Video Game / Death end re;Quest 2

All spoilers related to the first Death end re;Quest are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Death end re;Quest 2 is a Role-Playing Game developed by Compile Heart as part of their "Galapagos RPG" line of games, and a direct sequel to Death end re;Quest. The game was initially released for the PlayStation 4 on February 13, 2020 in Japan. The international version was first released to Steam on August 18, 2020 before English PS4 releases on August 25, 2020 (North America) and August 28, 2020 (Europe). Like its predecessor, the game saw a late port to the Nintendo Switch, releasing in Japan in 2021 and internationally in 2022.

Death end re;Quest 2 takes place in Le Choara, a southeast Europe-styled town that is part of the real world of the original game, and follows Mai Toyama, Rotten Dollhart, and Liliana Pinnata as strange happenings and conspiracies surround their dorm.

Both a numbered sequel and a spinoff are in development, according to an October 2023 interview with Famitsu. The spinoff, a roguelike titled Death end re;Quest Code Z, is planned for a September 19, 2024 release in Japan.

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Tropes associated with Death end re;Quest 2:

• Aerith and Bob: Most of the new cast has more western styled names, like Sarah or Betty, or at least attempt to sound like it especially in regards to last names, like Marie Pee and Charlie Parfait. Then there's Rotten Dollhart.
• Alternative Calendar: Present in both the Japanese and English versions, to varying extents.
  • As opposed to the first game's use and subversion of Year X, the year is instead listed as "BC 019" while in story it's read as B019. Later on Mai finds information on events from A989 and states that that would be 30 years ago. The A and B are simply equivalents to 1xxx and 2xxx. This would render the game 20 Minutes into the Past as it released in 2020.
  • The English version the lines spoken in story as B019 and A989 are instead usually mentioned in a more casual '19 and '89 style, only ever once using the A years for A980.
• Alternate Character Reading: The Strain Area is visited briefly, and Arata can clearly be heard speaking that name in English. It is written "死体博物館", "Corpse Museum".
• Alternate Reality Game: There is an ARG that seems to connect between the two games here.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The field bugs from the first game return as "curses", functionally identical except they no longer inflict damage unless that is their only effect. Knocking an enemy into, or off of, them no longer denies you their benefits either as any character who starts the knockback attacks will be given the effects as though they stepped in it themselves without the Corruption buildup.
  • Counter Actions are now far more scarce than they were in the first game, require the enemies to apply a buff to themselves to do it, newer enemy models take up a clearly visible stance for it, and a brief message pops up on the screen warning you about what they'll counter rather than being a constant effect that requires trial and error to figure out what sets them off.
  • Learning skills ends up being a bit of this and more frustrating at once. On one hand you now learn many skills simply by leveling up, on the other the Flash Drive system is still around for some skills but no longer provides an indication that your current combo has a chance of producing a new skill.
  • Not only does the game do away with save restrictions after bosses, the Game Over screen for a Death End adds an option to reload from the last choice instead of simply reloading from the last save.
• Ars Goetia: Barbas is spoken of as always watching and that he is coming. Higher ranking members of his cult instead speak his name as Marbas. The rather ornate design of the cross used in worship of El Strain is in fact a variant of the Sigil of Marbas.
• Artificial Human: Shina eventually gives Mai the data for her World's Odyssey character, as well as Lily, Al, Clea, Lucil, and Celica, which she uses to create additional party members that have no further purpose to the story.
• Attack of the Town Festival: The Carnival marks the beginning of the story's climax. Midra goes insane, murders the children of the Dorm, turns into a Shadow Matter and starts attacking the citizens of Le Choara. Then, after she is put down, the augmented reality that Le Choara is built upon breaks and reveals the town's true form.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Mai's weapons are referred to as hatchets in the English version. They're supposed to be natas, a type of knife similar to billhooks used in hunting and woodcrafts.
