Romeo is a Dead Man

i REALLY REALLY REALLY want to love this game and i do love this game. I just can't recommend it to anyone who doesn't have super powerful hardware. I've tried to optimize this game so many times and waited for patches and fixes but even now i can't get consistent frames without sacrificing all the visual clarity and detail that made the game identifiable. It's really frustrating as a fan of Suda works but until they either optimize the game, or the prices of hardware drops I unfortunately can't see the point in trying to force myself to finish the game in this state. Video games with artistry like this are more appealing when they are available to all consumers equally.

Fun game, but there's no reason a game that looks like this should be forcing my GPU to run at 80+ degrees C.

i don't feel good leaving a negative review about this game, because there are plenty of aspects that I enjoy that gives it that good old 7/10 PS2 game vibe. And I mean that in a good way. First off, had I realized this was an Unreal Engine 5 game, I would've never bought this in the first place. I'm tired of UE5, I'm tired of forced ray tracing, I'm tired of lumen and nanite jacking up my hardware's processing power for effects and visuals that do not cater to the gameplay. I understand developers enjoy UE's tools but the end result is just a hardware pipe dream and in this current economy I'm just sick of it. This game commits the usual sins that Japanese game developers do, which is making graphics confusing to navigate. There's an option for "graphics quality" which is basically "render resolution," Upscalers are a gamble as they may potentially make the game run worse, the game's FPS limits are 30, 60, and unlimited, as a UE title the anti aliasing is either a smeared oiling mess or a dithering mess that feels like your monitor's pixels are stabbing you. I play on two builds, one with a 5800X/6900XT and another 3700X/7600. The former build I play at 1440p with a mix of medium and high settings, the game sometimes holds at 130+fps but consistently dips as far down as to 60fps native and it just looks and feels bad with how inconsistent the frame pacing is. The latter build can technically run the game but it just doesn't feel good. That build I play for 1080p/60 in a living room and the game dips below 60 effortlessly whether in traversal, enemies on screen, or when I literally hit anything. speaking of The actual gameplay aspects are one foot in and one foot out for me. I enjoy that the game is a simple 3D hack and slash, the camera is a bit too close to Romeo in my opinion and you can't change that but its manageable, there is a lock on function but I can't recommend using it if there's more than 3 enemies around as it will not only limit your point of view but also leave your evasion in a bad spot. Where I am a foot out is when the game's VFX are obnoxious. Hitting an enemy results in a giant smatter of red blood that explodes with each hit, this drives up the visual clutter to the point where you can barely tell where your enemy is; in crowd fights its downright abysmal as I just had to eventually intuit how much I could attack and when to use Bloody Summer to thin the crowd safely. Pairing this with the inconsistent frame rate and you have yet another title to put in the "unreal engine made me throw up" box. This game went through development turmoils, I get it, and the visual presentation is alluring, the music is fantastic, the weird and unexplained stuff is just interesting enough to where I dont feel like I need an explanation for everything but also I'm fine just rolling with it. I've enjoyed some of my time, but I'm not sure I will want to bother playing this more than the story asked of me. If there is ever an option to lower the VFX, and the performance is further optimized - I'll then consider wanting to do more than "bitter."