Game Review: A Plague Tale - Requiem

When I reviewed Plague Tale Innocence back in 2021, I remember being really impressed with nearly all facets of the game. As a complete experience it presented a truly unique premise with a gameplay function which was based more on stealth than combat. Not all elements of the game worked for me though as I had issues with the game’s janky aiming and control mechanics. With the announcement of Plague Tale Requiem, I had high hopes that Asobo could capitalize on all the successes of the prior game all the while delivering new concepts and improvements. Despite those high hopes though, I found that Plague Tale Requiem didn’t do all that much to meet those expectations and is a far messier experience because of this.

Developed by Asobo Studios and published by Focus Entertainment, Plague Tale Requiem serves as the direct sequel to 2019’s Plague Tale Innocence. Released on both pre-gen and current gen consoles, Requiem offers the same type of third-person, over the shoulder perspective with a mix of stealth/action gameplay intertwined with the cinematic-focused narrative. What made both games in the Plague Tale series so interesting was its original premise. Not many games choose to tell such a personal tale within the backdrop of the French Inquisition so that’s what brought a lot of attention to it initially. Requiem’s main selling point is its direct continuation of the story that ended in Innocence while toning up the gameplay and graphics to benefit from modern technology. 

The story of Plague Tale Requiem follows Amicia and Hugo de Rune a few months after the climatic events at the end of Innocence. Travelling together with their mother and companion Lucas, the group hope to find aid from an organisation known as the Order within the city of Provence. It’s here though where things take an unexpected turn when Hugo, who is plagued by dreams of a mysterious island accidentally reawakens the power of the Prima Macula within him. As Hugo stirs in his sleep the city begins to be infested by the rat plague and it’s up to Amicia to take charge and help protect her brother as his powers grow more volatile. The reawakening of Hugo’s powers puts a clear target on all of the family’s heads as soldiers of the French Inquisition resort to extreme measures to combat the scourge of rats wherever the de Rune family go.  There’s more to this tale than I initially let on but the twists and turns of the games are not mine to spoil in any case. 

I have major problems with the narrative of this game. I get the ambition behind wanting to explore more of the relationship between Amicia and Hugo in a new light but the exceptions the story has to make to do so feels incredibly frustrating. This game’s entire storyline is filled to the brim with moments which just make no sense and feel so poorly paced when it comes to cohesive structure.  One thing that really bugged me with this game was how it seemed to throw away logic and a semi-grounded reality for a story which clutches at so much far-fetched nonsense. In Innocence there was aspects of fantasy tied into the narrative but that never came at the expense of the grounded plot for the most part. In Requiem’s case the story is constantly fluctuating and jolting from point A to point B with little desire to seem the slightest bit sensible. Character motivations are the worst crime in this story too, especially Amicia. This central character felt like a shadow of her former self in my opinion with constant moments of outrage which felt unnatural in the scope of what was occurring within the scenes. The problem with this story is that it meanders about too much with very little drive or motivation to keep the player following along in an engaged manner. It’s got a lot of emotional intent and there are moments which can be appreciated but they are minor aspects to what is in essence a very bloated plot. 

Gameplay doesn’t fare much better against the narrative either. When I look at the core controls and tools available to Amicia I can acknowledge there have been substantial improvements. Your weapons and tools have been expanded and tweaked to allow more scaling and customisation. There’s a great sense of ease when switching between your tools and the different types of ammo they can utilise. This however feels redundant when you look at the poorly constructed encounters you will need to use them in. The games encounters are split between the rats and the guards in which you will be avoiding both for the most part. These aren’t unfamiliar concepts as they existed within the first game too, but what stands out as a weaker aspect here is how poorly constructed, they feel. With this desire to go bigger these encounter sections often lose a sense of cohesion and structure in the wake of large, open-ended environments. The player is given no real clue or direction in how to proceed and the large scale of these zones means planning out how to proceed is near impossible due to the unpredictability of it all. There’s no sense of satisfaction from overcoming a set encounter because you never feel like you were given a fair chance with how they were put up against you. I don’t get how the gameplay can feel fundamentally worse off in this game compared to the original, it feels like the developers didn’t truly consider bigger doesn’t always mean better.

The only true aspect of this game which doesn’t have any flaw in it is the presentation. Graphics-wise this game blows it out of the park. The world and its various environments are so beautifully crafted and rendered. There were numerous moments where I just had to stop and appreciate the pure detail that was being outputted from my screen. The way light bounces of surfaces and reflections, the scale and density of the open vista, character animations and expressions; all of these examples just exemplify why this game is so bloody good to perceive. The original soundtrack by Olivier Deriviere deserves a lot of praise too. Deriviere manages to add a lot of emotion to the sequences within this game through his arrangements and the main theme he worked on for the game is so bloody good. 

Despite some stellar presentation though I can’t help but look at Plague Tale Requiem with a considerable amount of disappointment. When I think of one word to sum up my general gripe with the game it would probably be; inconvenient. This game is designed and structured in a way which feels so inconvenient to play through and that really sucks to say. I expected this sequel to top up on all the best aspects of the previous title but it sadly under delivers in a lot of major ways. Maybe this is a subjective issue more than anything but I have to be honest and be upfront in saying that I just didn’t much enjoy my time with this game.