General Thoughts

Gameplay wise it’s a weaker Omega Labyrinth. Items are all identified from the start, no fusing stuff, other then a few attack items all you can do is attack, weapons are dungeon clear rewards, hunger was swapped with sanity, no bags, and the longest dungeon is 40 floors.

Story wise I have no idea who thought most of the game was a good idea. It’s basically a massive setup to a third proper game, introducing the final villain along with some copy NPCs and a few other recolor ally/enemies to the cast. Except the actual setup is in the last 10 minutes of the story. The rest is introduction to Sayaka, our heroine, and the rest of that new cast while ignoring the followup stuff. Basically when I finished the game I had to wonder if I accomplished anything.

As for ecchi… it’s not. Unless you like ryona and gore, it’s really not an ecchi game. Some of the death ends talk about Sayaka as a sexy girl, and she has the thiccest thighs and chest of the entire cast, but as for actually putting those on display in a way most people would find sexy? Doesn’t really happen.

Anyway, now I’m going to talk about the death ends as that’s the biggest and most involved part of the game that influences everything. Far to much of the game is based on the player dying and it hurts the entire game.

Death Ends

The entire game is more or less designed around these, and it’s a big issue. So Death end 1 had like 20 some, Death end 2 had 7-ish, and this one? Code Z has 100+ a few. Each one granting a passive skill point for the Death End skill tree, which I’ll get into the issues with that in a bit.

Anyway, I want to be clear. You can beat the game without doing any of the death ends. You need 20 for the true end to unlock, but you can get to that point and beyond without using the points. It’s just without going for the death ends the game is silly short and really bland. It took me a little less then 30 hours to beat the game with all the endings, without going for them it’d take like 15-ish. Maybe a bit more due to dying on accident instead of on purpose?

So what do I mean the game is designed around getting death ends? First, the difficulties. Enemies don’t get stronger, you lose more on death. Levels and items on normal, weapon stats on hard. Dying is the main form of engagement the difficulties affect. So I played one easy, no punishments others then time. I then didn’t have to engage in like half the shop system which kind of sucked, it had some cool ideas…

Moving on, the second half of the game adds in shortcuts, which let you skip to past the boss fights of a dungeon to the rescue half, which take like 5 floors to beat. The only point to these shortcuts is if you are dying in the easy part of each dungeon trek, which is unlikely as the escorts are silly durable and you already mapped out a decent chunk of the dungeon. No, the point to the shortcuts is to cut out replaying entire dungeon trips to get the 2 escort only death ends + actually beating the dungeon. Of course you still have to beat the entire dungeon + due to the boss + die twice to the escort bits per dungeon for the first half. It is… very tedious.

There is a bit more, like how Mai’s character makes way more sense if you see her death ends during her escort bit, but you get the point. I see the entire game as designed around these to a substantial degree, with no small part to being they are the only side content the game really has. If only they weren’t some of the most boring type of side content.

So moving on, what’s the problem? Why do these make the game bad? Part of it is the repetition. Each dungeon twice minimum. More depending on where in the game the dungeon is and how high up the monsters you are looking to die too is. Each standard monster has 3 death ends. 2 just die to them, and 1 sanity 0 death end, which is honestly where a majority of my issues with death ends comes from. Sanity is a fine concept, it replaces hunger that these type of games would usually have. When low you lose icons on the minimap, then the entire map at 0, and start hitting yourself in confusion at random at very low sanity. That’s fine. It’s dying at 0 to every normal enemy in the game where it goes to hell. Most enemies don’t do a lot of damage. Dying in normal play isn’t very common. Those confusion self hits do percentage damage, aka usually way more then most enemies. Those confusion hits are 100% random and there is no way to turn them off. Have fun watching Sayaka ruin a run after spending 5 minutes dropping your sanity to 0 just to watch her blast herself to a different death end. The one you’ll probably see the most. Defeat yourself in confusion.

Now you don’t have to do any of the 0 sanity death ends. There’s 8 traps, each dungeon has a boss, middle boss, 2 escort death ends, and normal enemies all have 2 other death ends. You only need 20 to get the true end. Honestly that’s the best way to play this. Get the deaths that happen naturally and force a few other and just finish the game. It’s kind of boring, but it gets the lore the whole game is about anyway.

To finish this rant, I want to talk about the actual death end passive tree. It’s one of two ways to really improve Sayaka’s stat other then HP. The other is weapon modding, with the stupid rare Atk and Def patches. The skill tree has 5 paths. 3 of them are survival based. 1 is attack is based. The last is trap/status effect based. So if you are going for all death ends, 3 of the 5 paths are actually only going to make the process longer. The trap one is also a land mine for getting half of the escort death ends. You have to perish along with your escort at the same turn. There is one trap that does 50% HP to a 3*3 with the trap at the center. This trap is in every dungeon. The trap passive section of the trap has one specific skill that ruins this. Sayaka can get the ability to break traps she sets off. A really nice skill, if not a trap itself. You can of course time enemy hits and manage without area traps, but 3 triggers and done is so much nicer. Those are also the most unique death ends with special cgs only they get. In a way they are the most worth pursing specifically of the whole set.

Finally, the reward for all death ends earned? You power up your super mode a tiny bit. That’s it.

This wasn’t a fun game to play. Death end 3 better go back to full party RPG like 1+2, at least that’s amusingly broken.

Save for Death end re;Quest Code Z

All cgs, all death ends, I think the save has the entire story replayable?

Completion: Die 100 times in different specific ways. Beat the game. That’s actually it. On, and go back and get the bad ending in the story replay.