Video games are art. I hope that’s not something to argue about anymore. Only a few years back it certainly was, but at this point I feel like most people would agree that video games are art. I suppose some people might hesitate to agree when looking at more ‘slop’ games, but I’d argue that every art medium has stinkers here and there. Regardless! I do feel like some games tend to be more artsy than others. Whether or not you feel like this is a bad thing is up to you. I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking games that aren’t exactly artsy like Call of Duty and what not, but there is for sure a divide between games Madden and Death Stranding. And I for one tend to prefer more artsy games. Games like Death Stranding, Alan Wake, and Nier Automata. Games where you can really feel the hand of the creator in them. Like when you play Death Stranding for the first time, you can feel that it’s a Hideo Kojima game! And this is very much the case when it comes to Romeo is a Dead Man.

Romeo is a Dead Man is directed and created by none other than SUDA51! Creator of games like No More Heroes, Killer7, and Lollipop Chainsaw to name a few. And he is very much one of the few creators in the game industry where you can tell you are playing one of his games. This is something that is sadly becoming so very rare in the modern game industry but that’s a topic for another time. Right now we’re talking about Romeo is a Dead Man and how it’s not only a fun game but also pure art!

It can be hard to describe what makes a SUDA51 game great. But I would probably say it’s about experiencing the games themselves, which is hard to describe itself. It’s not just about the story, game play, characters, or anything like that, it’s about how all of those things come together! If you were to take each of those parts and examine them individually you’d probably be left wondering what’s so great about his games, which is why you need to experience it all as a whole. With that in mind though, I’m going to go about explaining these parts and hope that I can show you why you should experience a SUDA51 game. And in this case, Romeo is a Dead Man in particular!

Let’s start by talking about story. Now, if you’re someone who likes a story that has proper build up, concepts that work in it’s world, and just overall makes sense, this might not be the game for you! I’m joking for the most part, but also not really. While the story of Romeo is a Dead Man does make sense, it only makes sense if you don’t try and take it too seriously. This is how it works for a lot of SUDA51’s stories. You basically have to buy into the ridiculousness of it all if you want to not only understand it but also enjoy it. Once you have resigned yourself to the fact that things are going to get brought up seemingly at random and not only be confusing for you, the player, but also the characters in the story you enter a sort of flow state where the craziness starts to make it’s own weird sort of sense. And that’s what makes SUDA51’s stories not only great but unique and memorable. But let me give you a bit of context for Romeo is a Dead Man‘s story itself! And don’t worry, like I do with just about all my reviews, I won’t be going into spoilers.

The story is about a man named Romeo, a deputy sheriff in the small town of Deadford, Pennsylvania. While on patrol one evening with the sheriff, they come across a woman collapsed in the middle of the road. Going and checking on her, Romeo discovers she doesn’t have any memory beyond that her name is Juliet. After helping her, the two fall in love over the next few months, always meeting at a local dinner every night at the same time. At some point, they decide to leave town together, just the two of them. But on the day they were going to leave, Romeo is attacked by a monster and killed! Thankfully, his genius grandpa Professor Benjamin was there to save him with a device he made for just this moment! Said device saves Romeo, replaces the arm and face he lost in the attack, and gives him special powers, transforming him into Deadman! From here, Romeo is recruited by the Space-Time division of the FBI and is tasked with finding and stopping Time Fugitives, one of which is Juliet herself! And that is the basic set up of the game. If that feels a little blunt and out of nowhere I actually decided to tell it in a less blunt and confusing way than the game! The game itself starts with a nightmare Romeo is having of when he’s attacked before going into the plot I just described while also introducing that there are multiple different Juliets running around and before even properly starting Romeo has killed three of them! And you better believe me when I say the game’s story only get more complex from here.

Hopefully all that illustrates what I was talking about when it comes to the craziness of SUDA51’s story telling. If the fact that they basically skipped over the beginning of the story, not really showing how exactly Romeo ended up getting recruited by the FBI, the fact that there are multiple Juliets and she’s a time criminal, and how the Space-Time stuff works upsets or annoys you, this ride might not be for you. But if you’ve never given a game like this a try before, I highly recommend you do! I myself normally hate when stories pull things out of left field all of a sudden without properly explaining it or giving me some kind of way to see it coming. It always feels cheap to me and like the writer just couldn’t figure out what to do. Meanwhile, I also love SUDA51’s crazy story telling because it does just that! Concepts are introduced so quickly and randomly, and sometimes are forgotten about just as quickly. If something like this happened in a game like Resident Evil I would be livid. But here? Here it’s charming! This is what I mean when you just have to buy into the insanity of it all. If you try to honestly take this story seriously you are going to have a very bad time. This isn’t to say the game is meant to be like a comedy either, it’s funny for sure but the fact that, despite it being so ridiculous, the story still takes itself pretty seriously just adds to the enjoyment for me!

