Death end re:Quest 2 is a JRPG developed by Compile Heart and published by Idea Factory in 2020. It is a direct sequel to the original game, but the links are not extremely strong, so you can enjoy it even as a first experience. It may only make you even more curious about the first game.
As you may have seen on my stream page, I have been playing this a lot in the last few days and finally managed to finish it a few minutes ago. It was an incredible experience, and I feel it is better than the original in terms of how "packed" the game felt. There was little downtime, and the story flowed very fluidly between chapters.
The story follows Mai Toyama, a teenage girl who was abused by her father. She ends up living in the all-girl Woodsworth Academy to recover after killing him in self-defense. There she starts to struggle to fit into the strange environment while trying to pursue her real objective: reuniting with her lost little sister, Sanae. She immediately makes a friend with the headmistress's daughter, Rottie.
Unfortunately, things start to take a weird turn when she is made aware that no one is supposed to go outside their room after midnight. She sneaks out and sees the city in disrepair, as if it were crumbling, with monsters sprawling all around it. Something horrible was happening in the city.
Murders, monsters, and a creepy atmosphere permeate the town. Who is friend and who is foe is unknown, and Mai will need to muster her courage to find a solution that will allow her to reunite with Sanae and survive. The game makes use of the same Death End system from the previous game, which gives you hints about the solution to the mystery.
The three main characters are:
Mai Toyama
A cool and serious girl with long hair. She is the protagonist of the story and the center of events happening in the city. She possesses extremely high hacking ability and was even able to hack into the Enigma servers of the original game. She becomes much softer throughout the game and is incredibly cute by the end.
Rotten Dollhart
The daughter of the headmistress and Mai’s best friend since the very first day. She is energetic and incredibly fun to be around. She is the source of almost all the comedy in the game and the medium through which Mai begins to change. She doesn't know much about technology.
Liliana Pinnata
A young girl who arrived at the academy after Mai. She is quiet and reserved, coming from another family with a disastrous past. Her dream is to become an exorcist and clear out the demons that took her family. She is deeply doted on by Mai, much to Rottie’s jealousy.
My favorite character is definitely Rottie. She is like the dream of any yuri fan, considering how attached she is to Mai and how open she is about her love for her. Seeing the two together makes me incredibly happy, even if Mai took quite a while to enter a dere mode with her.
We also have returning characters from the original game, including Shina Ninomiya and the other girls (though you can only call one to appear in the story). They are just as adorable as in the original game. The protagonist of the previous game also appears, but only for a brief moment.
The game has multiple endings, but the one considered canon is the True Ending, as it connects with the third game and gives you some hints about the overarching plot. I do not know much about the third game yet, but I am curious to see if Mai, Rottie, and Liliana return as supporting characters in it.
I am genuinely excited to try the third and final game of the series. However, first I want to play Soul Hackers 2, so I will focus on that, and then return here. I will make a post about it once I am ready, of course.
