I’m no stranger to the works of Goichi Suda, aka Suda51. I’ve played Killer7, Shadows of the Damned and Killer Is Dead, and enjoyed them. I’ve reviewed not one but two No More Heroes titles, so I’d like to think I’m aware of how bizarre his mind can be. But then out comes Romeo Is A Dead Man, and all bets are off.
On paper, it’s a hack and slash/shooter action adventure with melee and over-the-shoulder shooting elements. However, in the margins of that paper, there’s laser swords, clones, spaceships, dimensional police and, apparently, a story about love across time and space.
Is this going to be another “Suda51 trip” to buckle up for, or have the quirk factor finally worn off? Well, allow me to do my best and make this one coherent, but we are in for a ride…
Boy Meets Girl, Dies…
The story in Romeo Is A Dead Man is… oh god, please bear with me on this one. Any short summary is going to undersell it, anything at length is going to make me sound mental. But I’ll do my best… hopefully.
The year is 2019, and our journey eventually begins in the patrol car of one Romeo Stargazer. Yes, Suda51 has a similar daft naming convention as Hideo Kojima does. On a seemingly normal patrol, Romeo and his partner stumble across a woman lying in the road. Then, a demon appears, rips Romeo’s right arm, eats half of his face and kills his partner.
Then a portal opens, Romeo’s grandpa appears (from the future, obviously), jams something into his eye socket that transforms into a cyborg/undead Robocop-hybrid thing. Oh, and it magically regrows his right arm into a cool, metal one. And he has a helmet that looks like it was made from parts of a Sinclair C5.
RoRo’s Bizarre Adventures
That’s just Romeo’s origin story, above. The story itself gets its own section of the review because of how mad it is. On paper, it’s a space police force trying to eliminate the source of a lot of space-time inconsisties and problems.
Romeo is recruited into them after his pretty-much-dead encounter, working with a team of nerds, anthropomorphic cats, what I think is either a portrait or portal of/to someone, and a mascot.
Oh, and there’s his grandpa, the one that resurrected him and now lives on as a patch on his jacket. There’s a couple of family members on board the starship The Last Night, too. I feel like I’m missing some more wacky, irreverent items but honestly, there’s just so much to take in.
Amd yet. I haven’t actually gotten to what Romeo… I mean, Deadman (that’s a recurring gag in the game) and his crew are up to.
…Does Anyone Remember “Sliders?”
What the core drive for Romeo and the space FBI is shutting down singularities and bad things happening across different time periods. These are being led by, at least what we believe to be, Juliet. Or a mysterious entity known as Juliet… or it is Juliet, and she’s cloning herself as different versions to mess with Romeo. Yeah, there’s your clumsy Shakespearian tenuous name link.
Like Carmen Sandiego meets Timecop (see Suda51, I can make obscure pop culture references too), the gang are always on the back foot. Hopping between time periods, Deadman and his grandpa, via a sentient jacket patch, are tasked with the hunt. From 1980’s shopping malls, to late 1960’s Americana-style towns, they hop around. Reminds me somewhat of Ghosthunter on the PS2.
The gist, from what I gather so far, is to hunt down the “final Juliet”. But there’s the rub: Romeo has, at some point, met her (or at least the OG one, I think), and is conflicted about if he is to kill her or not. Yet whilst it seems pretty straightforward: the boy-meets-girl, fated lovers, “do they end up dying?” angle, I’m strangely invested. Maybe it’s because it is quite fun to play.
One More Hero
As we’ve learnt from Lollipop Chainsaw, Killer Is Dead and… well, No More Heroes, is that Grasshopper love a brawl. Specifically, they love a melee-focused adventure with awkward shooting controls along for the ride. In this instance you’ll be pleased to know that Romeo Is A Dead Man has one too. In fact, it’s the core gameplay.
Yet rather than having one trademark weapon, akin to Travis Touchdown’s beam saber or Juliet Starling’s rainbow chainsaw, Romeo Is A Dead Man goes for variety. Admittedly yes, the default sword is lightsaber-esque, but the others mix that up nicely. There’s some gauntlets, a big sword, and a staff that splits into two handheld blades during combos.
In terms of firepower, it’s as Resident Evil as one could imagine. A pistol, a shotgun, a machine gun and a shoulder cannon. Romeo starts with pistol and basic sword, with the others being easily acquired through purchase quite early on.
It feels like Grasshopper weren’t going for anything gradual, like Devil May Cry does. Instead it comes across as more, “Do what you like, with what you like” and favours the other wackiness. Which, I warn you now, there’s a lot more of.
Key, Door… What Else More?
