Death end re;Quest - PS4

Developer Compile Hearts has been building a name for itself with the HyperDimension Neptunia series for a while now, but after a dozen or so of zany RPGs about the living embodiements of videogames, it's interesting to see where the studio has gone next. With an isekai-style story of a character trapped in a virtual world a la .Hack or Sword Art Online the dev team has remained in familiar meta game territory, but has gone in a more mature direction.

Death end re;Quest follows two protagonists, Arata Mizunashi and Shina Ninomiya, the lead developers of a virtual reality MMORPG called World's Odyssey. Towards the end of development, Shina disappeared under mysterious circumstances and the game was shelved. A year later, however, Arata finds that the servers are running again and one player is logged in to the buggy virtual world - Shina.

What follows is a game of two parts. As Shina, you must play through the glitchy RPG of World's Odyssey - a game with a success rate of just 1 per cent. Meanwhile, in the 'real' world you guide Arata as he tries to figure out what's going on and where Shina's body is. This half of the game is a visual novel, with players working through conversations and putting together clues.

It's an unsettling set-up that asks intriguing questions about the space where our world and virtual realms meet. more