Warning, this review contains minor spoilers for the main story.
Guards and rats and slings, oh my!
A Plague Tale: Requiem remains a true sequel to its previous title in maintaining the core gameplay mechanics involving slings, pots, torches and stealth. The main change Asobo Studio made is allowing Amicia to use one of her four tools, including her hands, to deploy the various alchemical blobs. This change streamlines the gameplay exponentially and utilizes the player’s desires in solving the various environmental puzzles and stealth sections rather than setting up dominoes with strict expectations on how to make them fall.
The core of the gameplay, between the many cutscenes, involves stealthing past guards, maneuvering through rats, solving environmental puzzles and occasionally fighting off wave after wave of guards. However, stealthing seems to be the main crux of the gameplay with an overreliance on moving between patches of tall grass that the previous title, among many other 3rd person games, tends to abuse. Despite the repetitive nature of exploring the many unique locations in and around 14th-century France in this way, the game finds ways to evolve the gameplay in ways that keep it smelling fresh.
A small but noticeable change from the first title is that Amicia is almost never alone throughout her journey. Along with Hugo and Lucas, new companions Sophia and Arnaud introduce temporary mechanics that allow you to hold onto resources more effectively by making use of brute strength or physics-breaking prisms in ways that allow you to reevaluate the use of space and how to navigate through danger.
Though these temporary game-changing mechanics add unique ways to solve encounters, not all of the mechanics tend to blend well with each other as efficiently as they could over the course of the game. An example of this is the skill tree, which level up specific skills depending on how often the player uses them, like gaining the ability to sneak more quietly or push enemies into fire and rats, much in the way traditional RPGs handle skill progression. However, in this more linear, narrative-heavy game, it fails to involve the player in any significant way. There are few, if any, ways to grind a skill you want, and unlocking abilities is somewhere between forgettable and unnoticeable.
Also, unfortunately, the primary method the game uses to increase difficulty is by throwing more guards at you in tighter spaces, to a point near the end of the game where Amicia has to fight off waves of guards three separate times back to back, with little else changing besides the environment. The game might expect you to run out of resources during this time, but because it always wants to make sure you have enough to maneuver through oceans of rats, it doesn’t shy away from constantly handing them out. By the halfway point, I was consistently full up of all the alchemical ingredients and pots I’d need. However, the game does not like giving out tools and pieces, which are required to upgrade Amicia’s equipment. Unless you take your time exploring every inch of every encounter, you might not be likely to reach any of the max upgrades without specifically saving for one.
As far as making sure the environmental puzzles aren’t too easy, I recommend turning off hints, as your companions are already likely to find ways to explain what you need to do at any given moment.
Tragedy, loss and hope
What fuels the heartbreaking and heart-stopping experience of A Plague Tale: Requiem is the true-to-scale narrative that both massively increases the stakes while grounding the characters with oscar worthy performances and writing.
Although the ending of the previous title didn’t create much of a cliffhanger to draw inspiration to continue Amicia and Hugo’s story, it still becomes a true sequel in finding its footing in looking into the Macula’s past in order to give the player a better of understanding of the Macula and what it means to Hugo and Amicia going forward. As for the story, it evolved at much the same pace as the gameplay did. The character’s ability to learn new information informs their goals and relationships with each other organically. Through these various scenes, the player is able to make connections in the story based on experience more so than exposition, which greatly deepens the understanding of the Macula and Hugo’s internal struggle while connecting the player to Amicia as a person rather than just controlling a character, which will stick with you long after the end credits.
In terms of scale, Requiem does not hold back. Giving meaning to Vermintide, the rats have changed as much as they have grown in rank. Explosive cinematic scenes happen continually throughout the 15-20 hour playtime interspersed with moments of calm cloaked within the insane detail of it all.
About a gazillion more polygons
Requiem was released to next-gen consoles and PC only and for good reason. The detail within the environments, clothing and props has exploded in comparison to its previous title, becoming one of the most beautifully hand-crafted environments in any game to date. Between the colorful and massive architecture with cliffside sunsets, there was always an excuse to stop and utilize the now-popularized photo mode within the game. It made the gameplay more immersive and jaw-dropping than almost any before it, which is a feat all of its own.
You can view our playthrough album here, though be warned it contains major spoilers for the story.
Final Review: 4.5 out of 5
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Matthew has been a lifelong lover of video games since he could first hold a controller, and among his favorites are narrative-heavy, singleplayer games like; Divinity: Original Sin 2, Elden Ring, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Hollow Knight. Matthew also plays tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and Call of Cthulu. He graduated from the University of North Texas with a bachelor’s in Sociology and minored in English.
