ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN Review – Great Scott, What a Ride

Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture have always approached game design with an "art-first" philosophy. While their titles aren't always the most modern in terms of raw mechanics, they are always more than the simple sum of their parts. Powered by a singular, punk-rock vision, each title possesses a distinct flair that is becoming increasingly rare in the risk-averse AAA space.

Following No More Heroes III, which was based on a very strong vision but was ultimately constrained by the unrealized open-world setting, and Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered, a remaster of a rather niche game of the PS3/ Xbox 360 era whose main appeal was the collaboration between Suda51 and Shinji Mikami, creator of the Resident Evil series, the celebrated game director and his studio are launching ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN, their first new IP in a long time.

Launching such a game is a gamble, nowadays, where the vast majority of game publishers are relying on established series, but a gamble that, in my opinion, has paid off immensely: ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN is among Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture's best games, if not the very best, avoiding the pitfalls No More Heroes III fell into to deliver a deep dive into Suda51's passions with an engaging hack and slash experience that feels riveting, to those who can look past the inevitable confusion deriving from the director's artsy vision.

A Dead Man Rises

The story begins in the quiet town of Deadford, where rookie deputy Romeo Stargazer falls for a mysterious woman named Juliet Dendrobium. Their plans to elope are shattered when Romeo is brutally "unmade" by a cosmic entity known as the White Devil. On the brink of death, Romeo is saved by his grandfather Benjamin, a brilliant scientist who resurrects him as a "DeadMan" using the DeadGear Life Support system. Now a trainee for the FBI’s Space-Time Police, Romeo must hunt down some heinous space-time criminals across a fractured universe while searching for the missing Juliet, eventually coming to understand what happened after his resurrection fractured the world, what the Space-Time Police was really created to do, and who his lover really is.

The plot is definitely one of the game's highest points. Although it is deeply rooted in the tokusatsu genre, it seamlessly combines a wide range of diverse inspirations, from the Back to the Future franchise to FBI TV shows, to deliver a narrative that remains gripping. It sometimes makes sense, most of the time it does not, but presenting each story chapter as an episode of a TV show (complete with end credits for the entire development team and partners) makes the search for Juliet and the elimination of space-time criminals really engaging. Ultimately, the narrative functions like a fever dream: perfectly logical while you're under its spell, utterly incomprehensible once you wake up, yet the "vibes" linger long after the credits roll.

Although the confusion remains even after playing through the game multiple times, it's really difficult to remain indifferent at every hilarious interaction between Romeo and his grandfather Benjamin, which often homage Back to the Future with the iconic "Great Scott" line, at the convoluted explanation of what happened to the universe, at the reports on the heinous acts commited by space-time criminals across timespace, and at the philosophical and existential commentary of the individual residing in an old TV set which allows Romeo to travel between realspace and subspace.

Open-World, Begone

The artsy, sometimes incoherent nature of the ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN narrative is also fully evident in the gameplay mechanics, but it's hardly a problem. It keeps players on their toes, making them eagerly anticipate what the developer has in store for the next episode.

At its heart, Romeo is a Dead Man is not too different from most of Grasshopper Manufacture's hack-and-slash games. Controlling Romeo, players explore a variety of different locations, dispatching hordes of enemies using both melee and ranged weapon, completing some relatively simple puzzles ranging from navigational puzzles involving travel between realspace and subspace, an alternate dimension with a grid-like design that allows Romeo to reach otherwise unreachable areas, and traditional puzzles requiring players to use documents to find their solutions, gather every part of the Klysta Key to open-up the final boss area, where a space-time criminal awaits the newbie FBI agent.

As widely reported ahead of release, ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN does away with the open world setting of the No More Heroes series in favor of a fully linear experience. This, in my opinion, works in the game's favor. Though the game's progression is linear, level design definitely isn't, as every location and its related subspace dimension are intricate, featuring multiple paths and optional locations which include treasure such as food items and ingredients that can be used to cook Katsu aboard the Last Night ship, which serves as the main headquarter, Sentrey used to unlock weapons and Emerald Flowsion to enhance Romeo's stats, and Badges, special equippable items that provide unique boons.

Simply defining location design as "intricate" does a disservice to the amazing work the developer has done in this regard. Taking full advantage of the space-time incident that has essentially unmade the universe, Grasshopper Manufacture crafted the most diverse set of stages seen in hack and slash games, ranging from a shopping mall that made me feel like I was back playing Dead Rising, to a dilapidated hospital (complete with black and white visuals filter) heavily reminiscent of traditional survival-horror games, all complete with some unique gimmicks and puzzles that give each stage a very distinct feel.

While this sort of collection would feel completely out of place in any other game, the strong concept that powers it makes this a rollercoaster ride through Suda51's passions and themes, which feels even more engaging if the player shares the director's passions, as I do. On the other hand, I believe that even a player who is just looking for something very different from the safe game development approach of most AAA studios will be able to appreciate the freshness of this no-holds-barred dive into a very creative mind in video game form.

