Romeo is a Dead Man review: "When this time-traveling hack and slash hits its groove, this is Suda51's bloodiest, sharpest spectacle since No More Heroes"

Somewhere in the later stages of Romeo Is a Dead Man, the latest game from Japanese auteur Suda51, I started thinking about post-structural critical theory. That's not something my mind tends to explore all that often while gaming, but I kept thinking back to Roland Barthes' Death of the Author. At Romeo's hands, such a death would be a gory affair, assembling meaning from text out of mulchy scraps – but beneath the punk edge I can't help but feel how much the game feels like one of Suda51's most personal works, wearing its beating, bleeding heart on its sleeve. Romeo is a Dead Man's climatic hours are permeated by a kind of melancholy that brings to mind Neon Genesis Evangelion, where sadness is not the overriding emotion but certainly present, and imbues all else around it with a touch of blue.

It had been a long journey to get to this point. The introduction to Romeo Is a Dead Man sees a young cop with a head full of conspiracy theories, Romeo Stargazer, getting killed by a monster after he and his partner pull over to help someone in distress. He's then wince-inducingly injected in the eye by his Doc Brown-inflected scientist granddad, and resurrected. (If that's the treatment I ever need, just let me die, I'm just saying.)

Hacking and slashing across spacetime

From there, you get a whirlwind of activity as you join the FBI Space-Time Police, and jet off on a spaceship in search of monsters that threaten the universe, with levels taking you through various time periods (but never further than the mid-20th century, sadly). One of these monsters in question appears to be Juliet – Romeo's missing girlfriend and love interest, natch, but also far more eldritch than he remembers.

Between his ultra-violent time-traveling adventures, Romeo spends downtime on his spaceship, The Last Night, rendered as a top-down 16-bit RPG where you cook katsu curry, upgrade your stats by moving through a maze on an arcade machine, and speak to the other members of the FBI Space-Time Police, most of whom have somewhat unhinged personalities. It's a testament to the game's variety and stylishness that it's capable of pulling off this perspective shift without it seeming like a gimmick.

Romeo is a Dead Man's core loop is rooted in fairly standard hack and slash, character action-style gameplay that'll feel familiar to anyone who's spent time with No More Heroes of Shadows of the Damned, having Romeo slash through hordes of rotters (zombies) with two of eight weapons at his disposal – four melee, four ranged. For my money, the best is the Star Destroyer, a huge, heavy sword reminiscent of the Soul Edge, paired with the weighty Diaspora shotgun. As you make your way through levels, your grandfather, now a living back patch on your jacket, will give you pointers and banter with Romeo.

Mixed in with the standard zombies are special enemies. You have scorpion-looking zombies that shoot projectiles at you, ballerinas with tutus of flesh, and quite a few more, each with weak spots that enable quick takedowns. The enemy variety isn't stunning, but it's good enough, and all meshes together well to provide just enough diversity in how you splatter foes.

The first few levels can be a real slog. The second full level, set in a 1980s mall, is a particularly low point. Your weapons are so low-level at this point, requiring Sentrey, a resource found throughout various levels, to upgrade, that you feel like you're blowing spitballs at enemies rather than wielding a technologically-advanced shotgun. Each level ends with a boss fight, and it's likely that some will find the Mall's boss too tough to endure, and give up. This isn't helped by the game's field-of-view, which is tight and claustrophobic. Multiple times, especially in early levels, I would get sideswiped and killed by an enemy that I had no way of seeing coming. I like Romeo's character design, too, Grasshopper, but I don't need to be getting a piggyback ride from him.

I am become Deadman

Past the slow start, however, Romeo is a Dead Man really begins to get up to speed, the difficulty curve inverts as your weapons become silly powerful, and you are become death, destroyer of rotters. As you smash your way through enemies, you harvest their blood before unleashing a special move, called Bloody Summer, which does tremendous damage and heals you – which means I rarely had to worry about Romeo's hit points in later stages (especially with a few side dungeons under my belt). Healing is otherwise provided by space-time pharmacies dotted around the level – use one and enemies will respawn, much like Dark Souls' bonfires, or you can even return back to The Last Night.

Romeo is a Dead Man is best when putting you in charge of overpowered action, but at times Romeo will need to challenge his noggin, too – barriers within levels forcing you to enter subspace by speaking with a suited man in a J Edgar brand TV (as usual) in order to clear them. These might be fun palette cleansers if they were ever clear about what you needed to do, their orb-based challenges eventually, I realize, revolving around smoothing out the jagged spheres. Likewise, the Sentrey Forge back at The Last Night, where you can supposedly create more of the resource from space debris, is a system that remains impenetrable to me. Once I understood the orb puzzles, subspace became a nice break in the action, but it's a shame I felt unmoored when first asked to step away – something No More Heroes did a better job of implementing.

Still, Romeo is a Dead Man might be one of my Games of the Year, even if this fantastic, violent adventure comes with a few qualifiers. It doesn't take long for the combat to become a snappy delight as I tear through legions of horrors, the action rarely letting up. Similarly, a slew of media references manage to feel charming and well-judged, enhancing rather than drowning out Romeo is a Dead Man's own personality.

There's a repeated reference to The Clash, each level begins with an Oscar Wilde quote, and Morrissey lyrics (from before all his recent unpleasantness) are referred to on the title screen and in the name of a boss fight. The music, too, is a consistent bop throughout, and while goofy, it's suitably creepy at times, too. One level, set in an asylum, uses cockroaches as visual shorthand for horror and otherworldliness in a way that reminds me strongly of John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. Romeo is a Dead Man Suda51's best game in years, and while certainly not for everyone, it'll be an absolutely spellbinding trip across time and space for many, as it was for me.

As geeky and delusional as he may be, No More Heroes' antihero is one of the best assassins of all time