Plague Legend: Requiem Review: An Excellent Continuation with Surprise and Regret Coexisting

In May 2019, "Plague Legend: Innocence" was released. This 2A level narrative driven game did not attract much attention from players during its promotion, but with excellent art and unique background settings, it received a lot of praise after its release and was hailed as a "dark horse" work.

Plague Legend: Requiem has made significant optimization improvements to the previously criticized gameplay of being monotonous and boring, and has further improved in terms of visual expression and atmosphere rendering. Unfortunately, this game still has significant advantages and disadvantages.

*This review is based on version 1.001 of the PS5 platform. The descriptions and opinions on gameplay and plot performance in the review only represent the subjective opinions of the reviewers, and the actual game experience varies from person to person.

A Journey to the Middle Ages with Endless Scenery

From "The Plague: Innocence" to "Microsoft Flight Simulator," we can see that art and visual representation are actually the strengths of the developer Asobo Studio. In "The Legend of the Plague: Requiem," the official achieved even better results in this regard. The environmental styles in this work are very diverse and unique, and the expectation for new scenes even goes beyond curiosity about the plot, becoming the biggest reason that attracts me to keep playing.

In the previous installment, there were few truly sunny levels throughout the entire process. But in this "Plague Legend: Requiem", players can follow Amisia and Hugo through several warm and beautiful scenes, including vast flower fields, peaceful beaches, magnificent castles, solemn ruins, etc., as if the hellish battlefield and deserted village were just a terrible nightmare before.

In many places, Plague Legend: Requiem will set a large building in the distance as its destination. Players only need to walk in that direction and can make any twists and turns they want along the way. After climbing high points such as castles, looking back and overlooking the entire city, I had a panoramic view of markets, ports, slums, arena, farmland, and other areas, which gave me a pleasure that even Assassin's Creed in the past two years had not been able to provide.

In addition to natural landscapes, players also have the opportunity to experience the cultural customs of the Middle Ages in Plague Legend: Requiem, such as visiting bustling markets or participating in festival celebrations on Mediterranean islands. With the support of Chinese dubbing, the experience of this part has been further enhanced - strolling through the bustling town, I can hear street vendors shouting and selling in very localized Chinese; When passing by a small alley, I can effortlessly hear the low voice conversations of passersby in the dark without subtitles... All of these make the entire gaming world more lively.

And in the dark and oppressive scene, the performance of "Plague Legend: Requiem" was also unequivocal, leaving a deep impression on me.

To be honest, the grass, flowers, and other items in this game actually look a bit rough, which is in line with the technical level of a second tier developer. But the official seems to be particularly meticulous when it comes to showcasing things like scattered internal organs and flesh, as well as blood dripping and flowing in muddy alleys, with a full force of twelve points.

I still can't forget that there is a process in the game that requires Amisia to cross a river soaked with dead bodies. As soon as I got into the water, I was shocked - this group, who couldn't even figure out how to open the door, actually created the effect of mud mixed with the oil flowing out of the corpse when it decayed, floating on the water surface. Moreover, when the protagonist passed by, these impurities had a different flow effect from the surrounding ordinary water.

As for the portrayal of mice in The Plague: Requiem, there is no spare effort. According to the official introduction, the maximum number of mice on the same screen in this game is 300000, which is six times that of the previous game. In fact, I had some disdain for this statement before - even if you make one million, it still looks like that black frame dropping thing anyway - but when I actually saw a group of mice appear in the game, what exactly this number was was no longer important because the scene was really stunning.

In "The Legend of the Plague: Requiem," "a flurry of rats" is no longer a rhetorical description. Players can experience the cracking of the earth several times, followed by mice rushing out of the shadows, literally washing away, flooding, and even directly destroying various bridge sections of buildings in the city. At this time, the game often arranges chase and parkour performances similar to some paragraphs in "The Mysterious Sea", which are both thrilling and thrilling.

Players who have played the previous installment will know that the story background of "Plague Legend" is actually quite surreal, not the kind of truly realistic historical game. Therefore, "Plague Legend: Requiem" also has several supernatural style scenes in the middle and later stages. I don't want to reveal too much here, but it can be said that the environmental design of those levels looks almost as good as works like Disdain or Spiritual Media.

Although the stunning scenes presented in "Plague Legend: Requiem" are stunning, this game currently only supports running at 30 frames per second on PS5, and there may be occasional overexposure of the screen. It is unclear when the official will push related updates.