I'm a DeadMan, But So Are You

Combat in ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN is not as creative, but it's solid enough. Although Romeo doesn't have a lot of combat options at his disposal, with only a light and heavy combo string, two unique attacks unleashed by using either a light or heavy attack in the middle of a string of the opposing strength, a jump attack and a dodge attack, and a special heavy string finisher, his combat capabilities are enhanced by a few other mechanics.

The first is the Bloody Summer special attack, which can be unleashed after absorbing enough blood from enemies after damaging them. Coming with three different variants per weapon (ground, jump, and dodge), this powerful attack can stagger every enemy in the game, including bosses, making for an extremely useful tool that can stunlock essentially every enemy in the game with the proper setup.

What truly expands combat, however, are the Bastards mechanics. Defeated enemies will sometimes drop Bastard seeds, which can then be cultivated in the garden on the Last Night ship managed by Romeo's lovely sister Luna to unlock a variety of special attacks, ranging from freezing ranged attacks to tornado attacks to self-destructive assaults, emergency healing, and more. At the first two difficulty levels, using Bastards properly is not really required to win, but at the two hardest difficulty settings, managing their cooldowns and upgrading them via Fusion is extremely important, as the enemy configurations combining the most basic of mobs with ranged attackers and stronger, more resilient foes, pose quite a bit of danger.

Compounding these mechanics is ranged combat. While considerably more basic than melee combat, ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN heavily incentivizes using the four guns available to strike highly visible enemy weak points. Destroying these deals massive damage to enemies, making it easier to take down the most powerful of them, who often also deal status afflictions that can really impair Romeo's combat performance by slowing him down, disabling some of his abilities, and so on.

Thanks to a solid enemy design for both regular enemies and bosses - whose encounters are made even more exciting by a pulse-pounding, eclectic soundtrack - ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN’s combat is deeply engaging, even in its relative simplicity. While you shouldn’t expect the frame-perfect technical depth of a traditional character-action game, nor the signature wrestling moves of Travis Touchdown, the adventure delivers a 12-hour loop that feels more like a "Soulslike on steroids."

The game's entire structure leans heavily on this, with Space-Time Pharmacies serving as your checkpoints, and resting at them revives defeated enemies. This adds a layer of tactical tension to exploration that was missing from No More Heroes, making you painfully aware that a single mistake against a space-time criminal could reset part of your progress.

And if this Soulslike on steroids experience is still not challenging enough for you, the game features some optional challenges, such as optional combat arenas filled with enemies and rewards, boss rematches with a time limit, and more, which are sure to put your skills and knowledge of the game's mechanics to the test.

Punk, With a Touch of Psychedelia

The wild rollercoaster that is ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN is further enhanced by its presentation. Although the visuals are definitely not cutting-edge, they leverage Unreal Engine 5 to deliver detailed character models and environments that look great in a rough yet pleasing way.

What truly makes the game's presentation stand out, however, is how some wildly different aesthetic choices and visual styles blend together almost seamlessly. Besides your modern UE5-powered graphics, ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN features a colorful user interface, top-down 16-bit style visuals for the Last Night sequences, complete with RPG-like dialogue boxes, anime-style cutscenes for Katsu cooking, and a few other unexpected surprise sequences.

Some of the mini-games available lean even further into this very eclectic approach, such as the Pong-like minigame that must be completed while scanning for new space-time anomalies at the start of each episode, and the arcade-style 8-bit labyrinth minigame used to power up Romeo's stats. On paper, all of this may sound wildly incoherent and a little messy, but the same strong vision that binds the story and gameplay elements together surprisingly well makes for a visual experience that is just as pleasant.

2 of 9

Back when the game was confirmed to be powered by Unreal Engine 5, the vast majority of players weren't pleased by the news, as most games powered by Epic's engine suffer from stuttering issues, mostly on PC. Thankfully, making ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN a linear game worked in favor of the game's performance, as it doesn't suffer from any major stuttering issues. During my first venture in every stage, I experienced some limited stuttering, but for the rest, it's been mostly smooth sailing on my system (i7-13700F, RTX 4080, 32GB RAM), although I have to enable Frame Generation if I want to hit my monitor's 120 FPS cap at 4K resolution with the game's uncapped framerate option (only 30 and 60 FPS locks are available), max setting with NVIDIA DLSS Quality Mode.

Closing Thoughts

Within Grasshopper Manufacture's almost 30-year-long history, ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN is a unique chapter. It is the most mechanically polished and stable game since the original Shadows of the Damned, yet it beats with the heart of Flower, Sun, and Rain. It leaves behind the technical jank and the empty-world frustrations of No More Heroes III without losing the "punk" soul that makes a Suda51 game essential. It is a game that respects your time with its 12-hour runtime, but still leaves its mark with its fever-dream narrative. Whether you are a Kill the Past veteran or a newcomer looking for something that goes beyond the sanitized nature of modern AAA blockbusters and is not too bothered by some old-school hack-and-slash simplicity, ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN is undoubtedly the game for you.

PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

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