A Plague Tale: Requiem review: gorgeous sequel has some growing pains

digitaltrends.com:

There’s a specific sequence in A Plague Tale: Requiem that captivated me … and then lost me just as quickly. Returning protagonist Amicia and a new companion are trying to carefully sneak through an area packed with guards (a familiar scene in its predecessor, A Plague Tale: Innocence). As Amicia, I start quietly killing guards by beaning them with rocks and extinguishing their torches to send rats after them. New to Amicia’s way of doing business, my partner asks why she keeps killing these guys instead of just sneaking around them. Amicia keeps making excuses, ones that perfectly mirror my own twisted logic. “Oh, they were going to get in the way, and they’re bad guys anyways.” It’s an effective moment of introspection in a game that’s built around giving players the option to be the pacifist in situations.

Shortly after, I’m thrown into the stealth game’s silliest sequence. Amicia is backed into a room and trapped, when guards start pouring in. I have no choice but to kill waves of them with my sling as Amicia gives in to her bloodthirst, locked in a violent mental breakdown as her partner begs her to stop. It’s an over-the-top moment where the game is forced to momentarily reckon with its violence – it’s almost embarrassed of itself, apologizing for all its gleeful killing.

And yet, not but an hour later, I’m back at it as if nothing happened, killing guards with some fun new tools and unlocking new skills as a reward for doing so.

A Plague Tale: Requiem is a fantastic sequel on several counts. It improves on its predecessor in just about every way by finely tuning its stealth and navigation systems, adding more gameplay variety, and delivering a visually stunning world that puts games with much larger budgets to