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Review of Death end re;Quest

SubjectDeath end re;Quest
Death end re;Quest - NA Edition
ByHelpfulness: 4
Vote: 7
hexashadow13 on 2021-02-17
Reviewtl;dr: A game with a lot of unique and interesting concepts in both story and game play but that is incredibly rough in pretty much every aspect.

Death end re;Quest is an entry in Compile Heart’s Galapagos brand of JRPGs. Compile Heart is a pretty small developer that makes games with a pretty low budget but does their best to milk that budget for all it’s worth. Their Galapagos brand is for games that are more serious as compared to their less serious Neptunia or Moero Chronicle games. While with their less serious games it’s easier to forgive the budget issues, with their more serious games there’s less room for error. Unfortunately, this game gives the feeling that they bit off more than they could chew, and while the game has a lot of great concepts in both the story and gameplay, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

In terms of the story, there’s a lot of interesting elements. The way the story is presented is through dual view points, with Shina going on her journey in the virtual world while Arita deals with issues in the real world. The player has to choose to switch from one to other in order to proceed at times. The two stories also intertwine pretty well. The biggest problem with this system however, is that the Arita side is purely visual novel. There’s a UI that makes it seem like there’s more to it like an adventure game where you can choose where to go, who to talk to, and make decisions but the only options ever available are those that are required for the story, so it feels kind of pointless. Half of the story being pure visual novel wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, rather I love the concept, but the issue is that the story still feels like it’s paced and structured like a typical JRPG story for lack of a better way to explain it, with the events having major tone shifts and random events that have nothing to do with the overarching plot. In a game things like that are kind of expected at this point and most gamer’s have gotten totally used to them. But in a purely visual novel format they felt kind of jarring.

Another interesting element was the bad ends. These are essentially game overs that come with story. There are various decisions that can be made that lead to these. Losing certain battles also results in these. And there are also a couple others that basically involve ignoring what the game is telling you to do, like for example if you lay down bait for a monster and after the cutscene where it arrives instead of going to fight the dragon you try to leave. These are often incredibly dark and show things that simply can not be shown during the main story and many of them also have special art and voice acting just for that bad end, which makes them feel pretty worthwhile. There are two issues with these however. The first is, that while many of them clearly had effort put into them, I would say the majority of them are pointless and basically just some white text describing things on a black screen. Getting the bad ends is worthwhile because of the ones that had effort put into them, but it isn’t really clear which ones did and which ones didn’t, so to get the worthwhile ones you have to go through all of them, so the ones that are low effort feel like a complete waste of time. The second issue is that these are considered game overs and require you to reload a previous save. While most of them let you save at the decisions or right before the battle that lead to the bad end, many of them for some inexplicable reason do not, which is really annoying as it sometimes requires having to fight multiple battles again because you went for a bad end, which is even more annoying when that bad end turns out to be low effort.

The plot and characters themselves also had a lot of interesting elements going on. How occult elements and virtual reality was combined with interesting. The complexities behind how the real world and virtual world relate was also interesting. There were also a lot of unique ideas in relation to virtual reality that I had never thought of before but found immensely interesting, such as the truth behind the NPCs. There were also other interesting elements, such as memory loss, absorption of emotions leading to mental breakdowns, and eventually even time loops. Unfortunately, the script simply didn’t feel solid enough to support all of this and every individual element felt kind of half baked with a lot of portions that felt incredibly forced, not used to their full potential, or that simply didn’t make much sense or are really inconsistent. The twists especially felt like they were mostly dropped really randomly without enough build up. And as mentioned there are a bunch of tone shifts. And thus the pacing too is all out of wack. The ending especially I found annoying. There are actually seven different ‘true’ endings, each focused on a different character, but they make no sense. Six just kind of feel like sequel bait that don’t make sense holistically as they contradict each other and thus it isn’t clear how a sequel would work exactly, but the seventh, Shina’s, especially feels like complete nonsense in and of itself and I have no clue what was going on there whatsoever. The budget issues also clearly show, in that none of them have new CGs or anything like that, so they’re just all around really unsatisfying. The character’s themselves are really great, and I found myself getting attached to a lot of them. However, I would have to say that there are simply too many for the length of the script however, as it felt like it didn’t do justice to most of them.

In terms of gameplay, it is contained entirely on Shina’s side of the story where it behaves like a JRPG. It’s a really linear JRPG in a macro sense though in that it’s entirely composed of dungeons with no towns or anything like that and there being only one place you’re clearly supposed to go at all times. I actually really like the concept of a really linear JRPG that’s incredibly focused on just dungeons, combat, and the story, so I actually really enjoyed that. The dungeon design too was solid enough in a broad sense in and of themselves with exploration that felt reasonably satisfying, though there were issues in terms of visuals and technical issues. But the story as mentioned had issues, and the combat too was a really mixed bag, which dampened how enjoyable exploration was.

