A Plague Tale: Requiem

I went into this after absolutely loving A Plague Tale: Innocence. That game had me hooked from start to finish — the atmosphere, the subtle storytelling, and especially the bond between Amicia and Hugo felt natural and genuinely earned. So I was really looking forward to Requiem. To give credit where it’s due, the game is visually stunning. The environments are beautiful, the scale is far larger than the first game, and the overall atmosphere can be incredible at times. There are moments where it genuinely feels like a big step up in production value. But unfortunately, that “bigger is better” approach is also where the game starts to fall apart. A Plague Tale: Requiem feels like it takes everything Innocence did — and dials it up to 11/10. However, instead of improving the experience, it often works to the game’s detriment. Where the first game built meaning through quiet subtlety, gameplay, and immersion, this game feels the need to constantly tell you how to feel. Characters are almost always shouting their emotions, and instead of creating tension, it breaks immersion. It feels less like you’re experiencing a story, and more like you’re watching writers behind the scenes pulling the strings and telling you how you should feel. The emotional beats, which were so effective in the first game, start to feel repetitive and manufactured here. Relationships don’t just build and break — they swing wildly up and down, often within short spans of time. You go from trust, to conflict, to reconciliation, to tragedy so quickly that it starts to feel inconsistent rather than impactful. Instead of hitting harder, these moments begin to lose their weight. The gameplay also shifts in a way that didn’t work for me. The first game felt like a tense, puzzle-driven stealth experience where figuring things out was satisfying. In Requiem, encounters are larger, more chaotic, and stealth often feels unreliable, pushing you toward combat. It’s harder, but not in a rewarding way — more in a “just survive it” way. Additionally the game feels like its "pushing" toward stealth, like it will have a different outcome of the game, but it doesn't. Story-wise, the game leans heavily into tragedy, but it becomes so constant that it starts to feel excessive rather than meaningful. By the end, instead of feeling emotional, I just felt disconnected. I don’t have a problem with sad endings — in fact, the first game proved how effective they can be — but here it’s not just the outcome, it’s how it’s delivered. Combined with the way the story is structured and resolved, it didn’t land for me. For example and without spoiling to much, an emotional anchor and major character from the first game has very little time in this game so when they kill them off for "shock value" the emotional weight isn't there and it just doesn't land. The ending itself was especially disappointing. The game seems to build toward the idea that there might be another way, only to ultimately funnel you into a single outcome. On top of that, it introduces elements that feel like setup for future entries, which ends up undermining the weight of what should have been a definitive conclusion. AKA they undermine the entire purpose of the ending to open the game to a sequel. Overall, this is a game I wanted to love. It has incredible visuals, strong atmosphere, and clear ambition. But for me, it lost what made the first game special — the restraint, the subtlety, and the sense that the story was unfolding naturally rather than being forced. My honest take: if you played and enjoyed Innocence, I would leave it there. This game doesn’t build anything more meaningful beyond that. And if you do decide to play it, I would recommend buying it at least half price. As i don't see myself playing this more than once.