Romeo is a Dead Man: Review of Suda51's New Delirium

When you know you're dealing with the works of Goichi “Suda51” Suda, you have to prepare for anything and everything: Romeo is a Dead Man is, once again, a valid demonstration of this thesis. The new character conceived by the creator of No More Heroes, Lollipop Chainsaw, and Killer is Dead is, in fact, immersed in an absolutely insane concept that manages to bring together science fiction, horror, pulp/splatter, and occultism, all seasoned with Shakespearean quotes. In such a context, our canonical phrase “let's proceed in order” loses its meaning, but we will still try to give shape to the discussion about Grasshopper Manufacture's new title.

• The Story (as far as comprehensible)

• The Gameplay (general aspects)

• The Production (when it doesn't vary too much)

• The Commentary (summing up)

Romeo is a Dead Man – the story begins more or less like this

Romeo Stargazer is a young deputy sheriff in the town of Deadford, famous, he says, for two trivial details: tomatoes and the fact that in 2019 a scientist named Benjamin Stargazer (Romeo's grandfather) shredded the space-time continuum by creating the first time machine in history. Since then, inexplicable events have multiplied, starting with the discovery of a girl with amnesia named Juliet, with whom Romeo quickly develops a romantic relationship. Things go downhill when Romeo loses an arm and half his face after an attack by a White Demon: he is rescued by none other than Grandpa Benjamin, who arrived from who knows where and when, and by applying a device called Deadgear, transforms him into a Deadman. Now Romeo is an agent of the FBI's space/time division and, using the spaceship Last Night, must locate and suppress all threats that jump through history, causing death and suffering to the population.

If the plot as presented seems bizarre and full of holes, you haven't seen anything yet: one of the first realities you have to come to terms with in Romeo is a Dead Man is the fact that many things that make perfect sense individually have no apparent correlation with each other. The narrative is discontinuous and fragmented, alternating cinematic sequences, two-dimensional animations, or comic book panels with often very different styles and rhythms, repeating the same scenes with small or large modifications, filling the spaces between one gameplay phase and another with many questions and few answers. Is Romeo alive or dead? Is he awake or dreaming? Who is Juliet and what role does she play in the story? How did Romeo, his mother, and his little sister Luna all end up on the Last Night? And why, above all, did Benjamin turn into an animated patch on the back of Romeo's jacket?

Romeo is a Violent Man – the Basis of Gameplay

Trying to sweeten the gaming experience from the madness of the plot and setting, Romeo is a Dead Man essentially configures itself as a third-person arcade game: what Romeo will have to do is confront hordes of enemies while trying to unravel the path that will lead him to the inevitable clash against the current boss. To do this, our Deadman can count on 4 melee weapons and 4 ranged weapons: initially, he will only have the serrated katana and the pistol, but by spending the appropriate currency at the Last Night, he can unlock the two-handed greatsword, gauntlets, and decomposable dual swords for melee, as well as the shotgun, machine gun, and missile launcher for ranged combat. Each weapon can then be upgraded with another resource, improving its characteristics, which is important considering that against certain enemies, some weapons will be inherently more effective than others.

The command pattern therefore includes fast attack, powerful attack, jump, and dash, plus aim and fire for the equipped ranged weapon; pay attention to reload times because they are quite important and tend to leave Romeo defenseless. By filling a special bar, it will then be possible to perform a devastating move which, among other things, allows the protagonist to regenerate some health. In addition to these weapons, Deadman can carry “Bastards,” a kind of Zombie that can be summoned to obtain special attacks or defenses and which require long cooldowns after use. Bastards can be cultivated [like plants] in the special greenhouse and fused together to obtain more powerful specimens. To enhance Romeo's other characteristics, such as base damage, defense, health bar, and more, it will be necessary to engage in a real maze sub-game where in-game currency is spent to travel further.

The upgrade mini-game is just one of the digressions the gameplay takes from the standard action game scheme: the aforementioned search for the path leading to the boss, for example, will often require accessing a kind of parallel digital world called Subspace where there are no enemies but where it will be necessary to solve some puzzles to reach subsequent passages, in a very labyrinthine way. Other puzzles will be of the canonical “find key and use it on the door” type, but there will also be mildly Stealth sessions where you try to avoid enemies that cannot be faced at the moment, space travels piloting the Last Night, or further digressions.

Romeo is a Stylish Man – Suda51's Vision of Production

Just as the plot is a patchwork of genres and elements assembled chaotically [really or apparently? Find out for yourselves!], the production of Romeo is a Dead Man also takes ample liberties. The game environment – understood as standard gameplay – is normally composed of discrete areas connected in various ways and never particularly large; equally rather limited is the field of view and the enemies' perception, but this has not prevented placing even conspicuous quantities of them in a single room. In Subspace, where texture detail is much more modest, the field of view increases significantly.

Romeo's model and those of the bosses are excellently realized and animated, but among common enemies, the detail drops considerably: okay, there's no pretense of having a realistic work, but the Bastards, for example, are probably at PS3 levels. Special effects are also quite modest, although it's undeniable that the amount of gore on screen is decidedly high. As we mentioned, however, the product's graphic realization is not limited to standard gameplay sessions but spans many genres: for example, the interior of the Last Night is rendered in 2D pixel-art, some characters appear as Anime-style videos, bosses are always introduced by dialogues on comic book panels... every new piece of the puzzle that appears before us during the gaming experience is a small stylistic trauma compared to everything else. The same goes for the soundtrack, which combines death-metal, punk, RAP, classical music, Jazz, and dissonant variations of all these things. The game is excellently voiced only in English, but the Italian text translation is decidedly valid.

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Romeo is a Decent Man – Our Final Commentary

As we stated at the beginning of the article, before approaching Suda51's works, it's good to free yourself from pretensions and expectations because the author's stylistic signature is to assault narrative and gameplay standards, subjecting them to his own bizarre vision of the medium. Romeo is a Dead Man certainly makes no exception: a disconcerting plot, a hallucinatory setting, enemies ranging from gaudy to delirious, crazy characters [among others, a cat-woman, a black man living in a screen, and a talking mascot], sudden changes in rhythm and style, and jump-scares bordering on the vulgar. And, of course, all seasoned with tons of blood. If this is what you're looking for in a gaming experience, you're in the right place.

Unfortunately, our job is to be critical and objective: once the game is stripped of all its hallucinatory substratum, however witty and stylish it may be, what remains is a fairly classic action-game with linear combat sequences, enemies that do become more numerous, varied, and aggressive over time but are essentially faced with more or less the same techniques, bosses that are more beautiful to look at than to fight, and puzzles that are more useful for breaking the rhythm than for stimulating the brain. Nothing “bad,” mind you: the game's pace is still valid, the combat sequences are fun, and the overall quality of the work is valid, but in this regard, Romeo is a Dead Man ends up in the bin of games that, while doing their job as contracted, do practically nothing to truly stand out or innovate the medium.

So if you're looking for “Suda51's new great masterpiece,” you'll hardly find it in Romeo is a Dead Man. You'll find a fun and decidedly crazy game, that's for sure. If that's enough for you...