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Rats, rats, rats
When A Plague Tale: Innocence was released back in 2019, it took the world by storm. Its beautiful graphics, intrigued gameplay, settings and story was something new. It had its flaws, but still it managed to entertain players. Three years later we got a sequel to the game, A Plague Tale: Requiem. I had high hopes for the game, because the first one was nearly perfect game, so maybe the developer now had refined it to the perfection?
The Innocence is gone
A Plague Tale: Requiem takes place six months after the first game, where Amicia and Hugo defeated Grand Inquisitor and foiled the Inquisition’s malicious plans. Hugo still has the sickness, Macula, in him. They thought his powers were under control, but they are awoken yet again. With that comes the rats that literally destroys everything and kill all people in sight. But, there’s a hope; in Hugo’s dreams he sees an island where he thinks lies the cure for his illness.
So, that’s pretty much the basic storyline. It surely has twitst and turns, and all kinds of new characters are introduced in the game. The gameplay is pretty much the same, but this time Amicia and Hugo has new moves in they use. The only thing that I must say immediately, that the game introduces new moves throughout the game, but then they aren’t basically used anymore in the game. It introduces lots of other things, but seems like they had too many ideas and the game would’ve benefit for it being more simple.
The same gameplay issues than before
Then comes the bugs that might just ruin your gameplay completely. There are scenarios where I had to sneak amongst the enemies and also deal with the rats. Amicia had lots of different items she can use, then there’s the light that have to be used against the rats (because they are afraid of it), then there’s the soldiers that varies, meaning some I can kill and some I cannot because they have armor on them. So it is a lot to think about and to do. In these situations, where even millimeter out of light might get me eaten by rats, and I have a NPC with me that might suddenly run somewhere and die. Or the janky gameplay in general get me killed. So, there’s lots of dying and fustration with this game, in all together. So don’t expect perfect and polished game at all, it still has the same issues like they had with the first game.
What comes to the overall length of the game; it is a way too long. This is an issue what I see in lots of games. They don’t know when to just cut things off. Every time when I thought that the game is about to end, a new thing happened and the game went on. It was very much like this: a peaceful moment with Amicia and Hugo and everything is fine, then the rats came and destroyed the whole city and ate all the people, then they have to survive through it and soldiers, then a peaceful moment again… so it was very much rinse and repeat. It only took so much until the effect of it dies.
Visually, the game looked a-ma-zing!! I took so many screenshots and used photo mode all the time. The game is gory and dreadful, and it’s not even shy about it. The game is very emotional and the storytelling is good. What makes it even better, is the voice acting, which was great, but might get little used to first. The relationship between Amicia and Hugo feels genuine, and it’s very endearing.
The puzzles, the few that were introduced, weren’t that hard to solve. There was only one puzzle that took me a while to solve.
The Final Verdict
A Plague Tale: Requiem is a good game. It is longer than the first one. It introduces new characters, huge areas and cities, new gameplay mechanics and graphically it is a very polished game. I liked the story, even though the game was a way too long and streched. Do I recommend it, is it a must play? Yes, it is.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is available on PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, xCloud and PC.
SCORE:
4/5
“The relationship between Amicia and Hugo feels genuine, and it’s very endearing.”
One More Level 