Romeo Is A Dead Man Review

We deserve more punk rock game development. More games that feel like the product of a bunch of delinquents in a garage making noise. The kind of approach that doesn’t always result in something good, artistically or technically, but at the very least something raw, human, collaborative, crunchy. Grasshopper Manufacture, led by the inimitable Goichi Suda, has been doing this for a minute, and in going fully independent to develop and publish Romeo is a Dead Man it’s been free to make something that is 100% punk rock. It’s loud, brash, violent, grimy, and not especially good.

Billed as “ultraviolent science fiction,” Romeo is a Dead Man is a patchwork of inspirations and unabashed references to popular media, presented in unmistakable Grasshopper fashion. It’s a post-multiverse multiverse story that sees Romeo, a cop rescued from the brink of death by a complete collapse of the universal fabric caused by his genius grandfather, recruited to a special Space-Time division of the FBI to track down a group of time-hopping fugitives. The most evil of which happens to be an omnipotent, calamitous supervillain and the object of Romeo’s affections, Juliet. Also, grandpa now lives on the back of Romeo’s jacket. With me so far?

All of this is presented with the subtlety and consistency of a beehive full of fireworks, as the game throws a dozen different visual and narrative styles at you in rapid succession, never holding onto an idea long enough for it to gain any real meaning. Each major ‘episode’ takes you to a different period in time, (mostly) in different locations within the same sleepy town of Deadford, and all bookended by a succession of random interstitials and a debrief at The Last Night, your multiverse-faring vessel.

There’s a whole lot going on at any given time, oddly more so between the proper levels. Navigating the interdimensional ship and getting to know your fellow Space-Time Police is done in a retro, pixel-art style, and aboard are a number of opportunities to upgrade Romeo’s stats, cook katsu, grow Bastards (I’ll explain) and more through goofy minigames. I’m quite fond of the game’s take on a skill tree, where you spend your XP currency on jet fuel for an alien monster thing to fly around a maze in an arcade cabinet.

It’s always exciting to play a video game where I genuinely have no idea what’s going to happen next, and Romeo is a Dead Man manages to come up with surprises just often enough to hold attention. There are some really neat, self-contained experiences here that I won’t spoil but offer massive temporary genre shifts that I loved, even if the ones toward the game’s conclusion are sandwiched between some massive slogs through repeated areas.

Truly, it’s the ‘regular’ gameplay segments, where you’re running through painfully simple locations and fighting the same handful of enemy types no matter the era, that exhibit the game at its least interesting. You’ll traipse around some corridors, dispatching enemies, briefly dip into a trippy subspace area to emerge elsewhere in the level, and repeat until you find the required items to face down the boss. GhM are seemingly the masters of perfectly serviceable game design propped up by an emphasis on style, but these levels also happen to be the most stylistically barren parts of the game, so that balance is thrown off considerably.

It’s curious, having read a few interviews with Suda51 around this game (particularly this one), that one of the points he raises is how important it is in an action game that everything feels comfortable and responsive in combat. It’s interesting because Romeo is a Dead Man does not feel particularly comfortable or responsive in combat.

It’s easy to see what the game is going for, equipping Romeo with a combination of melee weapons and ranged guns that he needs to switch between to suit the enemies in front of him, all the while dodging attacks with obvious tells and making good use of space to press an advantage. But in practice there’s a sluggishness to Romeo’s movements and a lack of immediacy to the controls that betrays any of that. There’s a certain deliberacy to it that you eventually figure out just by playing – especially on the harder difficulties – and it does feel good to nail that once you’re there, but too often you’ll have enemy numbers or groupings that seem geared towards a more immediate sense of control.

It doesn’t help matters that the game’s technical performance is…lacking. Far too often I’d find myself facing down large swarms of Rotters where the frame rate would absolutely tank, down into what felt like single digits, and in many levels that’s coupled with lighting so dim that you’re forced to simply swing in every direction and hope you’ll eventually cull the horde enough to sorta get your bearings.

It’s a shame because combat in Romeo is a Dead Man can be good, when it works. The Bastard system, where Romeo can summon various types of powerful Rotters grown in a garden aboard the space station (yep) for one-off attacks or buffs, is quite fun to experiment with. Bosses, especially, tend to call for smart Bastard usage along with the usual dexterity and pattern recognition, and their grotesque designs make for fun encounters. Playing on the highest initially available difficulty offers some nail-biting moments too, where a saving Bloody Summer special attack is spectacularly satisfying to pull off.

There’s a glimmer of something in this game, one that I can’t help but feel could have truly shone with just a little more curation and oversight – and cash, probably. Almost all of the biggest story moments are played out in semi-static comic book panels, which look great as is but showcase directorial and creative insight that would’ve made for banger cutscenes. A heap of collaboration has gone into some decent scenario writing, a killer soundtrack, and a bunch of cool art, but the polish isn’t there to properly showcase it all.

I find it tough to entirely dislike Romeo is Dead Man, in fact I absolutely plan to go back right now and attempt its ridiculous platinum trophy. I think if there were ever an example of a game that’s more likeable than it is good, this is a contender.

Final Thoughts

I strongly believe that, in this age of genAI slop and a homogenous AAA scene fuelled by the myth of infinite growth, art that is human-made, and feels human-made, is more important than ever. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be great all of the time. Romeo is a Dead Man is not great all of the time, but every high and every low feels like the product of a real human saying “I have an idea,” “Let’s try this,” or “Good enough, let’s go get beers.”

That is art. That is the art of a 6/10 game.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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