A Plague Tale: Requiem review

By Sean Carey,

A Plague Tale: Requiem launches for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Game Pass, and PC Game Pass tomorrow, bringing with it a tidal wave of rats, despair, and rotting bodies. Here's what Sean had to say about Amicia and Hugo's latest outing.

An omnipresent sense of foreboding runs throughout A Plague Tale: Requiem that you can never quite shake. While Amicia and Hugo may have found peace in the warm, sun-drenched fields of Southern France away from all that death in Aquitaine, an old adage rings true: you’re never more than six feet away from a rat…


Requiem picks up six months after the events of A Plague Tale: Innocence. Siblings Amicia and Hugo, along with their mother Beatrice and alchemy-wiz Lucas, are exploring the county of Provence in Southern France and appear to have found peace. However, Hugo is still afflicted with the Macula, an ancient curse/disease that could spell the end of the world if not cured, and while things start off happy and pleasant, it’s not long before Amicia and Hugo’s world descends into misery, rotting corpses, and hopeless despair. After Amicia is forced to kill, the Macula reawakens in Hugo’s blood, forcing the brother-sister duo to search for a mysterious island that may hold the key to Hugo’s affliction.

Starting off in the idyllic flower-filled fields of the French countryside, the very first thing I noticed when loading into the initial chapter was just how damn good this game looks. Sure, Innocence was a decent-looking game, but with Requiem, it seems Asobo Studio has turned everything up to ten. The environments, character models, and animations (minus some wooden in-game facial animations) all look excellent, and in my opinion, could easily rival some of this year’s biggest releases in the visuals department. Leaving the countryside behind, it’s not long before Amicia and Hugo’s journey whisks them off to small cities that are alive and filled with people. That soon changes, however, when the once-packed city streets are emptied and are replaced with putrid rats, death, and unruly humans with unscrupulous morals — if you’ve played Innocence, you’ll feel right at home with Requiem. The stealth-based gameplay, light puzzle elements, and Amicia’s sling are back, though there are some notable changes that make the game stand out over its predecessor.


One gripe I had with Innocence was how unforgiving its combat could be; if you were caught by a guard, you’d be killed in one hit, forcing you to restart the area. Now, it takes two hits to bring down Amicia, which opens up the gameplay, allowing you to run away and hide or make a mad dash for the exit of an area. You also have much more choice in how you want to tackle a stealthy situation, thanks to levels being larger and more open. Innocence often felt linear in its stealth sections, and the solution for sneaking past the guards and rats was often fairly obvious and straightforward. In Requiem, with the levels being a bit bigger, you now have more options open to you in how you approach a scenario. Further expanding player choice are Amicia’s new weapons and tools. The newest piece of gear in Amicia’s arsenal is the crossbow, which can bring down armoured enemies for when a rock just won’t cut the mustard. It’s slow to reload, and bolts for it are limited, but these bolts can be combined with the various alchemical ingredients to deal more damage. Ignifer and Extinguis are back from the previous game along with Odoris, and Amicia also now has Tar, which can be used to fuel and boost the light of a flame and can be combined with pots to create a deadly fire trap for enemies. Along with these changes, the combat and crafting mechanics have been slimmed down and simplified with Requiem, which allows you to get into the action quicker and spend less time in menus — also, Amicia now has unlimited rocks, so no more ammo conservation on that front!

It’s not all about Amicia, though. Hugo’s powers have expanded, thanks to the Macula slowly taking over his body. Hugo can now use the rats under the ground to locate where enemies are, and much like in the previous game, he can control rats once more. The way in which Hugo controls the rats is slightly different this time, and it makes him feel so much more powerful. Instead of pointing where he wants the rats to go, you now fully control a small wave of rats that satisfyingly devours any human in its path.


While weapons and gear like the crossbow and sling can all be upgraded by finding parts hidden throughout the game, Requiem introduces a new skill tree with invisible XP. Depending on your playstyle, you will automatically earn XP and, ultimately, new skills for Amicia in three categories: Prudence, Opportunism, and Aggression. I like this invisible XP system as it’s something that ticks along in the background, offering a true reflection on how you play. However, there are achievements tied to each of these skill trees, and while I didn’t bother adapting my playstyle to try and earn all three in one playthrough, some may feel pressured to change how they play to pop the achievements. I would have preferred it if the achievements weren’t tied to this system and the Gamerscore applied elsewhere.

