Suda51 video games have a proud status of going in opposition to the grain, but Romeo Is a Lifeless Man nonetheless manages to beggar perception.
The most recent effort from the No Extra Heroes lead is completely baffling in a few of the finest and most irritating methods doable. One minute, it delights with comical cutscenes and distinctive gameplay sequences. The following, it confuses and annoys with perplexing mechanics and tedious actions.
On the finish of all of it, Romeo Is a Lifeless Man comes out the opposite facet nearly price enjoying. Simply.
The place do you even begin?
Nicely, in the beginning, when the story makes probably the most sense. You play as Romeo, a person getting ready to demise, as he’s introduced again by the House-Time Police. As a make good, he’s to journey by means of time and area seeking his lacking girlfriend, Juliet — or, somewhat, monsters that look like Juliet.
It’s tough to comply with precisely what’s happening past the preliminary setup, as a result of the plot appears to comply with a number of views, interjecting with random cutscenes and repeated occasions.
When you sat us all the way down to ask what occurs, we truthfully couldn’t inform you. We watched each cutscene. We learn each line of dialogue. We don’t know what occurs on this recreation. You simply must go alongside for the experience.
What we are able to clarify is every little thing else.
At its core, Romeo Is a Lifeless Man is an motion recreation targeted on melee fight. You possibly can equip simply as many weapons as you possibly can weapons, nevertheless it’s the latter you’ll spend more often than not swinging and bashing.
The roughly 13-hour marketing campaign is structured round phases, with a spaceship appearing because the hub space between them. Right here, you possibly can improve your arsenal, develop and enhance Bastards, and converse to an assortment of weirdos. Elective dungeons may also be travelled to through the spaceship to gather improve supplies and extra gadgets.
You journey by means of area and time, utilizing the spaceship to go to numerous moments in historical past to take down the monstrous copies of Juliet. Filter the enemies, get keys to progress, work your strategy to the boss, after which it’s on to the subsequent one.
Every degree is pretty small in dimension, besides the twist is you’re primarily solely seeing half of it at first. The phases are break up into “actual area” and “subspace”, with the previous offering enemies to battle and the latter puzzles to unravel. You journey between the 2 by means of floating TVs, and it’s this alternate that represents one of many recreation’s most irritating mechanics.
One tv set in “actual area” solely ever hyperlinks as much as a single different one in “subspace”. At any cut-off date, you possibly can have as much as six TV units to teleport from one facet to the opposite, and there’s no strategy to observe which one leads the place. All of the environments look extremely related, and whereas there’s a map, it doesn’t talk which TV goes the place.
It’s very tough to maintain observe of which TV you want subsequent to progress a puzzle in subspace, particularly while you die and get circled, having respawned at a checkpoint. Romeo Is a Lifeless Man can shortly develop into a tedious recreation of trial and error as you’re employed out the place it is advisable go subsequent.
On prime of that, puzzles inside “subspace” are by no means defined to you. You’ll merely be travelling from one TV set to the subsequent a lot of the time, however typically, it is advisable kind bridges, ladders, and walkways to get throughout. By a lot confusion and, once more, trial and error, you’re employed out what the sport desires from you. There’s by no means a tutorial; by no means a touch that can assist you alongside.
The 2 extremes of Romeo Is a Lifeless Man are what have you ever threatening to delete the sport off your SSD one minute, then thanking your self for persisting the subsequent.
That is an creative expertise the place you’ll by no means guess what the subsequent stage has to supply. It may possibly remodel from an ordinary hack and slasher in a single mission to a survival horror title the subsequent. By mixing the gameplay up, it retains issues recent and affords the prospect to neglect about these extra tedious components. The draw back is that they really feel like a slap within the face once they return.
Whereas primary, the fight system — which mixes melee weapons, weapons, and talent use — stays enjoyable all through. There aren’t any stamina meters to fret about; it is a back-to-basics motion expertise of whaling on monsters till they die. There’s an ordinary and heavy assault, then weapons full your loadout, from pistol pictures to shotgun blasts and rocket launchers.
Romeo Is a Lifeless Man differentiates itself barely by means of Bastards, that are the monsters you kill. Again on the spaceship, you possibly can develop them on a farm to nurture higher ranges and stats. As much as 4 will be outfitted by the tip of the sport, they usually can present additional means of injury, a heal, or methods of hindering enemies.
Some will take the form of an enormous bowling ball, others will forged lightning down onto monsters, and one other sort damages enemies as a twister. They supply a pleasant bonus to the melee and bullet motion.
Taking away from the gameplay, nonetheless, is completely dreadful efficiency — even on a PS5 Professional in Efficiency Mode. The body charge in Romeo Is a Lifeless Man is completely surprising. It appears to goal for 60 frames-per-second, however you’ll wrestle to seek out many examples of it truly attaining that outdoors of standing nonetheless and observing a wall.
Body charge drops throughout fight are extremely frequent, getting in the way in which and bringing the motion to a crawl. On a PS5 Professional particularly, this isn’t an appropriate degree of efficiency.
It’s a disgrace as a result of the title goes out of its strategy to make its visuals interesting and stunning. Throughout the spaceship and its numerous phases, Romeo Is a Lifeless Man modifications artwork kinds a number of occasions, from lifelike graphics all the way in which all the way down to 8-bit blocks — and a lot in between. It’s a extremely cool side, which, mixed with enjoyable and funky music, leaves the expertise trying good. If solely it ran simply as effectively.
