Romeo is a Dead Man Preview: Suda51 is Absolutely Cooking
To infinity and beyond (you just have to die first)
Sometimes a game comes across my desk that looks so different to anything I've played in recent times that I really don't know what to expect. Romeo is a Dead Man is one of those games. The project is headed up by Goichi Suda, better known by his alias Suda51, and after spending several hours in its earliest throes, I have even more questions than I did at the start, but oh boy did I have a lot of fun along the way.
I'm going to try to avoid straying into spoiler territory at all for the purposes of this preview because so much of what makes the game enjoyable is the narrative it weaves and the way that it delivers it to the player through fun cutscenes and comic book-style illustrations.
To give you a very broad overview, players step into the shoes of Romeo Stargazer, a sheriff’s deputy who, at the start of the story, unfortunately finds himself on the brink of death. After being revived by a brand-new form of super technology, he is recruited by the FBI's Space-Time Police as a special agent, whose job it is to head out into the universe to catch cosmic criminals.
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So how did he get there? We are told that during his days as a deputy, he came across a woman called Juliet, who had lost her memory, lying in the road. After a series of dates at the local diner, Juliet persuades Romeo to elope with her. Sadly, on the day that was set to happen, Juliet failed to show up and our protagonist was instead greeted by a White Devil, who ripped him to bits.
Romeo is (sort of) saved by his scientist genius grandfather, Benjamin Stargazer, who manages to lose his own life in the process. With technology now a big part of his physical makeup, we are thrust into the game with a series of tutorials designed to get us into the combat and movement.
It's an unbelievably dense start for the game, but if you're paying attention and keeping up with the details, it's also one that's really exciting to listen to and get started with in this medium.
The whole story is told in a way that's clearly leaning towards comedy rather than serious sci-fi, but the dark themes managed to gel really well with this approach, alleviating any potential for a bleakness that just wouldn't feel appropriate here.
Moving on to combat and movement, whilst it would be difficult to describe it as groundbreaking, the hack-and-slash approach is comfortably one of the best executions of the style that I have ever come across.
Combining light and heavy attacks with dodges and ranged gunfire might sound pretty run of the mill, but with the variety of enemies on show and the different approaches required to take them out successfully, you'll quickly find yourself hitting combinations that are as spectacular as they are satisfying.
Little damage numbers will pop up as you hit enemies and you'll get a nice change of colour to those when you crit or hit a weak spot, allowing you to learn what attack works well for each type of foe and when is best to use it.
Gameplay is quite linear in that respect and if you're looking for some kind of deep RPG where you can build the character in a thousand different ways, then this likely isn't the game for you, but that's not what the developer was going for and the game is all the better for it. You are a technologically advanced swordsman and rifleman cutting your way through swathes of weird and wonderful creatures, and that is the sum total of what the game really wants you to do.
Depth to the combat comes particularly to the fore during the game's boss battles, which I won't detail here due to restrictions on the preview. With that in mind, these set-piece moments are absolutely where the game shines the most, evoking the feelings of classics in that respect.
If I had to pick out one element of the game that will keep drawing me back for tens, if not hundreds of hours, then it's absolutely the approach to art the developers have taken.
There is a very clear approach to draw on as many different art styles as possible, so while the basic gameplay has a relatively simplistic sci-fi style to it, you'll be seeing a lot more than that throughout your playthrough.
Some elements of the story are delivered in comic book form between gameplay segments, while there are full cutscenes which are often rendered in an entirely different art style to anything that you've seen earlier in the game to that point.
While that approach may seem scattergun, I challenge you to play the game and not see it as a completely appropriate approach to take, given the game’s wider tone and writing. Sometimes, the highly realistic art works well for the more violent moments, whilst comedic moments can be punctuated by a more cartoon-ey approach. It works brilliantly, and it has the knock-on effect of making the game one of the most unique propositions I’ve played in the last few years.
Though this preview only takes into account the first couple of chapters, if it can hold the momentum that it manages to build up early, then we’re absolutely onto a winner.