Like the summonable, energy-shooting ghoul I cultivated on my spaceship’s zombie farm, Romeo is a Dead Man is a bit of a grower. After an iffy start that exhibits plenty of Grasshopper Manufacture weirdness but not much Grasshopper Manufacture charm, its disparate parts do eventually coalesce, forming a lean yet muscular hack ‘n’ slash with a playful talent for mixing up its mediums.
God, so many mediums. The tale of Romeo – small town cop turned cyborg samurai, enlisted to hunt multiple space-time variants of obviously evil ex Juliet – is told not just through Unreal Engine cutscenes, but also animated pulp comics, stop motion, and 16-bit pixel art, and that’s just in the first half hour. It gets eclectic while you’re actually playing, too: bloody melee combat remains the star but it’s rarely long before you’re dragged off to do some 3D puzzling, or to upgrade your stats and items by playing arcade and mini-games.
It’s unfortunate that, in the early stages, not all of it lands. Such variety initially appears to paint a surface-level veneer of innovation over the action, which itself starts slow, only pitting you against shambling undead and the occasional powered-up meat monster. Neither does it help that the plot is largely stakeless multiverse nonsense, adopting a blandly literal interpretation of Suda51’s recurring Kill the Past theme and repeatedly contradicting itself with cheerful ‘Don’t worry about it’ handwaves. Game, I want to worry about it! Worrying is just caring with an extra syllable!
Stick with it, though, and Romeo is a Dead Man develops a genuine capacity to surprise. In part, because it knows when to commit to the bit. There’s an extended sequence halfway through that dips into survival horror, and instead of merely taking away Romeo’s ability to swing a sword, the entire game shifts into a claustrophobic over-the-shoulder perspective while introducing stealth and Resident Evil-style puzzle elements that never reappear anywhere else. That’s a bonkers amount of investment for a single switch-up. I don’t want to spoil the latter stages, like I’m apparently willing to do for the horror bit, but these also run further with the cross-media aspect, skillfully relieving some of the more dramatic moments with high-effort swerves into absurdist, visually diverse comedy.
Also, y’know, it’s a pretty good action game. Combat recovers from its weak start as well, both trusting you to uncover the nuances of its combo swishing and gradually enlarging the menagerie of angry flesh flappers – mostly in a sensible order of challenge – to test what you’ve learned. Romeo is no Dante or Raiden, agility-wise, but what his fighting style lacks in flashiness is more than made up for in tangible, satisfying weight. Even the default sword, perhaps the most purely functional weapon among an arsenal of power fists and sci-fi spears, cuts through crowds and bisects behemoths with a moreish chunkiness. Romeo can also wield guns, though I ended up having enough fun with the blades that I only whipped out my shotgun when necessary. As in, needing to shoot things that were either a) flying out of reach or b) liable to explode in my face upon thwacking them.
The relatively lengthy wind-ups and recovery times do require more than a measure of timing, and bosses will happily teach a harsh lesson in it. But simultaneously, Romeo is a Dead Man is barely ever about passively waiting for an opening. There’s no blocking or parrying, and successful strikes fill a blood gauge that lets you lash out with more powerful special moves – which also partially refill your health. All of this conspires to thrust you into highly aggressive, excitingly pacey brawls, where taking some hits might be worth it if you can fill that blood bar in return. Dodging, too, often feels like less of an evasive technique and more an offensive manoeuvre for shifting into the optimal backstabbing angle.
None of this is especially groundbreaking. But it seems like before you can start layering on novelty cinematics and genre juggling, it’d be important to for your action game to have good action. And Romeo is a Dead Man’s fighty parts are meaty, frantic, and terribly good fun.
Truth be told, it’s also not just the most ambitious of Dead Man’s silly asides that can extract a grin. Between missions, I always enjoyed returning to the FBI’s spaceship hub (long story), where – in exchange for parting with the third dimension – you can chat, trade, and upgrade with weirdo agents and amusingly out-of-place family members. Here, the ‘Sure, whatever’ humour works better than in main story beats; nobody questions the logic of growing allied zombies like carrots so you can call them up in later battles, which makes it funnier when you yank one out of the dirt to triumphant fanfare. And there’s something both sweet and entertaining about having Romeo’s mum, settled inside the ship’s galley, cook buff-granting katsu curries using ingredients you’ve found drifting in space. As Yuri Gagarin said, “I saw how beautiful our planet is, and also how many jars of cumin are just floating around up there.”
I wasn’t quite so happy in Sub-Space, the loosely Tron-ish alternate dimension that most missions have you poking around for keys and light navigational puzzles. Its aesthetic, that of a Zen garden as built in a heavily shader-modded Minecraft, is quite nice. But whereas the rest of the game got better with time, the appeal of yet another dive into Sub-Space only waned. For one thing, a lot of these sections just go on far, far too long, slowing down progress in a way that becomes ever more incongruous with the impetus-heavy combat. For another, going there utterly knackered my framerates.
PC performance, in general, lurches around like a Regent’s Park pedalo in a Caribbean storm. At what is usually an easy 1440p, my RTX 3090 – running Ultra settings with Quality-level DLSS 4 – couldn’t reliably hold 60fps, with drops to 30fps and sometimes even lower in some Sub-Space areas. I also tried the Steam Deck, using the lowest possible settings plus FSR upscaling, and that fell deep into the twenties too – even in real space. This is thankfully not a repeat of the No More Heroes PC port, as you do at least get proper mouse/keyboard support and, evidently, those custom graphics options. Still, it’s no smooth runner either.
Whether that’s a dealbreaker, I’ll leave between you and your rig. If you can run it, though, Romeo is a Dead Man provides smiles, surprises, and memorable swordfights, especially once it warms up. It probably won’t go down as an all-timer in Grasshopper Manufacture’s ouvre, and in 20 years’ time, I doubt YouTube will be recommending me Romeo videos as often as it currently does Killer7’s Russian Roulette scene. But that’s fine: quality slashing and organic zombie gardening can still count for plenty.