I love Idea Factory, but the long-running Japanese game developer has had far more misses than hits lately. While a couple truly incredible JRPGs make up part of their lengthy list of releases, a majority of their output consists of half-baked spinoffs and undercooked genre shifts that even the most diehard of fans have struggled to enjoy. Amongst all that, though, I’ve always been impressed by the newly blossoming Death end re;Quest series. Two releases in, these grim, gruesome JRPGs come with a unique gameplay twist and a focus on layered world-building that always kept me intrigued. I was excited to see Death end re;Quest: Code Z continue that streak of success, but unfortunately the third time is not the charm.
Instead of being a full-on sequel, Death end re;Quest: Code Z is a spinoff story laying down some potential groundwork for where a third full entry might go, but it expects you to be exhaustively familiar with the two prior games from the get-go. I can only barely remember the events of the last two games, leaving me with far more questions than I was comfortable with when hopping into this one.
In a way, the game is built to parallel that lack of knowledge – new protagoninst Sayaka is a blank slate in a strange alternate version of Earth that runs on binary code, the powers of mysterious entities known as Ludens, and the whims of a seemingly all-powerful cyber goddess named Iris. Unfortunately, instead of using our uninformed hero as a way to deliver helpful info to the player, characters hint at important things yet dodge Sayaka’s questions repeatedly. On top of that, the game incorporates a frequent fourth-wall break where the cast regularly acknowledges and talks to the player directly. It only serves to muddy the agency of Sayaka even more, and makes it clear that this game is more focused on delivering callbacks and easter eggs to well-informed fans than it is in crafting a cohesive story experience. It’s a huge departure from the approach to storytelling that the prior games had – two JRPGs that start out as standalone horror experiences before slowly unraveling into wild scifi narratives of AI-sentience and parallel worlds.
There isn’t just a major shift in the approach to storytelling, but in gameplay as well. Rather than the Hyperdimension Neptunia inspired turn-based combat of yore, this game plays out as a top-down grid-based dungeon crawler in the vein of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon and Shiren The Wanderer. I was honestly so excited about this switch-up, as I’ve been itching for more mystery dungeon experiences after loving the latest Shiren The Wandered.
For the most part, the mystery dungeon gameplay in Death end re;Quest: Code Z is… fine. Your build options and item variety are pretty limited, but there’s still enough going on that makes running through dungeons pretty engaging. The default difficulty option strips away the item and money loss on death, which neuters the roguelike risk-reward that is kind of necessary in a game like this.
Unfortunately, two specific gameplay mechanics bring the entire experience down from “just fine” to borderline unplayable. The first are Death Ends – these gruesome death scenes typically come with unique art CGs and visceral writing, but they are also your primary source of upgrade points in Death end re;Quest: Code Z. A pretty cool idea at first, but eventually you’ll be forced to grind out missing Death Ends by purposefully dying to fodder enemies or replaying dungeons far more times than I would have liked.
There’s also the Sanity meter – every action you take or damage you suffer lowers this meter, and at zero you can’t see anything and your character begins attacking themself. The only way to restore Sanity is through a healing item you have very rare and random odds of encountering. If you’re trying to die to a specific lower-level enemy for a Death End, you’ll almost constantly die from Sanity self-harm before the enemy can actually land the killing blow. It’s an absurd mix of clashing underbaked systems that soured the entire experience for me.
I’m so into the idea of a sci-fi horror mystery dungeon game, but Death end re;Quest: Code Z just isn’t it. Diehard fans will probably enjoy the focus on character interaction and deeper worldbuilding in this game, but the amount of frustrating gameplay hurdles you need to jump through to experience it all just doesn’t feel worthwhile. I would love to see this gameplay improved and expanded on for a sequel, but knowing Idea Factory’s track record, we likely never will.