If I had to write a “normal” summary of the stage progression in Romeo Is A Dead Man, it wouldn’t be hard. In essence, it’s small areas that have locked doors, keys for them scattered around, and that’s how you progress. Like Doom, or boiled down Resident Evil. But of course, filtered through Suda51’s brain.
So we have key hunting, but also traversing to subspace to find pieces of a different type of key to unlock a different kind of door. We also have frequency orb tuners to solidify stairwells in subspace, because why not.
It sounds very overwhelming, but it’s not too bad. The subspace visuals are all chunky blocks and geometrics straight out of Tron. The corridors and backrooms of courtrooms and warehouses gets a bit samey, but it’s more just stages for the occasional locked room horde moment.
Stripped away of the Rotters (this game’s name for zombies) and other beasties, Romeo Is A Dead Man is essentially quite formulaic. Whilst you could argue that about most games, it wouldn’t be a Suda51 game without some other weird angles.
Here Come The Bastards
Romeo Is A Dead Man is, as I’ve said, pretty formulaic. It even has a weapons and upgrade system, akin to most other action-adventure games before it. You know the type: if you’ve played Shadows of the Damned, you’ve played Resident Evil 4, that kind of thing. It has a neat little stat boost mini-game that plays like a top-down racer meets Pac-Man, though. Yet it’s still just a fancy way of improving stats.
What is unique, however, are the pet Bastards. These are Rotters grown from seeds, found in-game, in plants beds on the Last Night. These little fellows can be nurtured and then mapped to certain keys for in-game aid, either offensively, defensively or passively. There’s suicide ones that blow up, sentry turret Rotters, and even some that will heal or cause defensive buffs for Romeo. It’s a neat little mechanic, which can be useful in a pinch.
There’s also pin badges that can be bought and equipped, again for various buffs and boosts. It’s not necessary to deep-dive into, it’s something to experiment with. And of course, weapon upgrades that raise the damage, stagger ability and amount of health that their special Bloody Summer moves restore.
If it sounds like I’m being glib, I suppose I am. It’s just that whilst the icing is all rainbow colours and sparkle effects, the cake is the same filling. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just more of the same with an anarchic Suda51 twist.
Oooh, I’m Blinded By The Lights
Whilst I’d love to call Romeo Is A Dead Man my favourite anarcho-punk game from my favourite, wacky director, I can’t. it does have a few issues that make me have to gripe. For one, the story pacing is pretty erratic at times. It’s strange, because whilst I should expect it from the Killer7 guys, it still does throw me off at times. As does a pace-breaking pseudo-Silent Hill/horror asylum stage, that’s about as flow-crunching as the hospital level in Hotline Miami.
In terms of technical issues, I wouldn’t say I had any that were immediate bugs or hard crashes. However, and maybe this is me getting old, the amount of bloom, flashing lights and spraying pixles is insane. At times in combat, it was hard to see where I was getting hit from because of the effects of my own weapons.
Not only that, but switching to ranged weapons on the fly sometimes doesn’t flow seemlessly. So there’d be times I want to use the shotgun in a pinch, yet it’s not quite flowing and I’d get smacked again. Yes, it seems like a skill issue, and may be hard to articulate, but there’s a definite issue that needs to be addressed.
What might put some newcomers off, mind, is that Romeo Is A Dead Man cares not for wimpy checkpoints. This is old school, save-points-for-restarts-only kind of gameplay. I’m used to it because, well, I’m old. But I can see it catching some people out.
Romeo Isn’t A Quitter
In conclusion, I bloody love Romeo Is A Dead Man. The jank is, conversely to what I’ve just griped about, part of the overall Grasshopper Manafacture charm. It’s so, for want of a better word, “random” that you can’t be annoyed at it.
It might seem like a hard sell if players aren’t familiar with the Goichi Suda catalogue, but don’t let it be off-putting. It’s very much a standalone, with enough to do in there. There’s no multiplayer, but there are extra dungeons that add extra challenge. There’s even harder, unlockable difficulties for that extra extra challenge.
It’s definitely an encapsulation of Suda51 madness, but this time as an overlay. It certainly feels more finished than Killer Is Dead was, because that was disappointing. Don’t think of it as a retelling of the Shakespearean classic, it’ll probably give you a nosebleed.
Instead strap in for a decent action-adventure, full of pop culture references, esoteric platforming/key hunting and some very sweary cutscenes. I haven’t even mentioned all of the other references, space bikes, digs at people who only buy digital… the list goes on.
Romeo Is A Dead Man is available today on PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series S|X and PC via Steam.
Developer: Grasshopper Manafacture
Publisher: Grasshopper Manafacture