A while back we reviewed Death end re;Quest 2 for the PS4. At the time, I hadn’t played the first game in the series and the second was interesting enough that it was worthwhile to go back and spend some time with the first game. The games are unique and viciously violent visual novels fused with other gameplay into a strange but enticing world, and the second game was a significant departure from the first, leaving players a bit surprised, at least until things started to make a bit of sense later on. Now, five years later, it’s time once again to revisit the world of Death end re;Quest with the release of Death end re;Quest Code Z from Compile Heart and Idea Factory!
This is not your standard story by any means, but it’s also wildly different than anything you might have expected. In Death end re;Quest Code Z you play yourself…sort of. The main protagonist is Sakaya Hiwatari, and she’s got no idea what’s happening or where she is. In fact, she’s about to die and the beginning of the game segues directly into a flashback of what’s been happening to her and Shina Ninomiya, the main character of the first game. Death isn’t always the end though, so be prepared for some wild world building here!
Shina is one of the lead developers of a popular video game and brings Sakaya on to help debug it. However, their world is also connected to something called The Strain and it keeps leaking into their reality. On top of that, you as the player are directly communicating with Sakaya, breaking the fourth wall to do so. Confused yet? It doesn’t get easier, at least not for a while! While they work on the game, Sakaya and other employees of Iris Corp. are also trying to stop the Strain from invading the world. It is impossibly difficult to explain much more about the plot of Death end re;Quest Code Z without spoiling some of the rather complex plot however. That’s a shame because it’s so wild and unexpected that it’s honestly hard to process things when the revelations start to drop about halfway through the game.
While the plot of Death end re;Quest Code Z is both excellent and compelling, the dialogue is a bit more hit and miss. That might be due to translation but it might also just be silly and over the top, and it’s hard to say which applies more. Many of the characters seem blissfully unaware of how world-altering events around them are, villains bicker constantly with each other, a variety of inappropriate comments are made and it’s frequently hard to tell which conversations are relevant and which are world building. Even the rather compelling violence of the game is often minimized by approach to dialogue here. That’s especially ironic for a game that takes place mostly at a company that makes complex RPGs. Add in an extremely healthy dose of yuri and you’ve got a recipe for confusion. It’s like the game knows where it wants to go and how it wants to affect players, but not how to do it.
There is a bevy of side discussion too, designated in white instead of red in the map screen. These are optional dialogue points that add depth to the overall narrative of Death end re;Quest Code Z. In between main story segments, you’ll have the ability to choose these stories and expand your understanding of the in-game world while enjoying even more of the rather odd dialogue of the game. There’s a fair bit of yuri in these sequences as well, but it’s all fairly harmless, not overtly sexual so whether or not that’s your thing, it’s not too terrible. Most of them are relatively short so unless you hate reading (and this is a game that’s about half visual novel), they’re worth your time.
While the dialogue might be a mixed bag, the gameplay definitely isn’t. Death end re;Quest Code Z is a bold shift from the previous games, opting to ditch the entire gameplay system and replace it with, well, Mystery Dungeon. We’ve reviewed plenty of Mystery Dungeon style games here including Void Terrarium (review), Void Terrarium 2 (review), and several Shiren the Wanderer games (review). The basic style is very similar to those and a marked departure from other games in the Death end re;Quest series. In short, you control a chibi version of Sakaya and move step by step through a series of dungeons called The Strain in a top-down grid based perspective. While you can adjust the camera, the movement is square by square. Enemies and invisible traps are sprinkled about the dungeons and your goal is to get to the bottom of each dungeon, level by level. As you move, the enemies in the dungeons move simultaneously, but they are randomized or sometimes even asleep until you get close or hit them. Your goal is to make it to the staircase for each level, working your way down until you reach the bottom and fight a boss.
Unfortunately, the Strain is so intense that it slowly drives you mad as you go. Once you reach 50% sanity, the sanity meter keeps ticking down and your screen starts to fuzz red. The worse it gets the redder the screen, until Sakaya goes insane and starts attacking herself. Hit zero and it’s a pretty vicious game over. That won’t be the only game over you see, but it’s one of the more shocking (and for some, likely triggering) deaths you’ll achieve. You see, Death end re;Quest Code Z is also a game about dying over and over as entertainment. While we played trying not to die, that actually makes the game harder. Each time you die, you gain additional skill points that bolster your abilities permanently. Sakaya feels the deaths however and each one creates stress and pain for her, so it’s a balancing act between purposely dying and becoming more powerful and struggling through without too many attempts. The death sequences are particularly graphic though, even more so than the main story so be prepared for suffering!
Dungeons are full of gear as well, and you’ll constantly be dropping things and picking up others because your inventory is particularly small. Balancing the right items for use at the right times (especially Ether Codes which replenish sanity) is incredibly important for survival in Death end re;Quest Code Z. Some items simply won’t cut it and the ones that are vital might not show up at the right times, leaving you weak as a kitten as the enemies scale in power with dungeon depth. While you heal every step you take in a dungeon, that sometimes isn’t enough and the denizens of the Strain pummel you mercilessly. Picking the right items to weaken them, strengthen yourself, or heal can be incredibly important, but you’ll also need cash in the form of Eni when you get out. Everything in your inventory can be sold as well, so you want to fill those extra slots with the most valuable loot, allowing you to buy more powerful items later.
