Sequel to Death end;Quest. Mostly similar in gameplay, though story style is more helpless children and far more occulty then the VR/real world mixing and cult stuff from 1. Has slightly less lewd stuff, or in other words barely any.

I have to rant a bit before getting to the rest of the game stuff. Every guide lies a bit. All of them. They list NG+ as being the only condition for the extra story stuff the game has. That stuff is NG+ True End only. If you take the final bad end, which also has a NG+ option, you set yourself up for an entire extra playthrough. That was dumb.

Story- 7

It starts with Mai(our main character) killing her abusive drunk father.

Faster forward a few weeks and Mai is now in Le Choara, the main location of this game. It seems to be some middle of the mountains European town, and Mai is from Japan. Mai came here as it’s the last known location of her sister. Mai goes to Wordsworth, the orphanage in the area and learns no one knows who Sanae is. She’s just missing. This forms Mai’s core goal of the game, figure out where her sister is. Someone is lying.

After meeting some of the other quirky all girl orphans in Wordsworth, Mai goes to bed. She then sees a girl who bullied her breaking the only rule of the place, don’t go out after midnight. Mai chases after to see what the hell the bully is scared of, and the town is just different. No adults, no people really, strange black growths everywhere and boom, monsters. Good thing Mai brought her father killing hatchet through her travels.

That forms sort of the backbone of the game loop. During the day further the core story and interact with the rest of the cast at Wordsworth, and at night deal with either a clue to move the plot forward or chase after yet another girl Mai saw in her window. Mai is joined in her quest by Rottie, the daughter of the headmistress of the place and her roommate. Rottie fell in love with Mai immediately and is basically a puppy chasing after the tough girl that is Mai. A few chapters in you meet Lilliana, a girl who wants to be an exorcist that has a dark backstory in a similar vein to Mai’s. Mai immediately latches on to caring for Lilliana and the three form the main party of the game. Rottie tries to be affection, Mai rebukes her, Lilliana wants something, Mai immediately does thing, Rottie complains. This is their cycle and basically comedy routine to help with destressing from all the dark stuff actually happening.

Le Choara is messed up. It has a weird god, El Strain. No tech or signals. It has an all girl orphanage in the middle of nowhere with no other adult women in town beyond the maids who work at Wordsworth and the local Bishop. After the first death in the prologue you are told the girl found a family. The girl who was yelling in a panic attack and Mai had visions of killing the day before. Yeah, she totally found a new family.

Early on you meet Shiina, the female protag of the first game working as a maid in Wordsworth a few chapters later she becomes an ally and sets up a bit of other stuff. It felt weird seeing her otaku habits when she basically never displayed them in the first game. If you have her maid uniform dlc, Shiina will show up in the camp to talk to during the story segments she travels with the group.

I mentioned the NG+ stuff in the top of the post so a quick note about that stuff. It’s almost entirely connecting this game to Death end 1 and setting up the story wide narrative. It has some Stein’s Gate feel where the individual games are dealing with specific villains but there is a greater scope big bad the series will hopefully get to in re;Quest 3. Also the NG+ stuff adds some more scene length to the heroine endings from the first game while also kind of making it feel like all 5 of them happen. That was an odd touch. At least it makes NG+ feel more worth it then re;Quest 1’s you now can choose your ending bonus as the only reason to replay the game.

Gameplay- 4

Same core idea as the previous game, positioning based turn based with no movement limit, 3 actions a turn, weapons focusing on any stat, learn moves via using moves and so on. There’s some system changes I’ll go into, but just know that I consider this to be a better experience in general. Not good, just not as as bad as Death end 1.

Field Bugs are now almost entirely just buffs, and certain fights will litter the field with ones that let you reach your ultimate form basically every player turn. I saw glitch form aka ultimates way more in this game then I did the first.

Instead of needing combo’s of moves you just need to use a specific move to learn a new one, but the game dropped telling you if you can learn a skill. I missed a pretty great skill because it was from a move I just didn’t care to use until I reached end game and used a guide to learn the movelist. It’s a weird good and bad change. You also learn a majority of your skills via just leveling up.

