Content Warning: The following review contains references to abuse, sexual abuse, death, and other sensitive topics. There are also minor spoilers for Death End re;Quest 2

When I played Death End re;Quest, I enjoyed the premise and the idea of a horror RPG. I liked the idea of the fear of the unknown, not relying on jumpscares. The concept of normal characters going up against horrors they’d never seen before appealed to me. Because of my enjoyment of the original game, the sequel immediately piqued my interest. Sadly, I’m a bit more conflicted about Death End re;Quest 2.

Before I get to the why of that issue, let’s start with what Death End re;Quest 2 is. Death End re;Quest 2 is an RPG that puts you in the role of Mai Toyama. After her parents’ divorce, she and her sister each went to live with one parent. Mai lived with her father, while Sanae lived with her mother. After her father’s death which I won’t spoil the circumstances of, Mai requests to be taken to Wordsworth Academy rather than another orphanage or home.

Wordsworth Academy is technically an orphanage, but it is also a school for girls in the isolated mountain town of Le Choara. Le Choara is rumored to be cursed, as there has been a history of disappearances in the town, along with other supernatural phenomena. When Mai arrives she discovers that they have no record of Sanae, but since it is the last place she knows Sanae has been, she decides to stick around and investigate her sister’s whereabouts.

Along the way, Mai uncovers sinister forces at work in Le Choara and also runs into Shina Ninomiya, the protagonist from Death End re;Quest, who is looking for Arata Mizunashi, her friend and male protagonist of the previous game. Without going into too many spoilers, I can tell you that you don’t need to know much about the previous game in order to play Death End re;Quest 2. In fact, aside from references and a few common plot threads, the storylines are related but separate.

The game takes place in two separate stages. By day, you explore Le Choara in a visual novel style format. You speak to students, faculty, and follow various plot threads that lead to your nightly dealings. By night, you actually get to explore Le Choara, in its nightmarish form. By night, the seemingly peaceful town turns into a nightmarish hellscape, with monsters roaming the streets and outlying areas.

This is where the majority of what I would consider actual gameplay takes place. You travel through areas, picking up items, fighting enemies, and ultimately pursuing whatever goal you have. Usually, it is to rescue a student or solve a disappearance. Each environment has special things your characters can do. Mai can hack into computers to reveal hidden areas and treasure, Rotten (Rottie) can fly over walls, and Liliana can smash growing barriers.

In addition to these particular ways you can interact with the environment, you can also find keys that open up areas deeper into the levels. Along the way you can find save points which let you save (obviously) and camp. By camping, you can take on missions (side quests) and buy/sell items and gear for your characters. You can also talk to your party members, which gives you fun little anecdotes or conversations between them.

Combat plays out very similarly to Death End re;Quest. Each character doesn’t simply attack once; they can utilize the triact system, and link together three actions. That can be three attacks, a support and two attacks, or a healing spell, a support, and an attack, etc. If you use a skill with knockback, you can knock enemies around. Knocking enemies into other party members issues a follow-up attack. However, if you knock enemies into each other, both enemies take damage. If you knock enemies into walls, they take extra damage, and so on.

Also returning to Death End re;Quest 2 from the original game is the concept of floor bugs and glitch mode. They don’t exactly explain them in-game, but you can step on bugged tiles to gain corruption. When your corruption goes to a high enough level, your character will go into Glitch Mode, which strengthens their stats and also unlocks a powerful Glitch skill.

If you knock enemies into bug tiles, however, it clears them off and provides your characters with extra buffs. Additionally, if you clear enough bug tiles in a battle, you’ll get extra money at the end of the battle. This isn’t explained super well, but if you’ve played the first game, it’s pretty much the same system.

Throughout Death End re;Quest 2, there are moments where you can make choices. Some of these choices lead to “bad ends” or essentially death states. Luckily, you can save before you make these choices. In fact, the game encourages you to and gives you rewards for filling out the “episode chart.” It also encourages multiple playthroughs, since there are multiple endings.

Additionally, as you explore field areas you will sometimes come across a being known as the Dark Shadow. If you allow him to catch you, you’ll game over instantly. However, he often goes away after a minute or two, just de-spawning and leaving you alone. So, if you can run a decent distance away from him and wait, you usually can go back and explore the area he was patrolling.

However, I’m going to divert from my usual no-spoiler policy here to talk about the story and the themes in it. Death End re;Quest was dark and at times graphic. However, it covered themes like the unexplained, cryptids, etc. Death End re;Quest 2 takes things in a different direction. The supernatural occurrences, fights, etc all happen in the real world as opposed to the simulated game from the first Death End re;Quest. Because of that, the plot itself is a lot darker and has fewer humorous references.