As the story progresses, the killing, death, and stress take their toll on Amicia. In the first several chapters, I found it quite the slog to get through — it’s very grim going, and there aren’t many lighter moments or wins here. You are surrounded by constant death and rotting bodies, and at times, end up wading through decomposing flesh and other detritus. The atmosphere and overall feeling of despair I felt in the early-to-mid section of Requiem is quite unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in a game. This depressing and ominous atmosphere is compounded by a phenomenal soundtrack that is forever building up tension when it needs it — hats off to Olivier Deriviere for creating such an exceptional score that compliments the gameplay and Requiem’s world.


However, this tension that’s slowly being built is almost ruined by Amicia’s constant talking. Amicia will forever be whispering to her companion or to herself even when an enemy guard is no more than two feet away. There is so much whispering going on that it felt like I was listening to an ASMR YouTube video made by a French woman. In a world that’s so hauntingly grim, sometimes you need the silence to feed into that atmosphere. I don’t need to hear a piece of dialogue each time I bring down a guard or make progress in a puzzle — just leave me to appreciate the decomposing body in the corner and let me fill in the blanks.

Despite this annoyance, Asobo has done an excellent job of forming Amicia’s character, and with the story as a whole. In the second half of the game, the mystery really picks up, and its here where you’ll probably find Requiem at its most enjoyable. The first half of the game doesn’t quite have the narrative teeth to pull it along, but later, things really start to get interesting for Amicia and Hugo, and for two new companions who join them for the ride: Arnaud and Sophia. I won’t say too much about these two for fear of spoilers, but to me, they felt a little underbaked in terms of their motivations. Sophia does have an interesting if not a pretty out-there ability that lets her use a prism to cast light around Hugo and Amicia to help them navigate the seas of rats, which was fun to use.

Another gripe I had with the game was with its performance. A Plague Tale: Requiem appears to be running at 30fps (or maybe slightly higher than that, though, it’s definitely not 60fps) on an Xbox Series X, and while that doesn’t bother me, there are some fairly significant dips in the framerate when things get busy. This usually occurs when you have loads of rats and fire effects on screen at the same time. Asobo says it can have up to 300,000 rats on screen at once thanks to changes with the developer’s engine. While the extra vermin is nice, I would have preferred the missing frames. Much like the first game, there is a fair bit of jank too. Rats will often be found in places where they shouldn't, which led to a few unfair deaths, and a few animations did go awry. At one point, Hugo was wearing a robe that somehow managed to hoist itself up by his ears, obscuring his face from view in both cutscenes and in gameplay.


As for the A Plague Tale: Requiem achievements, other than those linked to the skill tree that I’ve already mentioned, the rest are mostly tied to the story and finding collectables, though there are a few simple miscellaneous achievements. Overall, the list is pretty easy, but it may take more than one playthrough to unlock all of those skill-tree-based achievements. Thankfully, Requiem does have New Game+ for once you’re done, a chapter select if you missed any collectables, and if you wanted to make it ridiculously simple, there is also an invincibility mode.

Summary

A Plague Tale: Requiem is a fantastic stealth game with an intriguing story (once it finally gets going) that Xbox Game Pass subscribers and fans of the original really shouldn't miss. Requiem's gorgeous, yet bleak and harrowing world is a joy to explore, and thanks to expanded combat and additional options that allow you to approach stealth sections in whatever way you see fit, the gameplay really is a step up over Innocence. A few performance issues, some slightly underbaked side characters, and a constantly whispering Amicia do detract from the experience, but overall, Asobo has created a fantastic sequel here that demands a playthrough.
8 / 10
* Sean spent around 25 hours playing A Plague Tale: Requiem on an Xbox Series X, unlocking 28/35 achievements. A code was provided by the publisher for this review.
Sean Carey
Written by Sean Carey
Sean graduated from Southampton Solent University with a first-class honours degree in Journalism, which he uses to keep TrueAchievements and TrueTrophies topped up with gaming and industry news. When not scouring the web for the latest big story, you’ll find him tearing up the streets in Forza Horizon 5 or picking up wins in Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0.
View discussion...
Hide ads