Review: Death end re;Quest Code Z

Developers: Compile Heart, Idea Factory

Publisher: Idea Factory

Platforms: Ps4/5 (Reviewd) , PC (Coming Soon)

Death end re;Quest Code Z is the latest entry in the Death end series by Compile Heart and Idea Factory and its a complete shift in the series’ tradition genre of JRPG. Code Z is a complete departure from the series in terms of gameplay and story presentation and it is honestly quite hard to understand why they would turn, what is typically considered a decent game series, into what we have here. I absolutely love RPGs and even quite a few Mystery Dungeon games like Shiren, Pokémon, and even the Final Fantasy Chocobo series. There is a lot of fun that can be had with this genre and a lot of flexibility in the terms of strategy elements and progression system that can be mixed with an engaging story and quite honestly Code Z missed on almost every aspect in my opinion.

The game’s structure is as follow; 1+ hour of visual novel-esque main story scenarios and subplots, about a 30 minutes delve into a typical mystery dungeon area of anywhere between 5-15 floors that ends in a boss fight or a rescue mission of another character, back tracking through a few floors to escape the dungeon to rescue the character, and then another 1+ hour worth of visual novel cutscenes. Rinse and repeat for about 10 chapters. I think for every 3 hours of gameplay you may have about 45 minutes of actual dungeon exploration. This ratio is super exhausting and really not fun to sit through to be frank and made the game an absolute slog to get through and to be honest I haven’t yet beat the game, which is not something I typically like to do when reviewing a game. It would be one thing if the story was super interesting but with the characters basically just rambling over mostly static images it really just drags on way too long to hold my attention.

The best part of the game is the mystery dungeon aspect which is good obviously, but even then there are just some really weird choices in the way the game is played. This is your typical, take a step or attack, enemies take a step or attack, in a fairly large map comprised of boxes that you can move 1-2 spaces at a time depending on current status and buffs. As you move you will regenerate health but at the same time you will lose a bit of your sanity, which is somewhat fitting because my sanity was slowly dwindling as well while playing it. In the time you spend in the dungeon there is barely any noticeable or engaging music which is just odd, so your ears are just filled with the noises of your characters movement and the enemies make weird cries and attack noises as they attack you. There is obviously music playing in the background, and some dungeons are better than others, but honestly its just a series of a basic beat along the lines of bah do-do dah bad do-do dah soft jazz. When you are exploring a zone and the game play is somewhat slow due to the nature of the genre I feel like you need something uplifting for the music track to keep you engaged and amplify the urgency of the exploration, not feel like an elevator ride in an abandoned mall. The music does pick up when you are in a boss fight which is nice, but strangely there is more engaging music in the cutscenes with characters just talking at the cafe. Just such a strange choice.

Another weird choice is the game really only rewards you with permanent upgrades to your character when you die. Every time you die while exploring a dungeon, you get a pretty cool death image with an explanation of your death which doesn’t always fit the gruesomeness of the picture, but even then a lot of the image and actual wounds are glitched out stylistically. Basically, if you want to buff your character permanently, just run into the dungeon multiple times and die to the different enemies over and over so that way you can rack up some free upgrade points and then do your final run to finish the dungeon. Of course, this isn’t even necessary as the buffs didn’t seem to do any significant increase to your character and you would literally have to die at least 5-10 times before you get any decent upgrade. Outside of that, you can also upgrade your weapon that you use with specific items that change your damage type like Moon, Sun, or Star damage. These are the basic rock paper scissors damage modifiers, one being strong to the other and weak to the next. You can also add percentage chances to debuff enemies you hit with your weapons but again this is a low chance of around 10% per attack where enemies take maybe 2 hits to kill. Finally you can also upgrade the attack or defense of your character by upgrading the weapon as well. Overall, these modifiers are often rare and definitely very expensive if found in the shop. It was also frustrating because as soon as you would upgrade a weapon with any of these modifiers, a new weapon would be added that usually beat out the upgrade weapon you got just 30 minutes of actual gameplay prior. Some weapons have different base effects like attacking 2 spaces ahead or can give you a chance to get a free counter attack.

Visually the game is decent, the character images are well done but I kind of wish the death scene art cards weren’t as censored. Maybe that’s just a me thing though, if you are going to focus the main part of the upgrades of your characters due to their death you might as well go all out to further incentivize wanting to have to replay levels to actually see all the scenes but that just isn’t the case. I really wish there was more positive things I could say about the game, but really I just felt really let down by Death end re;Quest Code Z. If you are a fan of Death end, you might find some value here as Sayaka is a pretty cool character, the deaths are pretty interesting, and if you like mystery dungeons all of this might come together for you. If you are looking for a continuation of the Death end re;Quest series, just wait till the 3rd entry finally releases. Everyone else, you may want to wait for a massive discount or skip this entry all together. If somehow, the game drastically changes as when I eventually do beat this title, I will of course update the review, but if its anything like the initial 12 hours I have put into it, my review will stand as is.