By Nate
Have you ever wondered if Compile Heart and Idea Factory were capable of creating games outside of the Neptunia Universe? Well, they have just finished releasing their latest project, Death end re;Quest for the Playstation 4. Let’s find out if it is any good in this review.
Suffering from memory loss, our protagonist, Shina, awakens within a small house on the outskirts of Heartis. Let me introduce you to World’s Odyssey. This is a virtual reality MMORPG and complete projection of consciousness developed as a traditional fantasy of dreams and adventure. It was a big RPG that the game company, Enigma, put so much effort into, but it was cancelled after the disappearance of the game’s director Shina Ninomiya.
The game was supposedly deleted, but instead it has been restored in a buggy state. The bugs within the game take real forms as insects, infested humans, objects, monsters, etc. These bugs are destroying its world. Shina is contacted by a game programmer, Arata Mizunashi and learns that she cannot log out from the game. The two of them investigate these problems and learn about the dreadful reality that awaits.
Death End’s characters are cute and intriguing. I also enjoyed the Japanese voice actors for this game. They weren’t annoying to listen to. When playing this game, you’ll notice some beautiful scenery within the environments like the sky and water. It runs great on the PS4 Pro.
Gameplay for Death End is entirely turn based and similar to past Hyperdimension games. It feels less stiff than the old games though. I had no problems moving and it’s quite enjoyable.
At the start of your character’s turn, you can move freely around the battlefield. Being able to move freely allows you to strategize on where to hit the enemy or move your character to a safer area, away from the enemy. Also, the order of your characters’ turns is decided upon each character’s speed.
The attack commands for this game are command, action, change, and search. A command attack, also known as a Tri-Act, allows you to choose three different actions. An action attack allows for the player to select a preconfigured battle combo. Change allows you to switch out your character with a reserve character. Select allows you to view an enemy’s status information.
In this game, it features three different difficulties. So it is good for novice and advanced RPG gamers. One last thing that I remembered from the combat is that there is a blowback feature called, “Knock Bug” effect. From doing an Action or Command battle option, you can knock the enemy back and have them hit another enemy for an even bigger impact. However, if the enemy that is hit with the big blow is knocked into your ally, that ally will counter this with another attack known as “Knock Blow.” Each character has their own additional attributes for these attacks which makes for even more unique gameplay.
This is one of my new favorite games from Idea Factory that I’ve played on the PS4. Sometimes, there can too much dialogue compared to the gameplay, but I had a great time with a new RPG by one of my favorite game makers.
8.5/10
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