Warning: The subject of this review contains graphic descriptions and depictions of violence, gore, suicide, and other potentially disturbing topics. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

I want to say right up front that the game I’ll be reviewing today is way out of my usual wheelhouse. I tend to avoid games that I think lean too heavily into the whole “anime” aesthetic, though I know that’s subjective and rarely enough of a reason to dismiss a game out of hand. With that being said, I do enjoy a lot of RPGs and JRPGs. Even if such a game’s story is nonsensical, I’m often willing to suspend my disbelief and play through it. Can I say the same about Death end re;Quest?

Well, I had already counted two strikes against Death end re;Quest before I even started playing. One of the screens you see each time you launch the game clearly states that all characters are at least eighteen years of age. I’m always at least somewhat disturbed when any piece of media deems it appropriate to make such a disclaimer, especially given what I’ve heard about certain types of anime and their target audiences. More importantly, though, is the rather frustrating fact that Death end re;Quest’s borderless window setting doesn’t seem to work properly on my ultrawide monitor.

When I first launched Death end re;Quest, it was stuck in a borderless window at a resolution of 1920×1080. This didn’t fill my screen, and the usual Alt+Enter key combination that changes the resolution of most games had no effect. Death end re;Quest doesn’t support my monitor’s resolution of 2560×1080, so I had to set it to fullscreen mode at 1920×1080 in order to see the entire game window. Its graphics don’t look great because of this, but none of that is a deal breaker for me. Still, I wanted to make sure I mentioned all that.

Within my first twenty minutes spent playing Death end re;Quest, I had chalked up two more strikes against it. Death end re;Quest’s opening cutscene shows your character, an adventurer named Shina Ninomiya, being gruesomely slain by a massive monster of some kind. I can handle games that usually have a lot of blood on the screen. Still, the accompanying narrated, disturbingly detailed description of all the horrible things that happened to Shina during the cutscene made me increasingly queasy. I assure you, folks, I didn’t include that content warning at the top of this article for nothing.

The soft, female voice of whoever narrated that cutscene also felt wildly inappropriate given the circumstances. I think that made me feel even more nauseous. Shina is also affected by what’s described as a “curse” that initially manifests as so-called “spider legs” around Shina’s waist. In the dialogue cutscene following your first combat encounter, the curse begins to spread a bit, which causes Shina to scream, “It’s fluttering up my skirt!” That was the moment that made me say aloud, “Yep, this is definitely an anime game, all right. Great, now I’m both nauseous and creeped out.”

It turns out that Shina is actually both one of the co-creators of and a character within a virtual reality MMO game called World’s Odyssey. World’s Odyssey was shut down by its development company, Enigma Games, a year before it was planned to be released to the public, because Shina suddenly disappeared without a trace. The other co-creator of World’s Odyssey, Arata Mizunashi, unexpectedly receives an email from Shina’s account and discovers that she’s only disappeared because she’s somehow become stuck inside the game. Thus, Death end re;Quest takes place both inside World’s Odyssey and the real world.

Eventually, Shina begins hearing the disembodied voice of a figure who keeps giving her orders. Since Shina has no memory of the past year and has no reason to think she’s in the game and not the real world, Shina initially resists this voice and what it’s telling her to do because it won’t answer her questions. She starts to suspect it might be the voice of the in-universe God speaking directly to her. The identity of the voice is revealed to be that of Arata Mizunashi, who is guiding Shina through World’s Odyssey from his workstation in the real world.

The two figure out that the only way for Shina to escape from the game and return to the real world is to finish World’s Odyssey’s true ending without dying. The problem there is that this process was designed to be extremely difficult. Since Arata is one of the co-creators of World’s Odyssey, though, he has an arsenal of “game master” powers, which basically make him a god. This allows Arata to override any restrictions put in place on normal players and basically “break the game” in order to help Shina achieve World’s Odyssey’s true ending and get her back to Earth.

I really tried to get into Death end re;Quest, but I just couldn’t manage it. The story sounds right up my alley in theory, but the core gameplay loop couldn’t hold my interest for very long. That, combined with the amounts of gore, mentions of mass suicides, amounts of fan-service, and general “anime-ness” put me off of Death end re;Quest past the point where I couldn’t bring myself to return to it. Alexx reviewed the PS4 version of Death end re;Quest and really enjoyed it, though. He went much more in-depth about the core gameplay loop if you want to learn more.

Like I said at the beginning of this review, playing Death end re;Quest is basically venturing into completely uncharted territory for me. I am clearly not among the target audience for a game like Death end re;Quest, or most games developed by Idea Factory, for that matter. That being said, it wouldn’t be fair for me to categorically condemn Death end re;Quest and declare that no one should ever play it. As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, sometimes I wind up obligated to review games that are still enjoyable to others despite not being my cup of tea. This is another such case.

A PC review key for Death end re;Quest was provided by Idea Factory for this review.

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Death end re;Quest

$29.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Interesting story concept.
• Gameplay will feel familiar to RPG veterans.

Cons

• Gratuitous gore and presence of other disturbing subjects.
• Possible technical issues on PC.
• Uncomfortable amounts of fan service and anime tropes.