This review contains spoilers
In from one ear out the other. It’s got plenty of spit and shine and looks the part for its mere 25 million dollar budget, but at the end of the day it just rings hollow. Adding this to the pile of games that proudly sell themselves as ,,narrative experiences’’, but fail to engage me in any way. Why? I just don’t believe that the de facto template for story games the AAA behemoth has imposed on us still has any moving power to it. I like wide stealth sections where I have to hide in bushes and throw stuff to distract guards as much as the next guy, but we can not deny that these ideas have long been running on fumes.
Convention isn’t that bad; plenty of games that don’t reinvent the wheel are good or even great. All would be fine if I either found the story or the pure gameplay interesting, but I see both as precisely the opposite. All aspects of Requiem's design work in service of the story so much so that to hate on the story is to hate the rest of the game. Tightly knit together, they are almost inseparable and I’d wager that is what makes me the outlier in the praise for these games. I don’t get what makes the story here so special. Comparatively, maybe; contrasted with the average game, this sequel might stick out, but if you view it on its own terms it fails.
Nothing moves me here and I don’t get what should.The closest I can get to is a metaphoric tale about learning to let go of a loved one that is your world and accepting that you can’t save them, no matter how hard you want to. Happiness slips from under them from the very start and the respite we find our heroes at the beginning lasts all but too briefly. Little Hugo is robbed of the right to be a child again and again. His sister Amicia fights for the chance to change that. I find that to be an amiable framework for the plot to spring from, but it doesn't really blossom into anything and it just devolves into a series of unfortunate events. It confuses hardship as a substitute for serious drama. Everyone whimpers and cries all the time (or is at the edge of bawling), they are beaten and mistreated, they are out of breath from running for their lives and they often swim in shit, guts and blood. Its devices of narrating are more exhausting than anything else and when Sorobo tries to shock me with the horror of the plague with a disgusting visual and a sharp sting from the string section of the orchestra I snicker at the banality.
It doesn't help that the characters in these games don’t feel human to me. Everything that comes out of their mouths is fake; an alien interpretation of human speech that comes eerily close to something real. Their faces are soulless heaps of pixels and I’m hard pressed to remember anything interesting they say or do.
On top of that, Plague Tale 2 has decided to double down on the moronic side of the story about the Macula, magical blood properties, ancient tombs, secret cults, rat kings and more that it inherited from the original. Only this time it manifests a lore about the Carrier and the Protector that is as unnecessary as it is stupid. I won’t get any more into that, but it completely loses me when it starts rambling about that shit. When we get to the end, the rat nuclear bombs destruction of Marseille proves too much for me; its grandiosity suffocates the last remaining intimacy the story had.
And as a game? I would say serviceable and occasionally fun. It often feels sluggish and a tad unresponsive to me and I get that our protagonists are more feeble and defensive and the gameplay should reflect that but Requiem walks the thin line of it just being unfun to play. It has so many tools at our disposal, but they rarely seem developed to their maximum potential and they end up being samey in the end. Despite that, it’s still fun to manipulate the rats to your advantage when you get the chance.
It is also way too long and that might be because there’s something really artificial about the pacing. I am not saying the games this copies from are not like this, but they hide it much much better. Plague Tale varies between walking and talking (usually a space reserved for environmental puzzles), combat encounters with people that require stealth/action and confrontations with rats that have you thinking with light in order to survive. It needs to be strict about this order of the gameplay loop for variety. There occurs a problem though, when any of these core pillars present itself just for the sake of it. Unwarranted materialisation of rat swarms is the most frequent offence. Everytime they burst out of the ground I winced in annoyance. That's a strange reaction to have about the best and most unique feature in your game. The most egregious example is a chapter that has you making your way through the little fuckers just for your ship to get across a river chain. Clear padding for time.
It feels ingenuine to compare this to a big league player like Naughty dog, but this wants to be Uncharted and/or Last of us so bad that it invites the comparison itself; if you’ve played both you’ll know what I’m talking about.
There's a small detail that delighted me. When Victor strikes for Amicias life, she dodges him and starts running to the nearest exit. She is all alone at that moment, but exclaims ‘’Hugo, run!’’ nonetheless, as if he were there. What a clever little way to show how deep rooted Amicias protectiveness over her brother is. What usually constitutes a gameplay audio que that informs you to press the R2 trigger, is now being reversed into character building. I also love when I can see mosaics in video games, so I liked the chapter that has you infiltrating a ceremony. Lovely stuff.