There has been progress, but we still need a breath

The most criticized aspect of the previous game "Plague Legend: Innocence" by players is that the stealth and combat routes and methods in the game are very monotonous, making it very boring to play. This has been greatly optimized in "Plague Legend: Requiem", but perhaps the design of action content is not a strong point of Asobo Studio, and the stealth and combat parts of the game are still somewhat challenging to play.

Firstly, the scenes in "Plague Legend: Requiem" are more spacious, giving players more paths to choose from and the freedom to decide whether to completely bypass the enemy or flexibly maneuver to kill them all.

Moreover, in this game, Amisia will not be instantly killed even if attacked by enemies, so players can quickly run to other bunkers on the map after falling into a conflict and return to a hidden state, feeling less frustrated when their efforts fail. By combining multiple weapons and alchemy materials, players can create many imaginative and flashy gameplay.

In addition, "Plague Legend: Requiem" removed the erosion agent used in the previous game to target enemies with helmets, and replaced the potion that can be synthesized through the use of materials in the previous game with a short knife that can only be picked up. The purpose of doing this is quite obvious, which is to avoid the appearance of overly versatile weapons, in order to increase the combat pressure of the game.

On the positive side, such changes do make this game more challenging and enjoyable to play. Unfortunately, the material balance and enemy AI in this game were not well balanced, which made my stealth experience quite bad. In the later stages of the game, my alchemy materials will always overflow, and if I am willing, I can easily slaughter all the enemies at any time, just for stealth.

The positioning of the short sword in "Plague Legend: Requiem" is even more rigid, which can be regarded as a model of hitting oneself in the face. The disposable short knives in the game can be used to quickly kill enemies, break free from enemies to save lives, or open hidden treasure chests, all of which are clearly borrowed designs from The Last Survivor. But the production team may be afraid that the player's combat power is too strong, so they do not allow the player to actively synthesize short knives. Therefore, the knife on my body always needs to be kept to open the box that will suddenly appear (there may even be a box that requires two knives to open later), which is completely unnecessary in combat.

The official's repeated emphasis on the ability to control mice in the promotion is just a gimmick. After passing the teaching stage, this ability is mostly non-existent, neither practical nor cool, and compared to the black and white mouse whirlpool collision at the end of the previous work, it is simply a passing game.

Fortunately, Plague Legend: Requiem provides an invincible mode. If players are not enthusiastic about fighting, are not interested in torturing themselves, and do not want to be dragged along with the poor operations of this game, they can directly open this option, and then go through all the battle levels, quickly experience more diverse, better, and more valuable adventure and puzzle solving content - this game introduces many dialogue performances, more pure action adventures, and experimental side puzzle solving, all of which are much more interesting than stealth combat.

This stiff and awkward feeling also continues into the plot of Plague Legend: Requiem. Although I think the overall story of this game is not a problem, and there is even a possibility of sparking heated discussions in the community, the performance of this game can be described as disastrous.

It goes without saying that there is a deviation between the plot and the player's operation, which leads to narrative dissonance. However, even in the same plot, the protagonist's personality is also jumping left and right: Amelia may have said violence was wrong ten minutes ago, but after ten minutes, she went crazy and shouted, "I want to kill all of you."; Hugo once said that he should be obedient and be a good child, but then turned around and rebelled, starting to let mice eat people everywhere. In addition, we can also see characters who die after reciting their lines like stage actors, villains who start reasoning after defeating the protagonist... These performances are very routine, very boring, and drag down the overall plot.

epilogue

To be fair, Plague: Requiem is a great game that has made many improvements and new attempts on the basis of its predecessor. These evolutions really surprised me. But it continues the "biased" characteristics of the previous work - excellent performance in art and atmosphere, ordinary level of gameplay and plot performance.

If I had never played the previous game, and if "Plague: Requiem" was just another new IP from a second tier developer under Focus that I had never heard of before, then my evaluation of this game would definitely be more positive. But this is a sequel that I have been looking forward to for three years, and Asobo Studio is no longer just an unknown small factory. Perhaps due to my previous high expectations for this work, I personally cannot accept its current appearance emotionally.

If you have played the previous game, enjoyed traveling and sightseeing in the game, are interested in seeing how the story of the two siblings will continue to be written, or want to experience various mainstream games with a "visual experience" in the same work, then I highly recommend you to try "Plague Legend: Requiem". I believe this work will become a more successful commercial work compared to Innocence, but unfortunately it did not bring me the same surprise as my previous work in 2019.