I’m going to preface this review by saying this is my first ever Suda51 game. I’m setting that bar right away because you’re going to see a lot of flabbers being gasted. There were long periods of this game where my jaw was just hanging there as I wondered what in the hell I was experiencing. Yet, I was enjoying so much of it that the open jaw turned into smiles, as well as mouthing “WTF” more than a few times. Now, it’s not like I haven’t heard of Suda51 and his infamous style. The writers at Way Too Many Games have played and reviewed plenty of his games like Hotel Barcelona, Lollipop Chainsaw: RePOP, and Killer7. We have various opinions about his work, but I just never dove into his games myself. Well, that changed with Romeo is a Dead Man, and I have to say, this is a good first impression.

This is where I’d give you a synopsis of the game, but I’m struggling to even put into words how to describe this magician’s hat of a story. I felt like, at every turn, there was a new style of either art, gameplay, and perspectives thrown at me. Let’s just start with the basics. You play as Romeo Stargazer, a sheriff’s deputy in a small town who falls in love with Juliet, a woman he finds one night lying in the middle of the road. Clearly love at first sight. As their love grows, he was easily persuaded to leave town and elope with her. However…

Within the first five minutes of the game you’re ripped to shreds by an intergalactic monster. Barely hanging on to life, an old man (clearly a Doc Brown) zips through time and space to tell you you’re going to die in fifteen seconds before stabbing you in the eye with the DeadGear Life Support System. “You’re already half dead. From now on, you’re Half-dead Man! No wait, that’s pretty lame… DeadMan! From now on, you’re DeadMan!” When I read the title “Romeo is a Dead Man” I inferred that as people just wanted to kill him. Silly me. That was just the first of many surprises the game gave me.

After you fight the monster that killed you, you’re visited by the FBI Space-Time Police lead by Kimberly. He explains that Juliet is a space-time drifter and has popped in and out of all sorts of different eras. The towns she visits get space-time locked, and end up splitting up and disappearing. Juliet is on the Space-Time Police’s wanted list and since you have a special connection with her they want to recruit you to track her down. Oh, and there are also three other space-time drifters you’ll need to take down as well, but no biggie.

At its core, Romeo is a Dead Man is a love story, with inspiration from Romeo and Juliet, if you couldn’t already tell by the character names. If you know anything about that story you may already know how this one may go, but this is definitely not a faithful retelling of the 1950’s play. I really enjoyed the undertones of this throughout the story. It helps keep Romeo somewhat grounded and relatable on a human level in this over the top insanity of an adventure. Outside the themes of love we have, mortality, time travel, identity crises, and all blended into Suda51’s surreal self-referential style. It can be a lot, but for the most part it works really well.

 The story is told through many different styles like comic book panels, 2D pixel art, stop-motion, hand-drawn music videos, cutscenes, and in game cinematics. Honestly, all of these are really well done and add to the charm, except the actual pre-rendered cutscenes. The only time these happen are during the dream sequences showing when Romeo and Juliet are at the diner getting to know each other. They don’t look good, and they often time run really poorly especially on the Xbox Series X. I feel like these scenes would have been better off any any of the other styles. Which is a shame because these scenes are the only ones we get to see them together in love.

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Luckily, the rest of the game is full of amazing art style. Romeo is a Dead Man oozes style with its blend of surreal psychedelic atmosphere popping with colors. Besides all of the actual changes in art styles as I mentioned previously, the designs with the weapons, combat, Sub-Space, and bosses are fantastic. I absolutely love when the game just throws a random style at me or hits me with some left field visual that made me wonder “what the hell were they thinking?”. I will say, the UI took me a bit to get used to because it is a massive streak of rainbow color panels with a lot of information. However, once you get used to tasting the rainbow, it is nice to look at.

The only thing lacking in the visual department for me are the regular enemy variety and the Palace Athene dungeons. Regular enemies are your typical zombie style enemies which seems like an odd choice for a game with this premise. There are reasons to it tied to some of the other space-time drifters, but to have, essentially, only zombie styled enemies through the whole game is strange. There isn’t a ton of enemy variety, and that is a shame. However, the boss designs are fantastic and their intros are always shocking to say the least.

Gameplay itself is a bit of a mixed bag and not because of any lack of style. It’s a pretty standard 3rd person hack ‘n’ slash game with shooting involved. The core combat itself isn’t very deep, which is a shame, and that’s where my issue is in general. You start off with one standard sword and a pistol and you will use your experience points, known as Emerald Flowsion. Emerald Flowsion not only is used to unlock new weapons, but is also used to level up Romeo and purchase items. However, there is no point in even locking the weapons behind this because they are so extremely cheap that before the tutorial was over I already unlocked them all. The game has an entire UI section called the DeadBall Unlocker, yet you won’t visit it again after the tutorial. I thought the entire idea of having to decide to unlock a weapon or level up was pointless.

