A Plague Tale: Requiem – a medieval The Last Of Us (pic: Focus Home Interactive)

The sequel to surprise hit A Plague Tale: Innocence features even more rats than ever, as well as some of the most beautiful landscapes in gaming.

2019’s A Plague Tale: Innocence was a stealth game that wasn’t set in ancient Japan or the high-tech world of superspies, but rather in medieval France during a plague outbreak. You guided two children through the morass of dead and dying, whilst avoiding a rat infestation which presented itself as a seething tsunami of hideous, glowing-eyed beasts.

Alongside the setting, another major point of difference was the compelling sense of vulnerability it created. Rather than making its protagonists shadowy assassins, Amicia and her younger brother Hugo were children, making their need to hide from adult aggressors urgent and real. The sequel picks up mere months after the end of the original and retains much of its premise.

Hugo’s still sick with an illness that’s not the plague and which continues to baffle doctors. It’s so unusual it brings him to the attention of the Order, a sinister organisation that wants to get its hands on him but is seemingly a lot less interested in helping him get well than studying his decline. Alicia distrusts them from the start and instead wants to help Hugo find an island he saw in a fever dream, where they believe he may find a cure.

Playing as Amicia, your job is to keep Hugo safe through the legion of dangers involved in travelling through 14th century France, while pursued by heavily armed assailants. As before, stealth is your friend, assisted by craft-able alchemical weapons. Amongst your growing arsenal, one ignites braziers and enemies, while another puts out flames. That’s important in sections where you’re dealing with the rat infestation, because without a light source humans are devoured by the swarm in short order.

Amicia can also now use a crossbow. While that reliably one-shots even armoured enemies, the dearth of ammunition, and the fact that before upgrades you can only carry two bolts, makes it a weapon of last resort. You’ll still need to use it though, because there are several sections where the game throws wave after wave of enemies at you, forcing you to improvise defences with your sling shot, alchemical grenades, and when that fails, the crossbow.

The constant lack of ammunition adds to a sense of desperation reminiscent of The Last Of Us, even if the mechanics and third person action aren’t quite as refined. It’s also the only thing standing between this and full-on Lara Croft-ification, which feels like a possibility when Amicia starts annihilating whole rooms full of spear, sword, and mace-wielding adult men.

To the game’s credit, when she does go on murder sprees her young companion, Lucas, who joins Hugo as an occasional sidekick, gets really upset by it, and later in the game Hugo himself starts to get a little carried away when he discovers he can psychically control the rat swarm. That gives him the power to see enemies through walls, and to direct the rats towards anyone who isn’t carrying a torch, picking their skeletons clean like a shoal of monstrous land-based piranhas.

The rats are the element that feels most like a standard issue video game. Arriving in enormous waves, big enough to bring down buildings, and at one point an entire city, you usually end up running away from them in Crash Bandicoot-like corridors, punctuated by places where you have to jump, duck, or slide through a convenient crack in the wall.

Most of the time, though, you’ll be wandering through historically accurate recreations of French villages and countryside, the beautifully rendered, bucolic idyll standing as a counterpoint to the violence and horror of the rest of the game. (As in Tomb Raider, the game never misses an opportunity to plunge its heroine into gooey pits full of rotting corpses.)

That variety is echoed in the pacing, which does an excellent job of interspersing frenetic activity with more mellow sections that let you catch your breath, giving time to marvel at the beauty of the countryside. You’ll need those breathers, because when the action gets intense, unfortunately so will your levels of frustration.

While not frequent, there are a few scenes that annoy rather than challenge. Despite its glorious scenery and exceptionally human-looking characters, the action remains somewhat clumsy, a sense that’s inescapable when the going gets tough. Unlike The Last Of Us, which was often challenging but never unfair, this is more than capable of inspiring controller-hurling levels of irritation.

The puzzles can also feel a little lacklustre, with so many hints and tips offered by Amicia and co. that you’re never in any doubt as to what you’re supposed to be doing next. It’s clearly meant to let you focus on characters and story rather than trying to figure out which crank to turn first, but the net effect feels patronising in its unwillingness to let you make your own mistakes.

A Plague Tale: Requiem – surviving the beauty of 14th century France (pic: Focus Home Interactive)

The impression of fixed linearity can be misleading however. While completely inessential, the game’s collectibles are actually pretty hard to find, and demonstrate that there are secrets to unearth if you’re willing to explore every dead end and side turning, or at least the ones that aren’t blocked by convenient wagons and market stalls, which to be fair, most are.

Possibly because the script was translated from French, the moments where characters swear at each other feel weirdly awkward, as though it’s been shoehorned in for no good reason, and against the general flow of its aesthetic. It’s not a deal breaker though, and while the repartee certainly isn’t as subtle as The Last Of Us, or as naturalistic as the Uncharted series, the characters are likeable and undergo their own developmental arcs over the course of the game.

It’s also surprisingly long lasting. Clocking in at over 20 hours, despite its relentless pace and refusal to reuse areas and assets, there’s a lot to get your teeth into, even if you may need the occasional break to let your blood pressure return to normal after its more exasperating encounters.

Nothing can recreate the surprise of Innocence, and Requiem instead extends and adds to it, without trying to reinvent itself. It is an evolution though and does a decent job of handling its youthful protagonists’ gradual realisation of their role as killers, rather than passive victims. Tense, occasionally nasty, and offering a real variety of settings and traversal challenges, it’s a ripping yarn and further evidence that single-player games are very much alive and well.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch (cloud), and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Developer: Asobo Studio
Release Date: 18th October 2022
Age Rating: 18

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The sequel to surprise hit A Plague Tale: Innocence features even more rats and some of the most beautiful landscapes in gaming.