There might be some moments of beauty here, but they are lost on me. This isn’t a bad game, just a painfully uninteresting one and I venture to predict that posterity will remember these as the games with the rat tech and not much else. I disliked the first game doe, so don't take me seriously, lol.
Convention isn’t that bad; plenty of games that don’t reinvent the wheel are good or even great. All would be fine if I either found the story or the pure gameplay interesting, but I see both as precisely the opposite. All aspects of Requiem's design work in service of the story so much so that to hate on the story is to hate the rest of the game. Tightly knit together, they are almost inseparable and I’d wager that is what makes me the outlier in the praise for these games. I don’t get what makes the story here so special. Comparatively, maybe; contrasted with the average game, this sequel might stick out, but if you view it on its own terms it fails.
Nothing moves me here and I don’t get what should.The closest I can get to is a metaphoric tale about learning to let go of a loved one that is your world and accepting that you can’t save them, no matter how hard you want to. Happiness slips from under them from the very start and the respite we find our heroes at the beginning lasts all but too briefly. Little Hugo is robbed of the right to be a child again and again. His sister Amicia fights for the chance to change that. I find that to be an amiable framework for the plot to spring from, but it doesn't really blossom into anything and it just devolves into a series of unfortunate events. It confuses hardship as a substitute for serious drama. Everyone whimpers and cries all the time (or is at the edge of bawling), they are beaten and mistreated, they are out of breath from running for their lives and they often swim in shit, guts and blood. Its devices of narrating are more exhausting than anything else and when Sorobo tries to shock me with the horror of the plague with a disgusting visual and a sharp sting from the string section of the orchestra I snicker at the banality.
It doesn't help that the characters in these games don’t feel human to me. Everything that comes out of their mouths is fake; an alien interpretation of human speech that comes eerily close to something real. Their faces are soulless heaps of pixels and I’m hard pressed to remember anything interesting they say or do.
On top of that, Plague Tale 2 has decided to double down on the moronic side of the story about the Macula, magical blood properties, ancient tombs, secret cults, rat kings and more that it inherited from the original. Only this time it manifests a lore about the Carrier and the Protector that is as unnecessary as it is stupid. I won’t get any more into that, but it completely loses me when it starts rambling about that shit. When we get to the end, the rat nuclear bombs destruction of Marseille proves too much for me; its grandiosity suffocates the last remaining intimacy the story had.
And as a game? I would say serviceable and occasionally fun. It often feels sluggish and a tad unresponsive to me and I get that our protagonists are more feeble and defensive and the gameplay should reflect that but Requiem walks the thin line of it just being unfun to play. It has so many tools at our disposal, but they rarely seem developed to their maximum potential and they end up being samey in the end. Despite that, it’s still fun to manipulate the rats to your advantage when you get the chance.
It is also way too long and that might be because there’s something really artificial about the pacing. I am not saying the games this copies from are not like this, but they hide it much much better. Plague Tale varies between walking and talking (usually a space reserved for environmental puzzles), combat encounters with people that require stealth/action and confrontations with rats that have you thinking with light in order to survive. It needs to be strict about this order of the gameplay loop for variety. There occurs a problem though, when any of these core pillars present itself just for the sake of it. Unwarranted materialisation of rat swarms is the most frequent offence. Everytime they burst out of the ground I winced in annoyance. That's a strange reaction to have about the best and most unique feature in your game. The most egregious example is a chapter that has you making your way through the little fuckers just for your ship to get across a river chain. Clear padding for time.
It feels ingenuine to compare this to a big league player like Naughty dog, but this wants to be Uncharted and/or Last of us so bad that it invites the comparison itself; if you’ve played both you’ll know what I’m talking about.
There's a small detail that delighted me. When Victor strikes for Amicias life, she dodges him and starts running to the nearest exit. She is all alone at that moment, but exclaims ‘’Hugo, run!’’ nonetheless, as if he were there. What a clever little way to show how deep rooted Amicias protectiveness over her brother is. What usually constitutes a gameplay audio que that informs you to press the R2 trigger, is now being reversed into character building. I also love when I can see mosaics in video games, so I liked the chapter that has you infiltrating a ceremony. Lovely stuff.
There might be some moments of beauty here, but they are lost on me. This isn’t a bad game, just a painfully uninteresting one and I venture to predict that posterity will remember these as the games with the rat tech and not much else. I disliked the first game doe, so don't take me seriously, lol.