A Plague Tale: Requiem review - the story is dark and twisted, but the characters shine

The long-awaited follow up combines the best of storytelling with well-judged gameplay
Vicky Jessop17 October 2022

If the sight of rats eating men alive upsets you, then A Plague Tale: Requiem is not for you.

But hopefully, you would have worked that particular squeamishness out of your system with A Plague Tale: Innocence. For after almost three years, the sequel is finally here, and it’s even scarier than its predecessor.

A Plague Tale: Innocence (the first in the series, which launched in 2019) told the story of siblings Amicia and Hugo de Rune. Descended from a noble lineage, Hugo has been born with a supernatural, dark power in his blood called the Macula.

This allows him to control the army of rats terrorising the French countryside, which operate as a kind of Black Death-esque flash mob. They’re ravenous, they appear out of nowhere and… in the sequel, they can also tear down buildings. Yikes.

In this new Plague Tale, the siblings (along with their mother and her apprentice, Lucas) are attempting to make a new start, six months after their lives were torn apart for the first time. But of course, life isn’t that simple and soon the Macula starts poisoning Hugo from within – and causing rat-chaos everywhere the family flees.

On the warpath: Amicia de Rune
Focus Entertainment

As you might expect, the subject matter is grim. We, as Amicia, slog through plague pits, rat-infested streets, piles of partially-stripped human skeletons and body-clogged rivers in our attempt to find a cure for Hugo before he dies. The palette, in the first part of the game, is mainly shades of grey and black; the rat swarm more terrifying than ever (the developer, Asobo, has boasted that the game can generated hundreds of thousands of rats simultaneously). Truly, the stuff that nightmares are made of.

But once you get past the horrifying optics, this game – very similarly to the first – operates as a fairly straightforward puzzle solving/action-stealth game. Over a series of levels (here dubbed ‘Chapters’), Amicia and her companion - either Hugo or Lucas - must sneak through an area patrolled by guards, or rats, or a combination of the two.

Each set of foes offers a different challenge: the rat swarm, it turns out, hates light, so a lot of the levels require finding ways to get past it without being eaten, using Amicia’s sling to light and extinguish torches, braziers and bonfires from a distance with the alchemical bombs she has in her arsenal. Meanwhile, the guards’ alert system is fairly well-honed, so while you can sneak behind them, they will come and investigate if they spot anything suspicious, making for a fair few heart-in-throat moments.

Fortunately, Amicia is a little more tricked out this time around: in addition to her infamous sling, we have some new toys to play with. Now, she can counter an enemy’s attack, use a crossbow and even (if you have a knife to hand) sneak up to and stab unsuspecting soldiers à la Assassin’s Creed, which is fun - the only quibble I had is that the knife was one-use only, requiring you to source another to repeat the same trick.

Indeed, while stones for Amicia’s sling offer unlimited ammo, everything else (alchemical bombs, crossbow bolts, knives) must be scrounged, forcing the player to be tactical with how and when they use their weapons.

(Squ)eek: A soldier being attacked by rats
Focus Entertainment

The skill tree also offers a fun new twist that I’ve not seen before: the game will level up Amicia automatically depending on what kind of playstyle you prefer, aggressive or sneaky.

While continually solving puzzles can get tiring (though Amicia’s ever-expanding bag of tricks does help keep things interesting), the real draw of this game lies in the relationship between Amicia, Hugo and Lucas, their mother’s apprentice.

The voice acting from the young cast is stellar, and if Charlotte McBurney plays Amicia as a tad hysterical at times, you can at least understand why: she’s in fear for her brother’s life, and wrestling with some severe PTSD to boot. Though the cutscenes are long, they fly by and offer some genuinely fascinating character beats.

Grim as it is, A Plague Tale: Requiem is a beautifully crafted, character-led game that combines the best of storytelling with well-judged gameplay.

With 18-22 hours of gaming to get through, it’s a chunky beast, so sit down and devote a weekend to it: the story is dark and twisted, but the characters shine. Just don’t mention the rats.

A Plague Tale: Requiem will be releasing on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and in Cloud Version on Nintendo Switch from October 18

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