My own personal review on this game I can simplify into once sentence. I wrote, like, three paragraphs going over my feelings and thoughts on the themes and honestly I just felt it got a bit wordy and potentially too spoilery, so I’ll just leave this.
“A Plague Tale: Requiem is a story about the loss of innocence.”
Ninja Theory should then take up the sequel, highlighting Amicia’s PSTD, and the ghosts of all the people she’s killed to keep she and Hugo safe haunt her.
“Killing for a good cause is still killing.”
I thought exactly the same, that big action scene around chapter 4/5 in particular felt like something from Uncharted.
If Xbox miss out on acquiring Asobo, they are morons. Especially after letting Crystal Dynamics slip through their fingers too.
I have basically transitioned to a 30-fps hater at this point as a gamer, but I was willing to try this on my Series X last night because it is a slower moving game in general. It holds up really great honestly even at 30 fps, and my goodness the graphics on this one are absolutely insane! The graphics are some of the best that I have seen on a game in the environment in particular. I also remembered how much I enjoyed the first one and the characters, so yes this is one definitely worth checking out on Game Pass or otherwise.
I still need to play/finish the first one.
I’ve jokingly labeled this game “The Rats of Us”.
This game is honestly brilliant.
I’m so using that title now 
I’m getting close to the end I think. The game is so good and so goddamn beautiful.
Level design and environments are top tier. They really went for that AAA look and attention to details. People see The Last of Us but you can see some good Uncharted 4 inspiration also.
I was a bit sceptical about the pacing at the begining with a lot of slow walking sections which are annoying tbh, but there’s some really epic segments and development later on that I can forgive them for using this gimmick.
Storywise, it’s going places like real fast and can be a bit hard to follow. I don’t really get what they are going for, but I hope there’s some good explanations in the end.
The gameplay is also more open now and I really like the puzzles and how you can use different tools to accomplish the same thing. It can be hard to go 100% stealth.
And I actually put the blur back on, as it smooth things out especially during set pieces. You get used to it and it still makes you feel like it’s 60 FPS although it’s not.
Finished it. I was so tired from not getting much sleep this week, but I really wanted to see the ending and it just blew my foggy brain. What a fantastic game, wow, I was not prepared for that.
I was sceptical they could get to the level of that first game which is almost perfect to me, although it was a bit too formulaic with puzzles and stuff. Here, they went above and beyond with much more exploration and basically taking the critics of the first one to heart, although I don’t know who thought it would be cool to add QTE to cinematics and have long slow walking sections. All that is forgotten in the end.
And that ending…it’s just too perfect, so insane and also makes perfect sense that I didn’t see it coming. It just blew me away as I wasn’t really prepared for something that is fulfilling and also really emotional like that. It reminds me of the feeling of playing through The Guardians of the Galaxy game from Eidos Montréal. It’s just so well written and you care for the characters and then it hits you right in the guts and you’re left in awe, because a game is not supposed to get to you like that.
I still can’t believe what they managed to do with Requiem. It’s crazy that we have so many games coming and all are amazing, so I hope when the dust has settled that we still think about it as a contender for GOTY. As for myself, it’s already on my list.
Game is taking longer than I expected. Apparently I still have 7 chapters to go.
I enjoyed the first Plague Tale overall, and I’ve been looking forward to this. Game is super pretty, really fond of the characters and I’m loving the atmosphere. However, I am crazy stuck on Chapter 2. As in, literally cannot succeed at the combat and Amicia dies every single time I try. I’m making my way to the tower, in a very open outdoor area patrolled by enemies in helmets. Despite my best efforts, I fail at sneaking past them and have to fight them, but the only option I seem to have is to counter, which only stalls them, and then I have no means of killing them (slingshot does nothing to helmets). If I try to run, they catch up before I can figure out how to clear a path through the rats. I’ve tried about a dozen times now. There are simply too many guards for me to avoid undetected.
Edit: Never mind, I got through it eventually. As with the first game, I feel the combat with human enemies is the weakest part of the game.
Tried dropping the game to Narrative difficulty?
Yeah, good call. I’ll give that a go.
Really excited to check this out. Beat first game earlier this week.
The length being almost double is…not a good sign for me haha
Even with Narrative difficulty, you still have to respect the concepts of the game. The rats will still destroy you in darkness. The guards will still spot you and attack you. It may be more forgiving in the response times allowed for countering. I wish it was more lenient in the being spotted and other guard aspects. I want to play with less killing but the guards still come out of nowhere at times so my hand is forced to attack.
I’m sure a large part of my problem with the stealth here is that I’m simply not being patient enough, but a lot of the time it’s difficult to survey my surroundings adequently before making a move. Like, I’ll pan the camera about as much as I can before jumping through a window, only to realise after jumping through that there’s a guard just out of sight, and then it’s almost instantly a game of chase with all guards in the area. And with no means of attacking any helmeted guard, my choice is either to run away desperately or to put the controller down until I can re-try.
Funny your example is pretty much spot on what I experienced a few times as well.
There’s no shame in seeing “Amicia has died”, so don’t get frustrated and try again. In the intro-ish section with the field fires I died quite a few times cause I got turned around and was heading the wrong way. You can counter the guards, but it’s not exactly clear to me if you have to hold down X or keep pressing X repeatedly to have effective attacks.
My only real complaint I have so far is the sections where you’re supposed to go seem harder to spot or recognize. To me it feels like in the first game it was far easier to spot the intended destination. This leads to me wandering around more which causes more opportunities to be spotted and thus higher conflict chances. It makes for more intense sections than it really should have.
That happened to me a lot. In the review I mention Frustratingly working my way around in a circle to where I started in one level.
The darker scenes do not help but the game has some really weak destination pointers at times.
Japanese players are not happy with Plague Tale; Requiem because they removed Japanese until Plague Tale will be on PS Store I think. Still that’s not good they gave a huge negative review on xbox store
Updated
I think it is a rumor, but if is truth then it shows once again how detrimental Sony is to gaming.