So this story is far from something for everyone! And I didn’t even get into the fact it gets into some dark stuff, mainly when it comes to the villains and their crazy acts. But even just from a story telling perspective, it can be a hard sell. But I absolutely enjoyed it! And highly recommend people who feel like they may not enjoy it give it a try. Like I was saying, on paper I usually hate stories like this, but SUDA51’s style is just so charming that it’s impossible for me to hate.

But story is just one part of the equation here! How about that game play?

Unlike the game’s story, Romeo is a Dead Man has pretty straight forward combat! It’s basically a hack and slash with most levels being about going from objective to objective while fighting through various enemies. Said objective obviously changes depending on the level with there usually being some kind of unique game play gimmick. Like the first real level having you power on generators in a mall to light things up. Beyond that you also need to gather a key to access the boss of each level. To do this you must go to Sub-Space via the Nirvana TVs! Sub-Space is a combat free area that usually has some very light puzzle solving for you to do while you get the fragments you need to make a full key. These sections offer up a good break from the combat at the very least! But let’s talk a bit more about that combat.

Like I said before, it’s pretty straight forward. Just slice and shoot your way through waves of enemies! The game has a mix of melee and shooting that you can change between on the fly. Most of the time melee will be your go to since it tends to be the stronger of the two styles with the shooting being more for out of reach enemies or nailing weak points which you can’t hit with melee weapons. There are four options for each style too! For melee you have the starting katana, a big and heavy sword, a pair of quick striking fists, and a rather versatile spear that you split in two. Each option very much has their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, the fists are very quick and allow you to be more nimble yourself but are generally weaker than the other options while the big sword is the opposite, being very heavy hitting but very slow in the process. However, unlike a lot of games that have multiple options like this, there isn’t much of a reason not to pick a favorite and stick with it. Usually when a game gives you options like this, especially ones that you can switch between at a moments notice, there is some reason to jump between them, like having enemies that are very clearly quick so fighting them with a slow weapon would be tough. Romeo is a Dead Man doesn’t really do this. Like yeah, there are enemies that are faster than others but there really isn’t that much stopping you from using that heavy sword to fight them! I feel like this is kind of a double edged sword. On one hand, there really isn’t much of a reason to use all the weapons once you find your favorite, but on the other hand that means you never have to use a weapon you don’t like! Like for me I just about never used the starting katana after the beginning of the game, instead mainly using the fists and sometimes the big sword. Which was fine for me but it meant I wasn’t using all my tools so it might not be the best designed system?

The same can be said for the guns as well. You get four options the starting handgun, a shotgun, a machine gun, and a rocket launcher. All of these options have infinite ammo by the way! Which once again means you aren’t really given a reason to switch between them once you find a preference. For me, I basically exclusively stuck to the handgun and the rocket launcher! Especially after I figured out the rocket launcher just destroys weak points. Usually you need to hit a weak point multiple times before it pops and does a ton of damage, but with the rocket launcher you just need one solid hit! And given the splash damage the rocket launcher does, it’s pretty easy to hit most of the time. The main draw back to the rocket launcher though is its reload time. It understandably takes a bit to reload, leaving you very vulnerable in the meantime. This is why I also used the handgun every so often, namely when it came to shooting enemy projectiles and what not. But I barely ever touched the shotgun and machine gun! Again, this isn’t the biggest issues since I enjoyed using the options I did use but it isn’t exactly the best design when I can ignore so many of the options.

Now this isn’t to say that Romeo is a Dead Man is lacking variety in enemies, there are actually a surprising amount of foes to fight! Up until the final couple levels, the game is still introducing new ones for you to take on and they are actually pretty varied. The enemies you’ll be fighting for the most part though are the shambling zombie like enemies, the Rotters. They are basic fodder style enemies with the only real variation coming from the fact that some can inflict status aliments on you if they hit you. And a few will be sporting guns and attacking from a distance. Though, I have to give props for the detail that the Rotters are sometimes dressed differently depending on the level which is a nice touch! Beyond the Rotters you have some bigger and tougher enemies! I’m not going to go over them here but the main thing that separates them from Rotters, beyond being generally tougher and having a much wider variety of attacks and abilities, is the fact they have weak points to shoot! Usually if you manage to destroy said weak points, they’ll die from that alone which does provide a good change to the combat from blindly melee attacking away. Especially since it can be a bit of a struggle to hit some of those weak points in the heat of battle with so many Rotters and other enemies attacking you! Despite combat being pretty simple overall, things can get overwhelming which is usually when you bust out one of the other combat mechanics, the Bastards!

