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| Romeo Stargazer’s Deadgear mask reflects the game’s mix of sci-fi technology, time travel, and violent action. |
Romeo Is A Dead Man comes across as Grasshopper Manufacture doing what it does best: dropping you into something strange and unapologetically sharp-edged, then trusting you to keep up. You’re dropped into a world already overrun by White Devils and zombie-like victims, and Romeo Stargazer’s life goes off the rails almost immediately. One bad encounter on patrol turns him from small-town deputy into a Dead Man, a half-living agent drafted into the FBI Space-Time Police.
From that point on, the game keeps a steady pace. You move between fast combat missions, a ship hub full of odd side activities, and cutscenes that jump across different versions of Deadford and the wider universe around it. There’s very little hand-holding. Systems, weapons, and upgrade paths show up early, and you’re expected to learn by playing instead of sitting through long tutorials.
If you’re into Suda51’s brand of wild concepts, self-aware humour, and over-the-top action, Romeo Is A Dead Man wastes no time showing you where it’s coming from. The real question is whether you’re ready to live with how it moves long enough to get comfortable.
Romeo Is A Dead Man Details
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Publisher: Grasshopper Manufacture
Genre: Action, Hack-and-Slash
Game Mode: Single-player
Piecing Deadford Back Together
The opening hours set up a clear goal and then slice it into fragments. Deadford is the anchor point, shown across different eras and timelines as you chase fugitives who treat history like a playground. Each mission pulls you into a new version of the town or a connected location, with the story jumping between realities just as quickly as it shifts tone.
Romeo’s second life is the backbone of the plot. His grandfather Benjamin brings him back with the Deadgear mask, but that lifeline turns into a leash once the FBI Space-Time Police get involved. You’re sent after criminals who don’t belong in any standard timeline, and every case reveals another layer of how badly things have gone.
Juliet keeps everything from feeling like a detached sci-fi chase. She’s both the person Romeo cares about most and the mystery you’re trying to unravel, with hints that she may be tied directly to the disaster you’re cleaning up. Scenes rarely linger, but small conversations, quick flashbacks, and recurring visual cues keep pulling the focus back to Romeo trying to figure out what actually happened to her.
The story moves fast and doesn’t stop to underline every turn. By the time early arcs close off, you’ve met the key faces, seen several versions of Deadford, and have enough pieces to follow the trail even if not every answer is on the table yet.
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| Story-driven encounters in Romeo Is A Dead Man often play out in brutal slow-motion finishers that match its over-the-top sci-fi setup. |
Weapons, Blood, and Crowded Rooms
Romeo Is A Dead Man is built around staying aggressive. You’re dropped into tight arenas full of enemies, given a set of melee and ranged weapons, and told to start cutting your own path through the mess. Dodging replaces blocking, and you’re always looking for gaps in enemy patterns rather than slowly turtling behind a guard button.
You can equip four melee and four ranged weapons and swap instantly between them, which keeps fights from settling into one pattern. You might open with a chainsaw blade to clear a crowd, then flip to a long-range gun to pick off stragglers or pop a weak point. Weapons unlock steadily through the story, but even early gear feels strong enough to carry you if you’re willing to experiment.
Everything you do in combat feeds the Blood meter. Fill it and you can trigger Bloody Summer, a violent burst that clears space and restores health at the same time. It’s both a panic button and a reward for staying active, since you only fill that meter by staying in the fight instead of backing off.
The flow hits hardest when you accept that the game wants you to keep moving. Tougher encounters can feel overwhelming at first, especially when the screen fills with enemies, bullets, and effects. Once you figure out how dodging, crowd control, and Bloody Summer work together, those same rooms turn into loud, wild puzzles where you’re cutting through danger instead of running from it.
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| Big Bloody Summer swings clear crowded rooms in Romeo Is A Dead Man, turning close calls into brutal counterattacks when you time them right. |
Real Space, Sub-Space, and The Last Night
Exploration doesn’t pull you away from combat for long, but it still matters. Missions shift between Real Space and Sub-Space versions of the same area, with Sub-Space acting like a stripped-down layer focused on navigation and unlocking routes. A door blocked in one layer might be wide open in the other, so progress often means jumping back and forth to untangle the layout.
The Last Night, your ship hub, is where you handle most upgrades and side activities. Between missions you’ll talk to other agents, pick up objectives, and dig into the stranger parts of the world, but this is also where the game tucks in its upgrade tools.
