Death end re;Quest

1. jax-nero

   Feb 19, 2020

   10

   Very fun game I'm so glad that i bought this on a sale its so much fun to play

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
2. valizy

   Feb 22, 2019

   10

   This is the best compile heart game i've played so far. The story is a mixture of horror, mystery and tragedy, which is first time i've seenThis is the best compile heart game i've played so far. The story is a mixture of horror, mystery and tragedy, which is first time i've seen for JRPG.
   Story: first time you see this game, you would expect some classic JRPG compile heart story with classic isekai VRMMO. But after played a while, i realize the story is very exciting, with many mystery possibility untold until you reach endgame. There's many possibilities for bad ending and character ending. You can trigger bad ending midgame, so you must pay attention for your choice througout the game!
   Gameplay and graphic; gameplay is very good, i can enjoy it, but this game isn't focus on gameplay, but story and conversation of VN. Conversation can be very long, they explain each description of surrounding and what protagonist thinking at that time (you can see this type of explanation if you've played horror VN before like corpse party). Graphic is super good for JRPG, but the pro's is sometimes the character and movement glitchy (idk if this is on purpose or not, cz this game is about glitch and bug after all
   Music: this is what i like in this game, music is very maching every event, especialy for horror event (yeah i love horror)
   Overall: this game is very good, i hope iffy and compile heart would make game this kind of game again. Sadly there isn't much people know this game, because lack of promotion. sorry for my typo because of my trash keyboard :)… Expand

   • 3 of 4 users found this helpful
4. Joestar

   Feb 27, 2019

   10

   Fantastic RPG, great gameplay, music, story, and characters. Can't recommend this enough.

   • 4 of 4 users found this helpful
5. jcboyer515

   May 31, 2021

   9

   This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Surprisingly well written. Games like this made me realize that the dynamic between characters might be the most compelling thing about video games. The combat is turn based, like 3D SRPG, & it's a bit simple but it's also strangely satisfying to do well. About 25% of the game is cutscenes or dialogue akin to visual novels. My spoiler tag is for wanting to mention that while I do enjoy having choices in games, I thought it was a bit underdeveloped for the majority of the important decisions to basically be wild guesses. Sometimes it's obvious but I'm definitely telling you that several of my gut choices got me killed. But luckily, the game is not overly cruel & gives you an opportunity to save at your choice time, & even had a convenient little check for the diverging choices that carries to new game plus as well for what options you've already chosen since the are several endings. I'm very increasingly more & more impressed with Compile Heart/Idea Factory games. I haven't played the sequel yet but I'm waiting on my copy of the Switch port. Great game, 9/10… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
6. vahn

   Mar 12, 2019

   8

   They said this was one of the biggest projects of the company, and I can see why: there was a lot of detail and effort put into this game andThey said this was one of the biggest projects of the company, and I can see why: there was a lot of detail and effort put into this game and from the way it tries to tell a different, more dark-themed story can be seen from the very start.
   
   The game has two aspects attached to it: The RPG and the VN, both required to play through the game.
   
   -In the RPG part, you play the role of Shina, a girl with amnesia who seeks to find her memory by literally reaching the endgame and trigger the credit roll. While I won't spoil anything about it, there's a huge sense of tension throughout the game and lots of violence in it, with blood splatter and all that goodness appearing - or at least it would if they bothered to show more pictures of it happening. But there are tons of fan service pictures at least!
   The combat is very intuitive: each character has a set amount of skills you can learn via experimentation with the 3 skill slots and it's really fun to see if there's a new spell popping. I haven't seen this kind of system since, maybe, legend of legaia on the ps1.
   There is also a lack of hubs, at least at the start of the game, which means you'll be traveling from point A to point B for a majority of the time which is a nice change. No cities though which is a shame.
   
   - The VN parts, as for every VN ever, consists in lots of text - usually without voices, unless you play with Japanese voices - and the occasional choice you must do that will either halt your progress or lead to a new point in the story. In this side, you play as Arata, a Game Programmer who knew Shina and finds out she's still in the game: his job is to lead her to the endgame by any means necessary.
   Despite the fact it's kind of light on the VN aspect - there are usually 2 choices, with only one time giving you 3 - I honestly enjoyed the VN parts far more than I anticipated: there's a constant sense of tension, far more than in the RPG part, and you get hooked really quickly to see what's going to happen with your choice, which will lead you to either a new path or into many of the dead ends - or should I say, "Death Ends"?.
   
   With those two major points out of the way, I want to say that despite the large amounts of effort put into this game, there were some huge issues that not only were annoying but definitely frustrated me to no end. Starting with the Death Ends.
   
   Being a hybrid game, both parts have choices that can lead you to a death end - basically a game over - and the problem with this is that you have no way to know which option is the right one, resulting in having your first game over in the first hours of the game. VN games let you save anytime and this is true for the VN sections, but in the RPG sections you can only save on save points for the most part with the OCCASIONAL possibility to save during dialogues - and even then it's not guaranteed: be ready to reload!
   This is SO FRUSTRATING, especially with the really vague choices you can get that are not exactly easy to figure out: running away was a bad decision and helping calming down a girl was worse than letting her rant. I don't get this!
   
   In addition, and forgive me for my lack of VN experience, but don't they usually let you choose paths? Why it's only one path and the other is always a death end? There's also a huge lack of imagery throughout the game BUT I assume it's because of the Pegi, as the game will often mention decapitation, gore, and blood. Or maybe they were lazy.
   
