Romeo is a Dead Man
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Romeo is a Dead Man
Like its Fractured Universe, Romeo is a Dead Man is a whole lot of disparate parts that don’t always add up to a coherent whole – but I’ll be damned if I can't stop thinking about it, and I respect how it tells its story through its gameplay.
Whether it’s a compelling personality will vary from person to person, but it throws so much at the wall that surely something will stick. The combat is excellent, the enemies are memorable, and the balance between macabre and levity is well-tuned. Despite the stumbling story, there’s enough bounty in the chaos to recommend this game.
Looking at Grasshopper’s gameography, this one lives near the top of the ordered list for me. I was left wanting more from the love story incidentally promised by the protagonist’s names, but I was eager to keep playing to make Romeo stronger, see where I was going next, and learn more about the colorful cast of characters.
Suda51 is an artist with a recognizable aesthetic, and his fingerprints are evident on this game too, but what's missing is a sense of a larger vision for the game. . Sometimes it's charming or funny, but these moments are fleeting, and artistic flair does not cancel out the tedium of the game's combat and exploration. . It's not a tragedy on the scale of the real Romeo and Juliet, but this is one Dead Man I'm not inclined to mourn.
But overall, it’s the touches of mischief which make Romeo is a Dead Man stand out in a ‘good enough’ landscape dominated by Live Service and competitive games. Stuffed with one-off moments and boisterous action honed over nearly 20 years of carnage, it’s a game that never sits still, never settles for boring but functional and dies with a live hand grenade slipping from its fingertips.
No matter how dense it all gets, there’s always a method to the madness, a consistent, player-friendly path forward that ensures you can keep making progress at a steady clip, even when the game gets notably difficult. Any complaints I could make are nitpicks at best; if you also love Suda’s works, you owe it to yourself to play this one, and if you’ve never played any of his games before, this is an excellent one to start with.