The combat arena’s are smaller so the knockback stuff is way more effective. There’s also a super knockback that can trigger for more damage, which has a timing trigger you can learn to force to happen.

Moving on to non combat-

Game is split into day and night sequences. Day is pure VN with a scene selector(need NG+ to see all of this), all these are optional and really just give money via the episode chart. Night is dungeon time. Where you can go expands as the game story progresses, and if the game wants you to revisist places new chests will be thrown all over.

The game takes place almost entirely in a rural town that is corrupted, no fantasy volcano’s or fields. Just city streets and some mountains and farms. Pretty rare locations to be the dungeon areas. Very different from the VR MMO stuff from re;Quest 1.

You only get 3 proper party members and you get the 6 party members from the first game as ghosts. They can fight and do nothing else. On the other hand, bug skills see a lot more use in this. Rottie’s just floats you up to platforms and is the most boring. Lilliana’s breaks walls using balls you have to find, making her skill just a different kind of key. Mai hacks computers and lets you see things you couldn’t before using security cameras. This has 3 uses, seeing fake walls, making special chests appear, and being able to see codes for walls.

Choices can matter. There’s fewer dead ends in this one, 7 in total compared to 28 of the original. In return, a number of non game over choices decide the fate of other characters, which effects which scenes you will see for the rest of the game. At least 1 NG+ is needed to see basically everything.

There’s an annoying instant death stalker monster that spawns from time to time. It’s really just an annoyance, any fight or avoiding it will despawn it eventually. It basically just made me fight a few extra fights to avoid it. It can show up in combat too. It has a turn where it kills anyone standing in it’s zone from your party, making it even more annoying. It’s the least fun thing in the whole game.

Lewdness-2

Basically none? Of the 3 new girls, Lilliana is a kid, Rottie is flat, and Mai is stacked. There’s like 2 cleavage fanservice cgs in the game, both of Rottie and Mai and nothing else. Jiggles still here, and ultimate forms are still swimsuits.

There was actually some drama over the ultimates in this game. When it came out Sony had ramped up their anti fanservice stuff, so people saw that the returning 6 had more clothes on their glitch forms and got upset. The PC release is back to the original designs.

Final Thoughts

I like the looks of this game more then the first. I always knew the ecchi would be toned down to almost nothing but the Western small town look? That’s rare and I like it.

As for my actual opinion, I like 2’s story a bit more then 1 though 1 is probably more generally likable. Sword Art comparisons make selling someone on 1 easier, and 2 really relies on it’s atmosphere and quirky characters more then the hopelessness of 1. Combat is so similar that if you liked one then the other would be fine.

Both games are weak in lewd content and I expect Code Z, the third game, getting blocked by Western Nintendo is probably either for blood or something to do with a young looking girl’s costume. The recent market shit is annoying and I’ll probably do a write up on the whole current situation as I understand it soonish. I just really hope Code Z can come to PC, I really don’t want another Sony locked series nor another franchise I like to die because of prude garbage right before their big ending entry(See Senran and Omega Labyrinth).

Anyway, I think both Death end’s are some of the best games to come out of Compile Heart, owing to having good stories with effort and almost none of their games having great gameplay. If you like horror or dark stories I can definitely recommend them. If you want anything else then probably just skip them.

Save for Death end re;Quest 2

Filled bonus menu, all episodes on the tracker for rewards, all moves and weapons got at end game. Saves to every three chapters and a NG+ save ready to go at top.

Did leave a save to use the fill the episode tracker, just beat the final boss for the true final end scene to trigger and you should get the achievement.

Gameplay: 4/10 Eroticness: 2/10 Story: 7/10

Completion:

True end NG+ is required since a lot of scenes are NG+ only. Every chapter has 2 or so. The full true end is actually NG+ only. There’s also some mission only scenes that happen only on NG+, so missions can be ignored on run 1 but all done ASAP on NG+.

The most annoying bit is chapter 6 has a 5 choice set, with these having different scenes for the next 2 chapters, with each girl having a scene locked to NG+ True End run. Lots of replaying around that point for basically nothing. Like these scenes are almost 1:1 copy pastes with different voices, only the NG+ scenes are actually unique to each choice.