A Plague Tale: Requiem

A Plague Tale: Requiem is one of the rarer sequels in this library's coverage: a game whose review corpus agrees, almost without exception, on which half of it improved and which half regressed. "This must be the most beautiful looking game to date," reads one positive review. "Lighting, shadows, even the smallest textures — everything feels like the real next-gen." That sentiment shows up constantly, and — more tellingly — it shows up just as often inside reviews that ultimately don't recommend the game. Thirty of the 100 most-helpful negative reviews still single out the visuals as a genuine highlight before explaining what they think went wrong elsewhere.

A technical and artistic leap

Requiem expands on Innocence's rat-swarm horror and stealth-action formula with real scope: bigger set pieces, more elaborate combat and crafting systems, and set-piece sequences reviewers describe as genuinely breathtaking. "God, what a good game," reads one review at 116 hours. "The game drained me physically and emotionally, a real roller coaster of everything." Sound design draws similarly consistent praise, and the expanded combat and stealth toolkit is credited by multiple reviewers as a real improvement on the original's more limited systems.

The complaint that dominates everything else

Set the technical achievement aside, and the negative corpus converges overwhelmingly on one thing: the writing. Seventy-one of the 100 most-helpful English negatives raise the story or writing directly — by a wide margin the largest single complaint category this library has recorded in a review this size. The comparison to the first game is specific and constant rather than vague: 27 of those 100 name A Plague Tale: Innocence by title as the standard this sequel falls short of. "Inferior to the first in every way but graphics and music," reads one 255-vote review. "The writing and general plot structure are particularly bad, and will often have you doing things that make no sense at all." Another, more measured: "the story feels like it received a massively rushed rewrite half way through development. The broad strokes of the game's ambitions are mostly conveyed, but it doesn't" land the way the first game's more focused story did. A third calls it directly: "This sequel is how you ruin a good first game."

Not every reviewer agrees with that read — several defend the story's darker, larger-scale turn as a deliberate and successful evolution, and one long review built entirely around quoting the game's own dialogue treats the writing as a highlight rather than a weakness. But the volume and specificity of the complaint, spanning reviews written from launch week through 2026, makes it the honest headline of this game's reception: a sequel widely agreed to be a technical and artistic step forward that a large share of its own audience feels lost something narratively in the process.

What the data shows

Median playtime among the critical reviewers is 19.4 hours — high enough that most of this criticism comes from players who saw the story through to its end, not people who bounced off early. The achievement curve reflects a lengthy, substantial campaign: early milestones sit in the 60-83% range, tapering to single digits for the hardest completionist goals, consistent with a long game a real majority of buyers commit to finishing.

7.5 out of 10. A Plague Tale: Requiem is a genuine technical and artistic achievement — its visuals and sound design earn praise from supporters and critics alike — wrapped around a story that a substantial, specific and consistent share of its own reviewers say doesn't live up to what made its predecessor special. Play it for the spectacle and the sibling relationship at its core; temper your expectations for the plot specifically if Innocence's tighter storytelling is what you came back for.