Death end re;Quest 2

Story was nice.
Characters were nice.
Combat was nice.
Playing with mouse + keyboard was time consuming and felt bad - poor port with controls not really made for M+K.
Playing with xbox controller was smooth, but during every cut scene cursor was visible in the middle of the screen and that was annoying xD
Recommend only if you will play with controller.

Great game, not quite as good as the first but still a lot of fun. The VN style cutscenes' story is good and artwork is fantastic. The dungeon crawling gameplay is okay, difficulty is a bit all over the place but you can adjust it in the settings if you need to. I'm looking forward to the 3rd entry in the series!
The game is Verified for Steam Deck but runs poorly on Linux out of the box. I'm playing on Debian 12 with Flatpak Steam. The cutscenes are fine but the 3D dungeons have a lot of stuttering. Add this to your launch options to fix:
WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY=1 PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%
I used Proton Experimental. You can also install "unclutter-xfixes" and run "unclutter" in a terminal before you start the game to get rid of the mouse cursor in the middle of the screen in battles. This is an issue on Windows too. And to fix the lack of vsync, you can turn on TearFree with "xrandr --output $OUTPUT --set TearFree on" where $OUTPUT is your video card's output. You can find it by running "xrandr" and looking for its name. Mine for example is "HDMI-A-0"

Another gem I found when I was playing on PS4, though I never did fully finish the game over there. I picked up it up during the Summer sale and put a full day into the game already. Definitely a lot of fun and easy to pickup if you want a simple rpg game to relax to. Auto-battling is a thing, so that's many points given from me personally. Makes playing this game and watching a movie right at the same time very easy to do, so yeah.. I'd recommend this game for sure. 10/10.