   And lastly but not least, the RPG aspect has quite a lot of nuisances too, starting with limiting your characters with only 16 skills (3 assigned to Attack, Guard and Items) despite each character has only 20 to 30 skills (Celica has the most, with 32 I think). The hacking mode allows you to use different stuff, from changing a genre to summoning monsters, however, I barely used them at all: fighting genre was the best option and I must have used a summon or a debug once or twice in total - which makes upgrading them a total waste too. I also never understood how countering works and the endings are supposed to be gained by talking to the girls at the camp...or finishing the game twice so that you can choose right before the end.
   And can anyone tell me why the girls have to pant every time they run? It's uncomfortable, to say the least! Is this a fetish that I'm not aware of?!
   
   Overall, do I recommend it? Honestly, yeah, it's very good, the story was well written (except when it wasn't) and the RPG parts were fun (except when it wasn't). The game is also slightly longer than usual - I finished in about 35 hours - 38 for getting all endings - and the game doesn't really have a proper good ending either, making for a pretty interesting sequel bait.
   Give it a shot, but I recommend a price cut if you're not sure about it.… Expand

   • 1 of 1 users found this helpful
7. TheRealDMac

   Mar 19, 2019

   8

   TL;DR - "That was really cool, but I'm not completely satisfied."
   
   This is by far the most ambitious Compile Heart game I've seen. While ITL;DR - "That was really cool, but I'm not completely satisfied."
   
   This is by far the most ambitious Compile Heart game I've seen. While I don't think it fully achieves what it set out to do, which might have earned it instant cult classic status, it comes pretty close; close enough that I enjoyed the ~35 hour experience of getting the "normal" ending and was willing to put in a few more hours to get the "true" end. (An aside: had I not gotten the normal ending first I don't think I'd have appreciated the true one as much, but one of my complaints is that nowhere is it indicated that the fetch quests in the game matter, and apparently they do. Another is that even if you make it past the premature conclusion on your first try, each girl has a separate ending and nobody has figured out how to reliably get the one you want until new game+, requiring a second playthrough to bring the game to a satisfying resolution.)
   
   The gameplay is in some ways standard JRPG fare that any Compile Heart fan will be familiar with, but it has a unique and fun twist - you pick 3 actions, and if anywhere in those actions you used a "knockback" skill, or you pick "Attack" for all three, the enemy can be sent flying depending on its weight, and will ricochet off walls and other enemies, causing additional damage. Your party members will launch an additional knockback attack if it bumps into them. At its best, this adds an additional layer of billiards-like strategy to the combat, and can allow you to be efficient with your skill usage in the early game. Unfortunately, toward the late game, most enemies tend to be either too heavy or have too much HP to rely on this mechanic, and it becomes something reserved exclusively for tiny and/or flying creatures. This encourages experimentation with the interesting skill system (using certain combinations unlocks new skills, which activate for free the first time), the unique "field bug" risk/reward (hurt yourself for power-ups), and the mini-game-esque "hack" mechanic, but for all its innovations, the combat still devolves into that "everyJRPG" feeling by the end.
   
   The story is this game's main draw. There's probably an hour of exposition in the first 90 minutes of the game, and a lot of the comically exaggerated negative scores are, if I had to guess, due to this. The story-vs-gameplay pacing can be a bit odd at times, and you have to be prepared to do a lot of reading, hence the "Visual Novel hybrid" description many reviewers have used. The narrative is split between the Director of "World's Odyssey", trapped within her own virtual reality game, and its lead programmer, trying to rescue her from the real world. This isn't a Sword Art clone, though. It's an engaging mystery, and it addresses themes of Artificial Intelligence, religion/the occult, and creative freedom in game design in interesting ways. Occasional derailment via "cute girls doing things" aside, I was genuinely interested in what would happen next and what the root cause of the strange happenings in and outside of the VR game could be, and it kept me playing nothing else for a week straight. It has a bit of a slow start as it introduces the setting, but the "real world" portions toward the middle of the game kept me on the edge of my seat. There are two factors preventing me from giving this game a 9/10 score, however. The first is the game's namesake gimmick. The second is that, unlike the gameplay, which starts to feel rather standard by the last chapter, the story suddenly starts to go off the rails. It does so very much on purpose, and it mostly achieves the effect it's going for, but it results in a few loose ends (some people are already calling them "sequel bait") and a few critical plot points are presented without the gravity they deserved.
   
   The gimmick here is that many choices, both during gameplay and during the "Visual Novel" portions, can abruptly lead to a brutal "death end," forcing you to restart. (Save often!) This may seem like an inconsequential/torture fetish gimmick, but... it does have its purpose that I don't want to spoil. My complaint here isn't that the ends are frustrating or pointless, but that in-game trophies and rewards for them end up creating an INCENTIVE to die stupidly, whereas you're usually trying to avoid getting the "bad end" in the visual novel genre. (Some of the less predictable death ends are well written, and offer a little more insight into the world or characters, but some of them are obvious or just make you feel silly, requiring losing a fight or picking a clearly bad choice, and providing an incentive to go after them feels equally silly. )
   
   The graphics aren't quite on par with the latest and greatest AAA titles, but they're better than other games under the Galapagos RPG brand, and the visual design is top-notch.
   
   The sound effects are... really low-budget and can get repetitive, but the music is pretty great and usually fits the environments/scenes perfectly.… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
8. chad_pattan

   Mar 5, 2019

   3

   No. No, this isn't a good game.
   
   Here's the problem with the game - it doesn't know what it wants to be. I'd peg it as 90% visual novelNo. No, this isn't a good game.
   
   Here's the problem with the game - it doesn't know what it wants to be. I'd peg it as 90% visual novel and 10% RPG. That's NOT a good mix. The bulk of the time you're advancing static images and text along (visual novel), then all of a sudden you get into a one-off fight that isn't very fun. Long stretches of non-action.
   
   The voice acting is good as is the art, but the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired.… Expand

   • 1 of 8 users found this helpful

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