Extinction looks amazing and cool too! honestly one of the best creature collector games on PC for me hands down! also, don't forget to talk/interact with every NPCs that are found in the game as some of them will give you free items etc