What I really loved about “A Plague Tale: Innocence” was its amazing and powerful story with the two leads. The world is bleak and things seem to always go wrong, but the hope for a better life and overall survival was something I found very moving. Asobo Studio has finally released the sequel to the 2019 hit, that is “A Plague Tale: Requiem.” Boy, just when I thought things couldn’t get more depressing with what they had done in the first title, well I was very, very wrong. The Nihilism has been cranked up to eleven here and it can be a lot to take in. This third person action-adventure series consists of fun stealth, visceral violence, some puzzle solving, and a good dose of depression inducing story all coming at you in waves, but these waves are made of diseased rats.
Like its predecessor, “Requiem” is set in an alternate history timeline of fourteenth century France during the one hundred years war. Taking place about six months after what happened in “Innocence.” You play as Amicia, the older sister to her brother Hugo. Unfortunately, Hugo is suffering from a very mysterious illness. Without spoiling too much, the whole journey is about the two of you journeying to find answers. While doing so the rat infestation seems to have gotten significantly worse. While in the first game there were herds of rats but were more or less just covering areas of the floor. Now, there are so many rats they’re coming out at you in literal waves, as someone who loves rats, I still found this to be absolutely frightening.
The game begins very bright and optimistic, which felt really nice, I was happy for these characters, although that feeling was taken away from me fairly quickly and the more you play it somehow gets even more pessimistic and dark. The developers clearly felt they needed to one-up themselves and firmly believed they weren’t depressing enough in the first game. As someone who for some reason loves really depressing stories (not sure what that says about me), I was very compelled with everything that was brought forth to me here. “Requiem” is extremely beautiful to look at, while scenery can get very glum, the imagery mixes in some beauty here and there to remind you what an amazing piece of art this really is. As for the gameplay, it’s more or less pretty identical to the first, just with a few extra bells and whistles as well as some polish. The stealth mechanics are still fantastic, they add a lot more variety to how you go about taking out your enemies. You will even have allies that come with you on your journey, all of which have their own specific skill that can be helped utilize when being stealthy or just killing people.
The use of light is very genius here too. Light is very important, because it’s seemingly your only defense against the massive swarms of rats. This is used frequently in a lot of the puzzles, which can be fairly easy, but still fun enough to do. If you’re surrounded by rats you will need to figure out a way out of there by adding more light to areas so they move. In some cases, taking away light in areas will be at your advantage, for example if you have an enemy at a distance that is protected by a torch, instead of using your bow and arrow to kill him yourself, you can shoot out the torch making him surrounded by darkness, quickly after swarmed by the rats. It can be rather satisfying to accomplish in a sick way. The game also has a skill tree that unlocks branches depending on how you play, so if you want to unlock specific skills in a tree, be mindful of how you’re playing. Upgrades can also be had for your equipment that can be done at workbenches throughout the map.
“A Plague Tale: Requiem” is not a game for the faint of heart, or someone who may suffer from depression, because I promise you, this game will not help you with that. It’s not perfect, there’s nothing here technically groundbreaking, also for a game that is only playable on the latest generation of consoles I was a little let down by how it is locked at 30 FPS. The frames can also stutter at times, which is a shame and I hope they iron out the kinks in future patches. But for me, what makes me finish games above all else is how compelling the story is. Like the first game, this one more than delivered and I was enthralled. If you don’t have a rat phobia and don’t mind dour storytelling, I highly recommend both games in the series.
8.5/10
A Plague Tale: Requiem releases today, October 18, for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC and in Cloud Version on Nintendo Switch. The game will also be available Day One with Xbox Game Pass for Console, PC and Cloud.
For more information, visit: https://www.asobostudio.com/games/plague-tale-requiem
Related: Reviews by Nick Navarro
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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