• Call-Back: A scene that occurs during the flurry of late-game reveals, where Mai nearly lets herself be killed by the Big Bad but regains the will to live at the last minute thanks to the recording of Arata works on multiple levels. Not only is it an obvious parallel to the first scene of the game, where Mai decides against letting her father end her life at the last second thanks to the thought of visiting Enigma Games, it is also very similar to a late-game scene in its predecessor where Arata is ready to be killed by the Entoma but is saved at the last second by the members of the World's Odyssey party.
• Closed Circle: Once Mai comes to the conclusion that staying in Le Choara is too dangerous and tries to leave she finds that the entire town is sealed in by a wall that wasn't there when she first arrived. Shina explains that the wall is a result of "augmented reality", meaning nothing (except for the cultists) gets out while it's up and that someone or something in the town has access to the language that serves as the world's coding to be doing that. The brief moment that it's down allows Shina to send out an email to one of her allies from the first game.
• Creator Cameo: The talking Whip Spider toy in one of Kaede's scenes is voiced by Makoto Kedouin.
• Crossover: Has one with Ao Oni, as an alternate game mode with Mai being hunted by swarms of the titular oni.
• Death of a Child: Children aren't spared from the carnage in this game. In fact, awakening Marbas specifically requires the deaths of 666 children, which means that they are the primary group that is being murdered.
• Disintegrator Ray: The laptop discovered in Chapter 2 is equipped with one whose destructive power is demonstrated on a monster. Mai is the next victim if she refuses to use her USB drive on it, netting the player their first Death End.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Julietta, the humble social services worker, is the primary antagonist. She is actually Lydia Nolan's older sister who has come to exact revenge on Arata's world for causing Lydia's actions in the first game, and manipulates Midra into carrying out Le Choara's murders by holding her daughter's livelihood hostage. In a borderline Meta Twist, the game gives Julietta a "minor character" portrait right until the reveal drops, at which point she gains fully-animated art like the major characters.
• Doing In the Wizard: The first game stops just shy of confirming that Arata lives in a computer simulation and that the talk of his world having "glitches" is literal instead of figurative, but this game makes it explicit. Also, Lydia's grandiose exit in the first game suggests that the Observers are some kind of divine group, but here it's revealed that they are actually low-class citizens that are forced into the job by their technologically-advanced, dystopian society.
• Dub Name Change: There are many changes to various names throughout the game in the English version.
  • Liz Shoara was renamed to Le Choara.
  • Numerous characters have had their names changed, most falling more into Spell My Name With An S, though Rotten's nickname going from Rot to Rottie and Marie's last name changing from Pee to the less unfortunate sounding Pia are more complete changes.
  • Some bosses had names changed as well, such as the Tragic Love Demon becoming the more mundane Succubus.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Everyone Mai interacts with in Le Choara except Rotten and outsiders like Liliana are long dead, being reanimated by Julietta in her plot to revive Marbas. Mai sees Le Choara in its true form in Chapter 9: a dark, dilapidated ghost town.
• Evolving Credits: An alternate opening movie and title screen is unlocked after seeing the True End and starting New Game Plus. Unlike the first opening, which doesn't give away much, this opening is very spoilerific. For both the main game and a particular bit of Post-End Game Content.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Mai muses to herself about how Chitsuba's and Victorie's relationship could easily turn sour. A couple of chapters later, Chitsuba goes full Yandere, kills Victorie, and turns into Shadow Matter.
  • Rotten, reminiscing about how Midra used to pay more attention to her as a mother instead of a headmaster, mentions a severe accident that forced Midra to desperately search for medical help. Rotten doesn't remember who Midra ultimately went to, but she woke up safe and sound afterwards. Midra went to Julietta, who revived Rotten but told Midra that Rotten will die if she doesn't kill the children of the dorm.
  • Mai's visions of her dormmates being brutally murdered work on multiple levels. Some of them have or will happen with nothing that can be done to change them, but at least one can be averted, setting up deeper implications: Mai is actually seeing deaths from a previous loop of the Le Choara murders.