One example of the plot being darker comes down to the various characters and NPC’s themselves. You learn pretty early on that all of the students at Wordsworth Academy were abandoned or abused in some way. Furthermore, Mai’s backstory is incredibly dark. Not only did her father turn to alcoholism after her mother left him, but it is heavily implied multiple times throughout the beginning hours of the game that her father abused Mai, both mentally and sexually.

Mai has a fear of men after this and makes mention of “things [he] did at night” which takes things to a level that is incredibly unnerving. Each of the main characters has trauma or a dark side of their past. Liliana wants to grow up and be an exorcist because her father became a serial killer who believed he was serving the devil. Her mother (afterward) abused Liliana physically and mentally.

Granted, a good portion of the arc for these young women involves overcoming their trauma and finding solace in each other. However, death and horrible events are common throughout the game. One NPC exemplifies the Yandere trope, obsessing over another character and ultimately drowning them when they don’t reciprocate their love.

Our protagonists aren’t spared from this either. There is a scene in which it is shown that Mai murdered her abusive father. The actual act isn’t shown, but the implications are clear. Liliana’s abusive mother also winds up dead by her daughter’s hand. It is spun that the curse of the town leads Liliana’s mother to go mad and attack Liliana, but having a little girl kill her mother (even off-screen) is hard to watch.

I can’t decide whether they were trying to be empowering by having the girls kill the object of their abuse and simply missed the mark or if this was something wholly different. Either way, there’s something about the story that makes you want something better for these girls, all while feeling deeply uncomfortable by what you’re being shown.

The premise for Death End re;Quest 2 (as expressed by the developer) is “what happens when the world is consumed by darkness.” While I can understand them wanting to go heavily into the horror aspect of the game, it feels somewhat strange when juxtaposed to the first game which did have moments of levity and humor based on gaming references.

That doesn’t even take into account the sexualization of various characters and the fact that there are no male protagonists at all. It feels as though rather than making a cast of interesting (if flawed) characters, they tried to shoehorn fanservice of young girls in with a story of dark trauma and a cursed town. Mai’s entire relationship with Rotten Dollhart, one of your other party members, involves Rottie’s co-dependency on Mai.

Rottie also has romantic inclinations toward her that are played off as a joke by other characters. I can normally ignore Compile Heart’s tendency to fetishize their young characters because of solid gameplay and a decent storyline; they’re a Japanese company likely developing toward the male gaze (namely Japanese men.)

In this case though, it really feels gross. Maybe it is because the subject matter in the game is so dark. Maybe it is because one of the characters, in particular, is pretty young and looks to the others as sisters. I can’t tell you exactly what bothers me the most about Death End re;Quest 2’s portrayal of its characters and fanservice.

Honestly, I could consider this game a contender for Zoe’s “Women and Queerness in Horror” series, if it wasn’t such a violent, traumatic portrayal. I can tell you now that if you’re looking for good Lesbian rep here? This is not the game for you. It is exploitative and male gaze-fueled at best.

However, if you feel like you can ignore it or you’re in the mood to really test your limits in that regard, the combat and RPG elements are pretty fun. There is a lot of depth in the combat and the environments are colorful, varied, and honestly beautiful in a macabre way. It actually feels like Compile Heart and Idea Factory have tested just how dark they can go with their franchises.

The Neptunia franchise is their sunshine, bright, fun franchise. Mary Skelter is a bit darker but is still grounded in fantasy and a less bleak tone. Now we have Death End re;Quest 2, which feels like watching a mix between a snuff film and an Unsolved Mysteries marathon. When I say this isn’t for the faint of heart, I’m not kidding.

Mechanically though, the game isn’t buggy, there weren’t any crashes, and the controls were smooth. If you read what I’ve said here and think “This guy’s a wuss, it can’t be that bad” then maybe you’ll have a better experience than I did. I started playing with excitement and came away feeling a mixture of disappointment and gross.

As I said at the beginning of this article, I feel very conflicted by Death End re;Quest 2. Part of me wants to continue playing it in my spare time to see if it gets better or if there’s some satisfying conclusion to all of it. The other part of me, the part of me that is grossed out and weirded out by the time I spent with the game, doesn’t know if I can stomach it. Make of that what you will, this is definitely a buyer beware situation.

A PlayStation 4 review copy of Death End re;Quest 2 was provided by Idea Factory for this review.

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Death End Re;Quest 2

$59.99 USD

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Solid RPG Mechanics
• Colorful, Beautiful Environments
• Smooth Controls

Cons

• Really Dark Storyline
• Graphic References to Abuse and Murder
• Too Much Fanservice in Inappropriate Places
• Very Little Humor