Bastard cultivation is the most memorable of those. Bastards are helpful zombies grown from seeds you pick up during missions. Plant them, grow them, and they become support options you can drop into fights, firing off poison, healing, or explosive charges depending on how you build them.
Progression also runs through an arcade-like mini-game where you guide a small avatar through a maze and eat nodes that raise stats or tweak your weapons. It’s simple but surprisingly flexible, and the fact you can rearrange upgrades later helps if you realise a build isn’t working.
The overall structure is tight: mission, hub, upgrades, mission again. The repetition might sound rigid on paper, but the way visuals, enemies, and side activities rotate keeps it from feeling flat unless you run several chapters back-to-back.
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| Ship travel between missions shows Romeo jumping between Real Space and Sub-Space routes while chasing space-time targets. |
Style Swaps and Sound That Commit To The Bit
Romeo Is A Dead Man keeps swapping visual styles, and that variety ends up being one of its best hooks. Life on The Last Night plays out with chunky pixel art and expressive portraits, like a 16-bit adventure that wandered into a modern action game. Missions flip back to stylised 3D, with grim streets, warped laboratories, and surreal arenas that match the time-travel premise.
Cutscenes jump again, using comic-inspired panels, bold text, and short animated beats that make each chapter easy to remember. Those changes come fast, but they’re clear enough that you always know whether you’re watching a story beat, exploring, or about to be dropped into another fight.
Combat remains readable even when the screen fills up. Enemy swings, projectiles, and Bloody Summer activations are easy to pick out, which matters a lot when the game throws large groups at you. The gore plays up the dark comedy side of the game, especially when you trigger Bloody Summer just to watch the screen explode.
Audio keeps pace with the visuals. Battle tracks pull in rock and electronic layers, subspace areas go for stranger textures, and calmer stretches on the ship relax into slower themes. Sound effects do the practical work: you can hear when attacks connect, when enemies are winding up something dangerous, and when a room has finally gone quiet. On PS5, fights stay responsive most of the time, with only short dips when things get extremely busy and the screen is packed with effects.
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| Pixel-art briefing scenes on The Last Night give Romeo Is A Dead Man’s downtime conversations a very different feel from its 3D combat missions. |
Romeo Is A Dead Man Is Worth Learning On Its Own Terms
Romeo Is A Dead Man doesn’t spend long explaining itself. It throws combat options, upgrade paths, and side activities at you early, then expects you to learn by trying things and getting knocked around a bit. That can feel like a lot during the first few chapters, especially when maps start stacking vertical routes and enemy groups feel a little too eager to surround you.
Once you get comfortable with weapon swapping, Bastards, and Bloody Summer, the game hits a strong flow. You roll through a mission, return to The Last Night to tweak builds or chat with the crew, then head back out to chase another space-time criminal. The structure is tight, the story hits just enough emotional beats to keep you invested in Romeo and Juliet, and the presentation never stops reinventing itself.
There are rough edges. Navigation can get confusing later on, some fights cross the line from thrilling to exhausting, and those brief performance dips are noticeable even if they don’t ruin attempts. Still, if you like action games that expect you to learn by doing, Romeo Is A Dead Man gives you plenty of room to find your footing.
For an action game built around wild ideas, sharp combat, and a story that plays with time-travel nonsense while still focusing on its central relationship, Romeo Is A Dead Man is well worth your time.
Romeo Is A Dead Man Review Summary
Liked
- Fast, aggressive combat that rewards staying active
- Weapon loadouts and Bastards give lots of room to experiment
- Real Space and Sub-Space layouts keep missions from feeling flat
- Hub structure that makes upgrades and side activities easy to reach
- Bold visual shifts and strong audio work across ship, missions, and cutscenes
Didn’t Like
- Early hours throw a lot at you with little explanation
- Navigation can get confusing in later areas with stacked routes
- Occasional performance dips during bigger, effect-heavy fights on PS5
Overall Assessment of Romeo Is A Dead Man
Gameplay: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4.0 / 5)
Presentation: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4.0 / 5)
Performance: ⭐⭐⭐½☆☆ (3.5 / 5)
Story / Narrative: ⭐⭐⭐½☆☆ (3.5 / 5)
Fun Factor: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4.0 / 5)
Overall Value: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4.0 / 5)
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