While fighting, there’s a chance for enemies to sometimes drop seeds. These seeds can be taken to Romeo’s sister, Luna, and be grown into Bastards! Bastards are basically friendly Rotters with special abilities. For instance, one acts as a healing area, remaining on the field and healing Romeo when he stands close to it. Another will turn into a tornado and spin around damaging the enemies it pulls toward it! They are far more varied than that too! Bastards can very much provide an edge in combat and can be used as much as you like with the only limit being a cool down. You can also fuse Bastards together to make a stronger seed! This is really your only other option in combat besides the slicing and shooting. By the end of the game you’ll be able to have four Bastards equipped at a time too, and you can expand your garden to help speed things up as growing a Bastard does take real time! Ten minutes to be exact. Which really isn’t too long at all. So much so that I never used the option to speed it up by spending upgrade resources. That being said, much like everything else in the combat, I found the four Bastards I liked and stuck with them most of the game! I did experiment the most here compared to trying the different guns and melee weapons, but still!

Speaking of upgrade material, you can actually upgrade not only Romeo’s weapons but also Romeo himself! Upgrading weapons is pretty straight forward, just using materials to increase strength and what not, but upgrading Romeo himself is a bit different! You are given a sort of mini game where you direct this little guy through a maze where moving uses up your upgrade materials! The maze itself is littered with different buffs from more health and damage to how much healing items you can carry and how much healing you get from performing Romeo’s super move! It’s more than a little confusing at first but I found it really charming in the end even though I know I didn’t use the best path to get around to all the different upgrades. Said path you can actually backtrack on and restart entirely if you feel there’s a better way to go without using nearly as much materials to get there.

And that’s about it when it comes to the combat! The only thing else to probably mention are the boss fights which are a highlight of the game! While I can’t say any of them really offered much different in terms of mechanics compared to the usual combat, besides the bosses obviously having more varied attacks, all the boss fights were enjoyable and fun! This is mostly due to the fun, and sometimes freaky, designs of each boss and the fact that each fight has it’s own great music, but none were a slog to play either! I won’t go into too much detail about any of the bosses, but they are all fun and entertaining!

So overall, combat is very solid! I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s anything amazing or mind blowing, but I always had fun with it. The only times I ever got somewhat annoyed with it was when a couple of the later levels felt like they were dragging a bit, but that’s more about the levels than the combat itself.

Speaking of those levels, each one is very different from each other! Like I said before, each level tends to feature its own gimmick. Just about all the gimmicks are about how you get around the level with the notable exception being the Asylum level which really shakes things up in a scary way! Each of the levels are also framed as being in a different era. You are a Space-Time agent after all so jump around different times is just part of the job! This never really affected the overall feel of the levels but it is a fun way to bring in the themes of the story! Like I was saying before though, some of the later levels do feel like they drag on a little too long. The cult focused level in particular felt way too long with its underground section feeling never ending. But thankfully even this didn’t really hamper my overall experience with the game.

And that just about covers everything! There are a couple of side things to do but most of those are just fighting more enemies. There is also a mini game for cooking curry that use can use to give you different buffs in battle but I’d hardly call that an extra activity. This isn’t to say that the game is super light on content exactly, but it doesn’t have a massive variety in said content. My playthrough of the game was around 15 hours which felt like a good length for me. I should also mention the game is only $50 as well so it being a shorter experience is to be somewhat expected. Again though, despite all this the game is a great time and one I absolutely recommend!

Romeo is a Dead Man is a trip from beginning to end. This experience might not be for everyone but no one can deny that it is unique! This is a perfect SUDA51 game through and through, and I highly recommend it even if you’ve never played one of his games before. This game really shows why people love SUDA51’s style. It’s a game made with a vision and stands out from the crowd massively. Which is something I feel we really need more of nowadays. That’s not to say every game needs to be weird and off the wall, but so many games feel very similar in a lot of ways even if they are great games. We need more vision, more direction, and more art in our games! And that is exactly what SUDA51 delivered with Romeo is a Dead Man.

But those are just my thoughts! What are some of yours? Interested in giving Romeo is a Dead Man a go? Have you played any of SUDA51’s other games? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

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