Really enjoying Death end re;Quest so far; it's got a nice blend of plot and gameplay that is keeping me thoroughly invested in what's going on so far.
The challenge factor is starting to ramp up a bit, too, and overall the game is feeling a lot more balanced than some of Compile Heart's previous work, which would often tend to get to a point where you were immensely overpowered quite easily — that or you got completely flattened by an enemy way higher level than you. Thus far in this, there seems to have been a nice gradual incline in difficulty, easing you into making better use of the game's various mechanics as you progress without bombarding you with tutorials.
This is quite an interesting aspect, actually; there are a few mechanical elements that the game doesn't tell you a lot about, simply that they exist, and what you do with that information is up to you. Probably of chief importance among these is the element system, which works in a sort of "triangle" fashion. Moon beats Sun, Sun beats Star, Star beats Moon. And by "beats" I mean "does significantly more damage, to the degree of several thousand more points of damage per hit".
There's another aspect to that part, too, though, which is the fact that some enemies can counter actions by characters of an element they're strong against. Not every enemy does this, because it would get exceedingly annoying if they did, but once you spot it happening, you need to do something about it. This is a much better implementation of a sort of "reaction" system from the enemies than the Order Break system in Omega Quintet — or at least, I should say, a little more understandable. After a while you sort of instinctively understood when you'd suffer an Order Break in Omega Quintet, even if you couldn't describe exactly how. Here, the conditions are a bit more clear.
The story is ramping up now, too. The horror aspects are increasing, and the Bad Ends are getting more… bad. Some are relatively short text sequences that effectively say "you fucked up, that was a stupid thing to do", but in those instances it was usually pretty obvious which one the "right" option was. But there have been a couple where the Bad End route actually led to a surprisingly substantial block of narrative — albeit one that ended with violence, death and Game Over.
Anyway. Lots more to write on this in the coming weeks, and I'm looking forward to it. For now, that game has kept me up until 1AM, so I should probably sleep. It is a school night, after all…
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