YMMV / Death end re;Quest 2

• Contested Sequel: Death end re;Quest 2 has garnered sharply-contrasting opinions. Those who favor the game feel as though the game excised a lot of mechanics bloat, has a much more reasonable scope for a Compile Heart game, and has a story that is much more cohesive and carefully-plotted, creating a game that ultimately feels like a stronger package than its predecessor. However, detractors feel that the game's plot is too detached from that of the first and feel that that its roughly 20-hour playtime is way too short, resulting in a disappointing affair that is not faithful to its predecessor.
• Fridge Brilliance: Players might question the point of the game's website and other advertising hiding Midra's last name when the game itself quickly makes it obvious that it is Dollhart. This is actually a subtle bit of misdirection, as otherwise Julietta — whose last name is extremely significant — would be the only advertised character in the entire game with a first name but no last name.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Knowing about the demons in Ars Goetia will give away the fact that El Strain and the often mentioned Barbas/Marbas are in fact the same "god" when you compare the El Strain cross with the Sigil of Marbas well before the cult makes the connection clear themselves.
  • In the English version Liliana's name for her pet whip spider qualifies. Mr. Piggy has nothing to do with pigs, but rather comes from Amblypygi, the name of the order of arachnids known as whip spiders.
• Narm
  • The cartoonish "CLANG" sound effect from the first game returns, particularly during Leesha Nolan's execution, and is still jarring when it is heard.
  • Midra's transformation into Shadow Matter is in the middle of a bloody massacre. Her voice will likely serve as Nightmare Retardant for the scene as she sounds like she just inhaled a ton of helium.
• Pandering to the Base: In response to fan outrage over the changes to the returning characters' Glitch designs in Death end re;Quest 2 Idea Factory International opened up a poll to find out which designs players would prefer for the Steam release, as that version would not need to be subjected to Sony's standards.
• Porting Disaster: The Steam version of Death end re;Quest 2 has a nasty Game-Breaking Bug that glitches a variety of menus (include the equipment and tri-action menus), leaves artifacts of other menus on the screen, and forces mouse controls until the game is fully closed out. The glitch is often - but not exclusively - triggered by the shop menu, and is frequent enough to happen at least once almost every chapter.
• So Bad, It Was Better: There are a small number of fans who don't mind and, in some cases, actually prefer the "censored" Glitch Mode character designs in Death end re;Quest 2 and would have appreciated the ability to toggle the costumes in the Steam release.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While the first game wasn't hated per say, there were still a lot of problems that came with it. Death end re;Quest 2 meanwhile fixes most of the issues from the first game, both in terms of gameplay and story:
  • After the first game had what many regarded as a trainwreck of an ending due to the unevenly-telegraphed rapid-fire reveals, Death end re;Quest 2 contains a smaller-scale story that neatly ties up almost all of its plotlines during the first playthrough or on New Game Plus. Additionally, it has a bonus ending devoted entirely to addressing one of the first game's many dangling plot threads. Though not without leaving a Sequel Hook of its own.
  • Similarly the individual character endings of the first game are addressed in the second. Each character is given a scene that continue on from the "It's you!" moment they all ended on, explaining how they struck up a friendship with Arata after that.
  • The number of Death Ends in the second game is considerably cut down compared to the first, helping to avoid Too Bleak, Stopped Caring once again. For the players that enjoyed that aspect, the game does include numerous optional deaths of side characters.
  • Nearly every battle mechanic that involves Arata is done away with. Most of them either had niche use or were minigames that wore thin after the first few times.
  • The risk/reward ratio for stepping on bugs (or "curses" as they're referred to in DerQ2) is heavily tilted in the player's favor in the second game. As a result, they now serve as a finite resource for the player to manage instead of being a borderline Scrappy Mechanic that could - at its worst - disable your character(s) for an entire turn.
  • Neither game has a large amount of map variety, but while the first game tries to artificially inflate it with blatant backtracking and pace-breaking visual novel segments, the second game builds the game around a smaller-scale setting and embraces its status as a 15-25 hour game. DerQ2 also incentivizes a New Game Plus run with new scenes, including the aforementioned bonus ending; the first game's New Game Plus "bonus" is the ability to choose endings, something that most thought should have been available in the first playthrough.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Death end re;Quest 2 offers a twist on this trope in that a few fans felt that the game's biggest sin story-wise is being connected to the first Death end re;Quest, given that there is a notable stylistic shift and that the elements that connect the two are among the weakest. For example, the Evil Plan of murdering 666 children to awaken Marbas, and then sacrificing one of his descendants is a bit of a stretch in a setting that was heavily hinted (and effectively confirmed in New Game Plus) to be virtual from outside of the perspective of its denizens.

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