Let's Unbox Death end re;Quest Code Z!

the other day, a game i was really looking forward to finally came in the mail.

Death end re;Quest Code Z! this was one of my most anticipated games of the year! i was so excited for it, i even bought the limited edition, and i wanted to share it with everyone!

"Wait, what's 'Death end re;Quest'? The name sounds stupid."

first of all, the name sounds awesome and has plot relevance, so screw you.

but also, i'm happy you asked!

Death end re;Quest is a series of JRPGs. if you're at all familiar with Hyperdimension Neptunia and/or Corpse Party (which...you might not be), you might enjoy these games, as it's developed by the same studio as Neptunia (Compile Heart/Idea Factory) and has the same writer as Corpse Party (Makoto Kedouin)!

the first game is a sci-fi mystery story revolving around two protagonists: Shina Ninomiya, an adventurer who wakes up in what looks like a video game world with no memory of who she is, and Arata Mizunashi, a programmer for a game studio who's been obsessed with the disappearance of his former coworker, named Shina Ninomiya. the game's story gets into various mysteries, conspiracies, and eventually, the line between what's real and what's not begins to blur. the battle system takes after Hyperdimension Neptunia--you move your characters around a circular battlefield in real-time, and all your attacks/actions have a limited range. your efficiency in battle heavily depends on how you position your characters around the field and how you chain different attacks and actions together. like Neptunia, every character also has a transformation state where your stats are increased and you can use a special move unique to that character. the game also takes a page from another one of Compile Heart's games, Mugen Souls, with the knockback system--certain attacks can send enemies flying across the field, and knocking them into walls deals bonus damage.

the second game is an actual horror game, much closer to what you'd expect when you hear that the Corpse Party guy worked on these games. it revolves around only one protagonist, Mai Touyama, who, after killing her abusive dad in an act of self-defense, gets sent to an all-girls academy in Le Choara, a small town located somewhere in Europe. she intends to look for her little sister who should've been sent to the same academy, but when investigating her little sister's disappearance, she begins to find out that the town of Le Choara isn't quite what it seems. the battle system here is essentially a slightly modified version of the one from the first game, with the biggest change being the addition of knockblow attacks, where if you push the A button right when an attack connects, you send the enemy flying with explosive force. the way the overworld is handled is also very different--Le Choara is a fully interconnected map that you explore, as opposed to the segregated dungeons in the first game.

the main draw of the series is arguably how dark it gets, comparatively speaking,--the games all have higher age ratings than Compile/IF's other games and have gory game over scenes--but i'd also say that the stories, characters, and gameplay are all also very valuable, and not necessarily because the games were ""dark"" and ""mature"". the games almost seemed like they were made directly for me--the modern contemporary setting, the artstyle, the characters, the combat, the emphasis on mystery and the occult...these games have been at the forefront of my mind ever since i first played them. it might be my favorite (currently ongoing) video game series! some of the girls are also incredibly hot and i desperately wish there was more fanart of them

Code Z is a spinoff that seems to take place in a parallel universe--it's a roguelike with a totally different battle system and dungeon design mentality (think Pokémon Mystery Dungeon or Omega Labyrinth and not Hades or Binding of Isaac). all the characters from the two previous games are back, but everything seems a little too good to be true. the protagonist of this game, Sayaka Hiwatari, is sent to live with Shina to get used to life in this universe, but things very quickly begin to unravel.

the game seems really interesting, so let's look at all of the contents, starting with these trading cards.

for some reason, when you order literally anything from Idea Factory's website, they send you these trading cards. i think i have like 6 of them at this point. admittedly, the DERQ Z card was the sole reason i ordered it from the website, but they also gave me a Touhou one and a Genkai Tokki one. not that i'm complaining, i love Flan-chan, but these don't really have much to do with DERQ, so it's kind of funny

here's a closer look at the DERQ card. as far as i know, this art is exclusive to this card.

next, the giant limited edition box itself!

the art on it is really cool, i'd have loved a poster or something. the box was way bigger than i was expecting. i couldn't fit it in the shelf where i keep some of my games, so it's currently sitting on top of the shelf along with my books and movies.

here's the back of the box, though it's not very interesting.

now, let's open the box, and...

a mousepad themed after the game's protagonist!