Gameplay:
The gameplay revolves around the exploration of a town, which I must say. For what it is, is pretty large. There is backtracking to do as well. The equipment system in the game is pretty basic, such as finding your gear, or purchasing something to increase it. To be honest, your major upgrades will come from finding gears. There is also 999 levels, this is more for a post game kinda thing.
Battle System:
The battle system, it uses more of a pinball kind of thing if you know what I mean. Aligning the targets correctly, so you can take advantage of launch chains. This is the basics, but it gets a bit more complex. Such as there are nodes on the field, and with them comes boosts but health cost penalty.
Once the character corrupts, they enter into a transformation state. This is where the real battles begin, as it is a combination of maintaining, knowing when to use it up with an ultimate to gain a buff, and calculating the amount of damage you’d take. Knowing if your corruption gauge would fill back up. Despite it being basic, it does its job quite well. It is also a turn based game, but gives freedom of movement.
Story:
This is the high point. The wonderful cast of character, it starting with Mai Toyama living in an abusive life, forced out of normalcy. So, she develops more of a defensive side. Putting up a wall against people when she is freed. She goes to search for her sister, and finds herself at an all girls school.
It is here she gets acquainted into a more normal setting, that is until night falls, and everything turns to ruin.
It is here dangers are faced, her determination to find her sister. Along the way in this, she grows closer to another Rottie, who is very assertive to say.
So, a bit of coldness sets the line. However, as it goes along, you see how the relationship of the two is developed. Then how the classmates, and others play into this all. The game flips between a nice Slice of Life, to an unsettling horror. Your decisions in the game affects who live, but to an extent. You’ll see what I mean if you play it.
Anyway, as she tries and finds answers about her sister. Around every corner, things do not look good. Then on top of this, the strange happenings at the school, the state of the town. It all gloriously plays out, and kept me hooked in.
Different Endings:
The game has many bad endings, one true ending, and one EX ending. The bad endings, simply pick the choice that doesn’t sound smart. In short, think behaving coldly, and potentially selfishly. It might seem this way, but you are in the role of a leader.
The True Ending, do not lose the first round of the final battle, then win the rest. For a special bad ending, lose the first round, then continue to see. For the EX True Ending, do all of the Side Quests, complete all interactions in the day, then complete the game(NG+ only for EX True End).
Graphics:
Much better on PC than switch.
Music:
Very good.
Party composition:
You have three characters for the game, a fourth optional through some other means, then a bunch of others. Depending on their abilities, it can be useful in situations. For instance, Shina helps with item drop rate if I remember right. However, Mai is brutal on the battlefield.
Given her invincibility state, and capability to counter ailments as well, and her very high damage output. She fills the role of a damage dealer excellently, while covering herself. Lilliana, if I am remembering this correctly. She can shield all of your party members, so in tough situations, you can protect your party. And Rottie is a very good AOE user, that really acts as more of full on damage dealer. I think you get the point.
Replay Value:
Simply for the story itself, it gives incentive to replay. A second play through opens up new interactions in the day, this is to get the EX True Ending, which you should complete your Side Quests as soon as you can as to not risk losing the interactions.
Then a mode is offered to the Post Game Dungeon, where the difficulty really spikes up. It is here you will want to make use of your characters well. Mai, Rottie, and Liliana are exceptionally equipped to deal with this entire mode. You also get save points now and then. And even if you did all of this, just playing the game, to experience its story is more than enough.
Overall:
Death End ReQuest 2 is an excellent game. The focus is the story, and they fixed all the problems Death End ReQuest 1 had. While I did like the characters in one, they did not get proper development. Two properly developed its characters. Mai goes from someone who is more hostile and cold, to someone more happy. All the while, you see her strong devotion to save her sister.
Rottie gets her development as well into someone who learn more about the world, but still maintains her cheery self.
Lilianna was more passive, but becomes strong enough to pursue her goal due to her experiences with Mai. The smaller characters as well got their time as well, and you learn about and appreciate them. This game really over performs and does what it is supposed to do very well. Which is to tell a story.
Problems fixed from Death End ReQuest:
1. Poor Direction.
--> I complained about this for the first game, and this game completely corrects it. It respects your time, and allow you to save at any point during a scene. The game is no longer vague on directions as well.
2. Battle System.
--> It is no longer slow, and makes glitch more accessible while also making the later battles require you to loop around it. This is where synergy comes into place. If anything, I wished they kept the summon system and the genre change, these were fun for Death End ReQuest 1, but it doesn't matter.
3. Balance.
--> The game is much better balanced, and steadily progresses with its difficultly. It doesn't feel like a chore anymore.
4. Sexual Content.
--> I complained how some is fine now and then, but the over usage and downright questionable scenes made the first game off putting. It was to the point where it distracted from the story, rather than focusing, causing the game to be bloated. This ended up dragging down the first game. In the second, it was less focus on the sexual content, far less. And it focused in on the story.
5. Don't have to playthrough the game tediously.
--> Meaning for additional character scenes, just save and reload from a certain point. They also focused more on the story rather than wasting your time with the Side Quests. Which in NG+, when you do them, you are actually rewarded with something of worth with new events towards the EX True End.
6. Didn't spot any bugs. Whatever was there? Not noticeable. Death End ReQuest bugged on me quite a bit. 2? Not once.
Some Added Things:
1. Certain dialogues in battle.
--> In certain battles, using certain characters also tells more about the story. Such as the degrade function.
2. NG+.
--> New Game plus has more worth, given that it changes the intro movie and adds a lot of new scenes that connects to Death End ReQuest.
3. Level Up skills.
--> You level up to learn skills, but then have to use the level up skills to learn other ones.
4. Character interactions in battle.
--> There are a few dialogues that play when a character enters glitch mode.
5. Pain Area story section.
6. Oni challenge NG+.
--> I don't recommend it, it is as bad as the Chocobo Challenge from FFX.
Etc.
These are some of the smaller things that makes the game even better. Death End ReQuest 2 is 9/10 I'd give it. First run is contained, second one massively expands getting into the Endbirth Project as well as Lydia.
--> Now, I understand people are having trouble with the mouse appearing on screen. A patch that never came, here is a workaround.
Download AutoHideMouseCursor. You can set this to make the mouse hide itself within two seconds, and it works wonderfully. So you won't be bothered by the mouse again.

Played the first game on Switch, decided to try this one on PC.
This game is completely different from the first one, but in my opinion, is still special. There's a lot of complaints about Rottie, but I kind of love her, tbh. She's a highly competent lesbian with a gun, what's not to love?
The story is a bit wackier than the first game, yet a bit more cohesive this time. I recall being confused at points playing the first game, I feel like the story points connected a bit better in this one. Although, I am unsure if the plot would make sense if the first game isn't played, as there is a character related to another from the first game. I have no idea what playing this game is like if you didn't play the first game--maybe a bit confusing towards the end of the game.
The artwork and menus are GORGEOUS. Drop dead gorgeous. The main character's glitch form isn't as scandalous in this one, which I appreciate, because damn...this MC has it rough.
Story-wise, the plot is darker, but the death ends seem less brutal than the first game, imo.

After playing and beating it twice I can say the base game story isn't as good until you play the game for a second round, but most people won't do that so they miss the ng+ new stuff that I would heavily recommend you play Death End re;quest 1 before doing ng+ as you will be spoiled on certain things if you don't.
Rating before ng+ 5/10, after ng+ 8/10 for the story hook-in with death end 1 elaborating on some things which were left unanswered in both death end 1 and the end of death end 2.

standard compile heart
+chaos on loop boss theme
+Ao Oni mode
-budget
hope the third game has a bigger budget