A Plague Tale: Requiem review

Requiem in rat minor

A Plague Tale is a very special medieval fantasy series. Perhaps it shouldn’t be called “medieval fantasy”, since it’s radically different from that subgenre. A better label might be “supernatural horror” within a medieval setting. In any case, the point is that, while the series is set in medieval Europe, it’s not completely realistic, but it doesn’t include dragons, undead, magic, and the like, either.

There are no fantastic beings in A Plague Tale, and the only fantasy – or, if you prefer, supernatural — element is the disease of the secondary protagonist, the so-called Macula. At times, the Macula can be helpful, but, unlike your typical magical abilities in fantasy fiction, the problems it creates massively outweigh the benefits.

And this leads to the story’s major moral dilemma, which is (like in the case of its obvious major influence) a very personal trolley problem. The resolve of this dilemma creates the major emotional impact of the story and it does hit pretty hard. It is a rather long story. I was expecting a short game, much like first one, but it’s at least twice as long.

The characterization doesn’t disappoint. Besides Amicia and Hugo, there are quite a few likable or detestable characters, each with their own clearly delineated motives. The dialogues are pretty good, as well, and there is a bit of banter between characters now, which I think was missing in the first game, though I might be wrong.

The world created by Asobo Studio is gorgeous, with a graphical fidelity that rivals that of Horizon Forbidden West. Not a small feat for a small studio. However, the performance is not as impressive, with 30 fps on consoles and frequent drops below 60 fps on PC on an RTX 3080, at 1440p, with DLSS on. In one area, it dropped even below 10 fps, go figure. But it’s alright, I can accept this poor optimization on a game that looks this good from a small studio.

It's worth mentioning how good the soundtrack is, too. It’s truly medieval, with a lot of acapella pieces and single-line, trouvère-specific, melodies, while the more intense sequences in the game add modern variations to those melodies, with faster rhythms and prominent bass-lines. The game is called Requiem, after all, music couldn’t have been just an afterthought.

What really bothered me was the gameplay. There really isn’t any positive thing I can say about it. Controlling Amicia doesn’t feel good, stealth sections are tedious and repeating them is a nightmare, and combat is just a footnote. Upgrading seems largely pointless, as does the skills improvements based on your playstyle mechanic that the game employs. The puzzles are barely puzzling, and trying to get the same cart into the appropriate position again and again was not fun at all. The only thing that felt good was when I had to opportunity to run past a stealth section.

It wasn’t hard to overlook these problems, though, because the story was so good. Complemented by the beautiful visuals and the great soundtrack, it became one of the most pleasant experiences this year. And was that last, post-credits, scene intriguing or what?