  • In one chapter, a house is set on fire with there being no effort to put it out. The townspeople only exist to facilitate the murders at the dorm, so they wouldn't care about a fire.
  • A text message comes from Sumika stating that Le Choara was abandoned, which flies completely counter to the party's experiences. Augmented Reality and reanimated townspeople from thirty years ago are involved.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The Fallen ending has Mai lose herself to Marbas's power and call you a piece of shit and a murderer for trying to see all of the deaths that the game has to offer. It's then implied that Marbas possesses you, with the narration switching to a rare second-person perspective to describe you chanting "El Strain Marbas" and having the power drained from your entire body.
• Genre Shift: Downplayed in that many of the genre elements from the first game are still here, only rearranged in importance. This game focuses on Psychological and Religious Horror, with the more technological elements only coming into play near the end of the game. Then New Game Plus focuses on the Platonic Cave elements that were touched upon in the first game.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Everyone in Le Choara died thirty years ago. They are reanimated once a year so that more souls can be accrued towards the end goal of summoning Marbas. The only person native to Le Choara who is outside of the loop is Rotten, who didn't die but is instead "glitched" by the curse to stay young and lose her memory after each cycle.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The "Dark Descent"/"Fallen" End is perhaps the one ending that is not obvious on how to get, oddly due to being the only ending with unusual conditions like the first game and being at a point where you're likely assuming unusual conditions for endings have been removed entirely. It can only be seen if you lose the first part of the Final Boss fight.
  • Mostly averted regarding the Death Ends, as they are much more straightforward this time around and don't require any unusual conditions like losing to a boss or trying to save first. The closest they come to it is being tied to whether or not you save someone on two specific nights. Failing to save Sarah and Anne open up the choice for one Death End, successfully saving Abigail opens up the choice for another.
  • Like the first game it's played completely straight for learning skills, as noted above on Anti-Frustration Features the indicator that your combo can teach you something does not exist in this game though you do get to have all skills set all the time now cutting out the need to shuffle around the loadout.
  • One of the keylock puzzles requires looking at your Key Items menu, which the game gives you no hints about. This is a result of the English version omitting that they're passcode memos from the item name.
• Humanoid Abomination: Many of the new enemy designs appear to be misshapen, sometimes featureless, humans with insects, in part or whole, replacing some body parts. They're humanoid because they were humans.
• Inconsistent Dub: It happens a few times in the English version.
  • As mentioned above, the game can't decide if it should speak of the years in a shorthand style or the full Axxx and Bxxx style.
  • The Dark Shadows are called as much in story and the tutorial relating to them but when the characters panic about them showing up while exploring suddenly they're Shadow Matter, which is otherwise the term for all the enemies in general.
  • Mercy's last name is alternately Louis and Lewis, while Chitsuba's is either Idian and Idean.
  • Owing to Alternate Character Reading in the original version, one particular area is called the Strain Area in dialogue but the Corpse Museum on the Episode Chart with no explanation given.
  • Skills from the returning cast are randomly renamed, such as Al's Def Park suddenly becoming Threaten while Def Pant retains its name.
  • The tier indicating name of the new characters' skills is inconsistently Turre and Selturre for Mai or Tarre and Seltarre for everyone else, when originally they were all of the Tarre and Seltarre spelling.
• Interquel: The game takes place some time between the end of the first game and the 65536th iteration of reality seen in Shina's ending. Evidence toward this includes the facts that Shina's still human, Iris is an AI companion app on Arata's laptop, and degrades are still considered a viable option. Additionally all of the characters who can be chosen to receive Shina's Distress Call remember the events of their endings and it's revealed that the degrade code had been modified to allow the living in close proximity to the user to retain their memories as well, placing the game after all the iterations necessary to have seen all of those endings at the very least.
• Implacable Man:
  • The Dark Shadows, putting Nightmares to shame, will slowly but persistently chase Mai down if spotted and inflict an immediate Game Over on contact. Even the game's own tutorial breaks down before them, the second half of it being almost nothing but a blood red "run away" repeated over and over again, and even the standard enemies turn and run for their lives. Like the Nightmares, the Dark Shadows do provide a visual cue in the form of slight color loss and excessive screen flickering.
  • Later on a Berserker variant shows up. Rather than chasing you, these pop up randomly in the middle of battle. That's your cue to end the battle immediately or run, because once its turn comes around everyone within a wide area just dies. It is possible to finish the battle without running away, if you can stay away from the "Instant Death" Radius and the RNG doesn't select attack that cover the whole battle area.
• Inside a Computer System: After a hefty amount of Foreshadowing in the first game, this game finally confirms that Arata lives in a virtual world.
• Interface Spoiler: Shina's Maid Outfit adds the real Shina to the camp based on whether or not there's any reason in the chapter Shina couldn't be there as opposed to Rotten and Liliana's presence just needing to know they're in the party at that time. She's absent in Chapter 7, despite initially traveling with Mai, giving away the fact that something will cause her to leave. She dies before the chapter ends.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Death end re;Quest 2 takes place after the events (outside of Shina's ending) of the first game, and neither the media surrounding Death end re;Quest 2 nor the game itself are particularly interested in hiding the first game's reveals regarding Arata's world. For example, Shina's profile on the official website flat-out states that she knows about the "degraded" state of the world from the first game.
  • When the player is prompted to text one of Shina's friends, they are categorized using their World's Odyssey names, comepletely shattering that reveal for anyone who hasn't played the first game.
• Meta Twist: Generally, Death Ends occur immediately after an incorrect decision is made. This game also introduces decisions that alter the plot but do not result in Death Ends. Late in the game, there is a decision that lets you continue regardless of what you chose, leading you to believe that it is a decision of the latter type...until you make it to the next event marker and get slapped with a Death End if you chose wrong.
• Metal Slime: There are numerous varieties of these all throughout the game, most commonly among the Mary type enemies. The Pain Area even names a few of these as Metal enemies, such as Metal Mary. Defeating any of these will yield a great deal of experience for the portion of the game they appear in, but they're often faster than the party, almost always run away, have high evasion to at least one damage type, and defenses that will often reduce anything to Scratch Damage. Glitch Mode, Mai's Aparable Marre debuff, and no small amount of luck are about the only way to kill these.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Two pairs of characters share the same first name, though spelled slightly differently. Cera Putnam and Sarah Floyd, and Marie Pia and Mary Walcott. Marie and Mary also share their name with the Mary line of Shadow Matter enemies, including Laughing Mary and Metal Mary. On a last name basis there are Betty and Elizabeth Paris, neither of which interact or otherwise imply a relation between them.
• Potty Emergency: Following the first game's occasional usage of Toilet Humor, this game features both jokes and serious situations prompted by the need to find a restroom:
  • Vina Miles breaks curfew to find a toilet and makes herself a target for the creatures of Le Choara, which sets up the first bit of RPG gameplay.
  • During New Game Plus, Rin Asukaze drinks too much fluid and is searching for a bathroom when she's cornered by Midra. A pair of soiled pants wind up being the least of her worries.
  • Played for laughs with Svetlana who, in the middle of a search for a restroom, ends up transforming into Lucil and is implied to have let herself go on Kimata.
  • Played for dark comedy in the Fallen ending where Big Bad Julietta makes a joke about a character peeing themselves over the shock of having their head cut off.
• R-Rated Opening: The game opens with Mai talking about how miserable her life is when her drunken father grabs a hatchet and spontaneously decides to kill her while cursing her, her mother, and her sister Sanae. Mai is almost ready to accept it until she thinks about her last wish: to see Enigma Games. She snaps, snatches the hatchet, and butchers her old man.
• Self-Made Orphan: There are a few characters that end up having to murder their parents, primarily in self defense:
  • Mai killed her father after the latter tried to kill her in the beginning of the game.