Idea Factory seems to really like their mousepads, the Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters LE also came with one, and they also have a few on sale on the website.

well, it's cool, and also feels really pudgy, but also, my laptop has a trackpad built-in, i don't really use external mice, so i don't really know what to do with it.

the next thing in the box is...

the artbook! i was really excited for this, i love artbooks. this one didn't have as much concept/beta art as i would've liked, but i'd imagine with this being the third game in the series and using most of the same cast, there probably wasn't a whole lot of things they needed to change.

well, since i have it, let's flip through it!

here's the page for the game's protagonist!

i'm quite happy that it includes commentary from the character designer. i love seeing the thought process and mentality behind designing and writing a character, it's why i enjoy reading artbooks so much.

another interesting thing about this game is that almost every returning character got a full redesign!

something that always stood out to me about Death end re;Quest (in the first game, this admittedly isn't as much of a thing in 2) was how contemporary the character designs were, a lot of the characters were very fashionable and took after real life fashion styles, and this game takes it to an extreme. you can tell the artist took a lot of inspiration from more goth/alt styles for this game specifically.

this character became an immediate favorite of mine, just based on her design and expressions alone.

can you tell how much of a fan i am of her?

here's what i was most excited for: the beta/concept art!

Sayaka didn't change as much during development as the other two protagonists did for their respective games, which i find interesting.

i think that first image with all the characters in the train looks awesome, i kind of wish there was a finished version of it.

the second half of the artbook has excerpts from the game itself, which get into spoilers, so i didn't read it.

the last thing in the box was the game's soundtrack CD!

i'm very happy it came on a CD, so now i have more levels to play in Vib-Ribbon!

this series has a lot of songs i like. some of my favorites are Odyssia, Forsaken, Battle Hymn (Cutting Through Flesh, Severing Bones), The World as We Know It, Illusions Everywhere, Slumber, and Saint of Greed.

i want to say that the second game has my favorite soundtrack overall (which is odd, since it has more atmospheric tracks and i'm not usually a fan of that kind of thing), i like its battle themes and map themes, but also a lot of the cutscene themes from the first game make me tear up with nostalgia...

Code Z is cheating because most of its soundtrack is just borrowed from the other two games...

and last, but not least, here's the game itself! (forgive the glare, getting good lighting on this was impossible)

for some reason, with Idea Factory specifically, the game itself is never just in the limited edition box, which is why they're separate in the pictures i took earlier. i don't know how to explain this, assuming you don't normally buy Limited/Collector's editions for games, but usually with Limited Editions and the like, the game itself is in the giant box along with all the other goods, but with specifically only Idea Factory, that's never the case, the game's case is just awkwardly shoved in the mail along with the box. it's weird. my copy of Sisters VS Sisters was also like that. i don't understand why they just don't put it in the box lol

here's the back of the box!

a big thing with Code Z is that, in japan, this is the first game in the series to get a CERO Z age rating, hence the title. this is japan's equivalent to the ESRB's AO rating, it's 18+. this is the age rating horror games like Resident Evil get in japan because of the gore.

the ESRB (and i think PEGI in europe?) seem to be less strict about this kind of thing, since the game doesn't...have a higher age rating, compared to the other two. though, if you look closely, this is the only one of the three to have a "gore" tag added on.

here's the disc!

er, funny story, when i first took the game out of the package, i thought there was something else in the case, since it made a rattling noise and had a weird weight to it, but then i opened the case, and...the disc was loose! thankfully, it was still in good condition.

another thing Idea Factory really likes is their reversable covers.

sometimes they do this to get around having to censor their boxart, and other times they do it just because. this reversable cover is just the art that's on the LE box.

i actually don't really like most of the reversable covers--but because they're almost always missing the serial information and age rating on the back and that bothers me! weirdly enough, the only reversable cover i actually use is the one for the first Death end re;Quest game--the reverse cover for it shows both protagonists running past each other, which i think ties into the themes of the game really well--and it actually has the serial information and age rating on the back! why is it the only one that does that?!

that's everything!

before i end this blog, i want to show off the japanese and european special editions, since they actually got slightly different ones.

here's the japanese one!

the biggest difference right off the bat, aside from them not getting a mousepad, is that japan got a special "heroine death scream alarm clock".

they also got a drama CD which...i'm kind of curious about. the american limited edition combined the artbook and Note Z into one thing, i'm kind of curious to know if japan got a better artbook than we did, artbooks feel like they have stuff removed sometimes.

here's the european day one edition.

i'm actually really jealous of this, because they actually got the poster i wanted! they also got a pin. i think it would've been cooler if the pin was modeled after the red spider the protagonist carries around.

if you read this all the way through, then thank you! if i didn't have the internet to ramble about things i like at length to, then i'd probably just start talking to myself like a schizophrenic.

i hope i could convince at least one person to try out this game series, because i think it's really cool, and i want more people to play it.

one last bit of helpful advice: