It’s no secret that I was a big fan of A Plague Tale: Innocence with its gripping story, intense puzzles, and of course the large hoard of rats. You can imagine my excitement when I found out that this beautifully twisted coming-of-age story had a sequel. I want to give a big thank you to Asobo Studio and Focus Entertainment for letting me give A Plague Tale: Requiem a try!
A Plague Tale Requiem picks up where the last game’s story left off with the De Rune siblings, Amicia and Hugo, who are now away from their home region escaping the inquisition that wanted to take Hugo to use his mysterious powers in their favor. Hugo’s condition which seemed to have gone away six months prior has come back, and so have the rats, and Amica must now protect Hugo once again in order to find a way to save him.
Now onto the game itself! The controls for Requiem are pretty similar to Innocence but with a few more added mechanics which surprisingly blend well with the existing controller layout seamlessly. The game’s sound design is again a home run with this one, headphones are a must for this in my personal opinion as it takes you into the world of Requiem.
The soundtrack, you can’t see me doing it but I’m doing the chef’s kiss, Olivier Derivière, cellist Eric-Maria Couturier, and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir set the game’s tone both beautifully and hauntingly. Charlotte McBurney and Logan Hannan return to voice the De Rune siblings and dare I say, I think they’re even better in Requiem, and they were amazing in Innocence!
The graphics really pop this time around breathing life into the world around Amica, and with next-gen graphics and consols, the rats are even more amazing than they were in Innocence! With the liquid animation to their movements, you can’t help but feel your skin crawl seeing thousands of them at one time on your screen! If you like photo modes in games, you’ll enjoy knowing that it’s in Requiem!
The gameplay is intense at times, not gonna lie! a new mechanic was added to the game, the game forces you now to make a choice on the fly whether or not Amicia is stealthy and calculating only killing when it’s necessary or being a one-woman army where god must show mercy to her enemies because Amicia won’t! How you go about dealing with your enemies will go towards what skills and perks you unlock, the more stealthy you are the more stealthy skills you unlock, and the same goes for being combative. Personally, I’m trying to stay in the middle of the road for this morality experiment.
Overall, if you liked A Plague Tale: Innocence and want to continue going down this emotional rabbit hole, then A Plague Tale: Requiem is for you. It’s what made Innocence amazing and then some. The story continues, the mystery is captivating, the stress from the puzzles and stealth is awarding (you read that right), and you can’t deny the fact that what you see and hear is everything a video game of this type should be.
On my scale of 1-10, A Plague Tale: Requiem is a 10. my only real complaint is again the devs missed a great opportunity to use Ghost‘s song “Rats”. Requiem is out now for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PC, and in Cloud Version on Nintendo Switch.