In addition to items, you’ll get a variety of weapons, frequently after rescuing someone from the Strain. Each weapon has different attack and defense strengths and those can be boosted both by continuing to use that weapon to level it up and by applying items found in dungeons and the café shop to the weapon, boosting its stats. You can also modify weapons by adding Memories to them, giving them additional abilities such as strengths against certain enemy types, additional attack power or knockback. The more souped up your weapons are, the easier the dungeons become, to the point that while playing, we only died once in the dungeons due to not understanding how Sanity worked. After that, a combination of attack and defense boosts and attack and defence weakness on bosses made them easy meat at the end of each dungeon.
There are also Glitch Girls in the dungeons, modified girls (with a bit too many jiggly physics a la DOA) that have been enlisted by the programmer Mizunashi (those of you who remember him from Death end re;Quest will know who we’re talking about) to enact his grand plan. He’s actually one of the only male characters in the game, but let’s not get sidetracked. Glitch girls chase you through the dungeons and attack you when you’re in range or chase you in the same room. You can get away from them if you’re lucky but they do a lot of damage fairly fast and they’re immune to your attacks. Your only hope is to run away one square at a time while taking damage and they even like to destroy the crystals that allow you to warp out of a dungeon entirely. Fortunately, their patterns are randomized enough that you can sneak past them and escape most of the time, but they’re by far the nastiest enemies in any dungeon. Even with the ability to shift to a Vanquish form (Sakaya’s version of a Glitch Girl form that’s temporary and must be charged through combat), you can’t defeat any of the Glitch Girls and some items don’t work on them.
Naturally Death end re;Quest Code Z keeps up the high standards that you’d expect from the series in terms of design and visual flair. The characters are wildly stylized with high quality VN-style portraits, multiple facial expressions and tons of personality. The series has never suffered from a design standpoint with lots of unique creatures, characters, and scenes. It’s also incredibly violent, even if the gore itself is never fully shown directly. There’s blood everywhere in certain scenes and the death scenes in particular are quite disturbing, especially since suicide and dying are baked right into the attribute levelling system. The new Mystery Dungeon gameplay looks virtually identical to other incarnations of the system from Compile Heart, albeit with palette swaps and new designs to make it if the Death end re;Quest universe. Having full access to camera controls is of course awesome in the dungeons, but moving with the cameras rotated at an angle may be difficult for some in the linear grid based maps the game uses. Strewn throughout the game and GUI are subtle nods to the way the world itself functions in the game as well, slight glitches and digital frays that flicker at the endge of your vision in an excellent, stylized manner that doesn’t quite distract but does catch your eye occasionally, subtly reinforcing the world building going on here in this third climactic episode of the series. In short, the whole game is gorgeous and highly polished, even if it might not be quite what you’d expect.
The soundtrack for Code Z is another matter however. The main soundtrack is excellent, with a sold main theme and some great tracks that really fit into the theme and vibe that the game puts out. Where Death end re;Quest goes wrong a bit however is with the music in dungeons. There are only a handful of tracks that play in the dungeons and they tend to become rather repetitive as the game wears on. Certain tracks play when Glitch Girls are about, giving you auditory cues as to what’s coming, but there’s little variety from dungeon to dungeon in terms of music and that’s frustrating. The sound effects are good as well, but some, particularly the demonic horses, also become repetitive and their high pitched whinnies get on your nerves to the point where you dread the encounters not for the gameplay but simply for the noises you’re going to hear. There’s some good voice acting too, but only in Japanese and if that’s not to your liking, you might as well shut off voices in the options menu. The voice actors are excellent of course, but some of their portrayals are a bit over the top and the squeaky overreactions you’re apt to hear fairly frequently can become tedious as well.
There aren’t really any major negatives to Death end re;Quest Code Z (other than typing the title at any speed) and honestly, it’s a very well-designed game with a solid interface, interesting plot, and compelling gameplay, assuming you like the Mystery Dungeon format. The dialogue and music are a bit weaker in some areas than perhaps they should be but aside from that, this is not only a great game, but a worth third entry into the series that solidly ties the series together in a way that also improves the experience of the first two games. A little more overt violence and more serious dialogue would have been welcome but the final product here is still great. At $50.00, it’s a reasonably priced game that will net you at least 25 hours or so of gameplay and more if you’re an obsessive completist. You can drop an extra $20 on the soundtrack and artbook for the Deluxe Edition too if you’d like, but regardless of which version you choose, Death end re;Quest Code Z is a good time and a fun game!
This review is based on a digital copy of Death end re;Quest Code Z provided by the publisher. It was played on a PS5 using a Sony 1080p TV and on the Playstation Portal, where it played equally well. Death end re;Quest Code Z is also available on PS4 and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.