  • Liliana killed her mother after her mother got turned into a Shadow Matter monster and attacked the group.
  • Rotten had to kill her mother Midra to stop her rampaging throughout the city as giant Shadow Matter monster.
• Sequel Escalation: Death end re;Quest 2 leans much more heavily into the occult elements that the first game touched upon but treated secondary to its technological elements. Inverted with the titular Death Ends, however; there are far fewer here than in the first game.
• Shout-Out: Just as many with the first game, even in the achievements/trophies.
  • Learning 15 of Liliana's skills is "The Exorcist".
  • Learning 15 of Lucil's skills is "Lucil I'm Home."
  • Knocking back an enemy for the first time is "She's a Pinball Wizard."
  • Viewing most of the sub-events is "We Don't Need No Education."
• Spell My Name With An S: Regarding a very spoilerific term in New Game Plus: is it Endverse or Endbirth? The English version goes with the latter, but an argument can easily be made for the former given that the plan is about creating an ideal alternate universe.
• Square-Cube Law: Used in the Knockback system. Against small enemies Knockback will only inflict about 80% of the damage that triggered it, but as the enemy size increases the damage increases up to 300%. The easiest way to kill massive enemies is to just shove them around a little bit, so even the weakest attack results in massive damage when they hit something.
• Swapped Roles: In the first game, Shina goes missing and Arata ends up searching for her. In this game, Arata goes missing and Shina ends up searching for him.
• Tamer and Chaster:
  • The Glitch Mode designs in this game show off far less skin that the first game's, including modifications to the first game's playable characters to bring them in line with the less-exposed sequel designs. Idea Factory International reverted the changes to the returning characters in the Steam release, leaving the sequel characters' designs as Artifacts.
  • Even putting aside the Glitch costumes, this game has far less Fanservice than the first Death end re;Quest, much less the average Compile Heart game. Like its predecessor, it earns its Mature rating (and equivalents in other rating systems) due to its extreme violence.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • With the removal of the less-conventional Death Ends, almost all of them fall squarely into Press X to Die territory.
  • Shina's chosen friend lays a threat on Midra while making no effort, beyond the threat of more people investigating should they not be home within the week, to protect themselves from a confirmed mass murderer that they know is part of a large cult. Unsurprisingly, they're mortally wounded after being ambushed by the cult. It goes right into Idiot Ball territory for Kaede, who would be the type to anticipate such a retaliation based on her personality in the first game.
• Translation Convention: This is used in a couple ways in the Japanese version.
  • In Le Choara the characters are speaking English, not Japanese. This notably comes up should you have Shina choose to send Kaede an email asking for help. At some point in a conversation with Mai, Kaede lapses into actually speaking Japanese prompting Rotten to ask what they're talking about.
  • Further emphasized in another scene involving Rin, though relying on Switch to English. While she's talking and thinking to herself it's in Japanese, but when approached by someone from Le Choara and questioned in "Japanese" she responds in English and similarly gets an English response.
• Two Decades Behind: Three decades actually. Le Choara is incredibly behind on technology, still having payphones, no internet, and unreliable cellphone reception. At best there are characters like Collette who believes the book she's reading on computer programming from the 80s is about cutting edge technology, and at worst there are those like Rot who mistake the whole thing for magic. This is because they are from three decades ago.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: While talking with other characters at the camp you're able to continue controlling Mai. This gives you the ability to just walk out on the conversation, distract them by continually bouncing around, or attack them with her knife. They respond directly to all of those actions, rather than simply canceling out the dialog.
• Wham Episode:
  • The end of Chapter 7 starts it and it continually escalates up through Chapter 9, all to set up the finale in Chapter 10. There is a very good reason Compile Heart requested that people Do Not Spoil This Ending.
  • It doesn't end with the closing credits either, as New Game Plus and its EX Ending serve as one for the entire duology.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: In essence, the entire plot stems from Julietta's rage over her sister sacrificing herself to protect a world and people that Julietta doesn't accept as real.

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