The arsenal consists of the standard sword and pistol as I mentioned above as well as a heavy sword, gauntlets, a staff that can split into two weapons, a shotgun, mini-gun, and a rocket launcher. One melee and firearm can be equipped at a time, but can be quick swapped with some d-pad presses. In the beginning swapping between weapons is really fun because it is still easy enough. Unfortunately, as you get into later levels you need to decide what weapons you want to focus in on if you’re going to max out a weapon. There isn’t enough upgrade materials to upgrade everything unless you do serious grinding.

My biggest gripe though isn’t that I had to focus in on only a couple of the weapons, it was that they didn’t evolve into anything better. Whether that was from combos or even special moves. The only extra move you get is early on you unlock a Badge that allows you to hold the strong attack move on the third strike to charge a power attack. Otherwise you’re stuck with the same combo moves from the beginning to the end for the fifteen-ish hour run time.

There is the standard light attacks, heavy attack, a charged heavy attack, and then your standard mixing of the two, but nothing deep. There are power attacks called Bloody Summer that you can pull off with all the weapons, melee, and firearms, that is used once you build up your blood meter. These are special attacks that you can use while standing still, jumping, or dodging to change how the attack is done. They are crucial life savers, since they can heal you, and cool as hell looking while doing big damage.

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However, by far the most unique (and just bat shit crazy) aspect of the combat gameplay is the Bastard system. Bastards are zombies that you grow in the garden of your space ship and use as weapons. Let me back up a bit. Sometimes when you kill enemies, they will drop Bastard Seeds. Back on your ship, called The Last Night, you have a garden ran by your sister where you can plant these seeds. Each seed will have a different ability like being able to shoot poison, slow down enemies, self destruct and much more. Letting them cultivate longer will grant better stats for your bastard and when they are ripe you can pluck them out of the ground. They are given a trait and name with a randomizer and you can then equip them to use in combat.

It doesn’t end there. Seeds come in different rarities so there will definitely be better abilities as you go along, but your biggest tool will be Fusion. Fusion will allow you to make unique Bastards that you can’t find from single seeds. These offer extreme abilities like being able to teleport enemies, brainwash so they fight each other, and massive charge attacks for huge damage. There are a good amount of Bastards to collect and fuse with a few of them I was only able to finish towards the end of the game. This is easily my favorite aspect of the gameplay for Romeo is a Dead Man, it is weird, unique, and adds this mini-game to the package.

Besides the general combat there are a lot of other gameplay aspects, like flying The Last Night around space collecting space debris you can turn into upgrade material. There is a little cooking mini-game to make katsu curry that will buff various attributes or increase Emerald Flowsion. WorstPink, the nurse, has a hundred question visual novel styled side quest. That if you miss one you have to restart, but if you finish it you get a reward and achievement/trophy. A boss rush training room where you can wager your Emerald Flowsion to earn more. I’m sure there is some I’m even missing here, but the point is, there is a ton to this game and I was just constantly entertained with all the little things it kept throwing at me.

Sound design is really solid with a decent outing from the voice cast. The voice work isn’t amazing, but they do a good job here, I don’t have any complaints. I like Romeo’s Grandpa’s eccentric and quirky mad scientist feel. As I mentioned above, he reminds me of Doc Brown from Back to the Future. The general sound effects from the combat attacks, weapons strikes, explosions, etc. all sound high quality as well. What stands out the most, however, is the soundtrack. The soundtrack is composed by Nobuaki Kaneko who is also an actor who plays Hatter in Alice in Borderlands, which is a great show. Most importantly here he is a member of the rock band Rize, which is a Japanese rock band. They have covered Nu metal, rapcore, alt rock, punk, and hard rock, and that influence is clear in the Romeo is a Dead Man OST. Besides the music he did himself, the rest of the track list is also really great.

I have to say that I couldn’t be happier with my first full experience with a Suda51 game. Romeo is a Dead Man is a weird, wacky, and insane work of art in all the right ways. Where it lacks in combat depth and enemy variety it more than makes up with a plethora of other gameplay ideas and a hilarious and fun Bastard system. With the constant visual treats and new ideas it constantly threw at me, as well as a time and space jumping story with an interesting twist on Romeo and Juliet, it kept me hooked to the very end.

 

Graphics: 8.5 While not a technically impressive game from a raw visual standpoint, the artistry and style is off the charts.	Gameplay: 7.0 Hack ‘n’ slash is serviceable and the Bastard system is fun, but lack of variety in combos and enemy variety make the gameplay get stale quickly.
Sound: 9.5 Voice acting is well done from the main cast, but what shines here is the phenomenal soundtrack.	Fun Factor: 8.5 Romeo is a Dead Man oozes style and the amount of fun ideas thrown in kept my attention throughout. However, it just needed more in the combat and enemy variety.
Final Verdict: 8.0

Romeo is a Dead Man is available now on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X and PC with i7-12700KF, RTX 5070, 32gb RAM.

A copy of Romeo is a Dead Man was provided by the publisher.