The battle system has a lot of potential and can be really good at times, but it felt like it was implemented terribly with really bad balance. That basics are that’s it’s a turn based system where positioning matters as attacks have different areas that they do damage in. The most interesting aspect about this is the knockback system, which results in knocking the enemy a certain distance, which can result in combo attacks with other party members on the field that are in the way of the knock backed enemy. Setting up a single one is simple enough, but setting up multiple is pretty much impossible and basically only happen through luck. Thus when they do occur, they’re immensely satisfying. There’s also a corruption system, where when a meter goes up high enough they enter a glitch state with higher stats and the ability to use a super move. The meter goes up upon getting hit, or the character stepping on bug tiles, which are tiles placed around combat maps. In addition to providing corruption, the tiles can also provide various other positive effects like stat buffs and healing but can also provide negative effects like debuffs or damage. This is especially interesting, because knocking enemies into these tiles result in them obtaining the tile’s effects. In addition, once enough glitch tiles have been broken, special global abilities can be used. These elements add another tactical level to positioning attacks. In addition, character’s don’t do one move at a time, but rather three, which makes things like buffs and such feel more worthwhile since you aren’t wasting a whole turn on them.

Though all of that is great, the issue is that the game doesn’t make good use of it. Glitch mode is overpowered, so it’s best to go over tiles and obtain corruption as fast as possible and not really use the tiles with the knock back system at all. Combat also follows a pretty simply rock paper scissors system with Sun/Moon/Star, but most character’s can only use one and it costs a turn to swap characters, so it isn’t really useful. Especially as you can’t swap a character for any reserve character, but rather only a single partner that has to be preassigned to each active character. Normal mob enemies in general are also really easy, but in the end game you’ll randomly run into enemies that really easily stun lock your entire party, instant KO, or just won’t die until you cause them to enter glitch mode, which is just a major pain in the ass and doesn’t really require much tactics, just dealing with the annoyance. I also don’t think the game does a good job of explaining all it’s elements, as there were things like enemy interrupts that I still don’t entirely understand. The bosses are much better in that regard, wherein they serve as difficulty spikes that actually require strategy. But the bad mob battles are time consuming enough that the good boss battles don’t feel like they make up for it. The system where special abilities after enough bug tiles are gone also felt cumbersome, in that the base abilities are fine in that they just add tiles or buff/debuff, but there’s also this weird system where it allows for genre shifts into mini-games or summons, and that just felt like it was adding pointless bloat to the battle system. The growth system overall I wasn’t much of a fan of either. As mentioned three abilities are used at a time. The only way to obtain new abilities, is when you get the right combo of them and it unlocks a new ability. I think there are also level requirements to abilities, in that the same combo may not unlock them at first but does eventually. This just felt incredibly obtuse. Beyond that, it’s pretty standard when it comes to leveling up and gear, though there’s nothing like a synthesis system as seems standard these days.

While, the game is linear, there is some side content. The first is missions obtained from the shopkeeper that appears in all the dungeons. There are a few kill missions, but the vast majority are simply material collection missions. These materials can be purchased from the shopkeeper though, so they felt kind of trivial. Completing 80% of them is required for the true ending, but they’re so easy that this could only possibly present an issue if you didn’t know to do so. There’s also strangely a tab for special missions but I don’t think there are any so that just seems to scream that content had to be cut due to budget constraints. There’s also a special dungeon called the pain area that’s just a relentless stream of battles, but that felt like too much of a pain with nothing really worth it at the end so I simply didn’t bother.

In terms of production values, the game as mentioned is really low budget and it shows. It has a negative effect on the endings to the story as previously mentioned, but it also detracts from the experience overall. The world design is ultimately really dull and the 3D modelling for it weren’t great. It also has too much repetition of locations, so most locations really overstay their welcome. Thus, even though dungeon design is decent they start getting pretty boring. Running through dungeons quickly without fighting is mostly possible and not an issue since the game is mostly easy. However, hit boxes and such on terrain and enemies were all really off, so that resulted in annoyingly getting into fights even when you’re trying to avoid them. The enemy design was pretty much all monstrous and ugly, which fits in a sense, but got really annoying to look at eventually. The modelling on character models was surprisingly good for the most part. However, animation was really weak, especially in regards to mouths. Also, just in general there were very few cutscenes, and those that there were mostly just used stock animations. The art for the CG and sprites was really good as the art style and character designs were excellent, and the little animation the sprites had was well implemented. However, it felt like there just wasn’t enough, and that having more would really help. The lack of CG or cutscenes during key moments felt like it really took the impact out of them. Similarly, there simply weren’t enough music tracks, wherein the tracks it had were decent enough at first but got kind of annoying by the end, especially as they ended up having to be used in places they really didn’t fit. The OP has good visuals and a good song. The ED has a good song, though it used the same one for all the ending. In terms of QoL features, it was mostly solid enough with a backlog, skipping or fast forwarding through scenes, etc. The textbox would oddly get stuck at times it felt like though. Also, setting abilities was also much more of a pain than it should have been.
4 points