Romeo is a Dead Man Review: Unadulterated Suda Madness

2 days ago 3

Published Feb 10, 2026, 9:00 AM EST

Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

I’ve long held the belief that artistic endeavors, games included, are often at their best when they’re at least a little bit self-indulgent. I want a game to be fun, of course, but I also want it to be a showcase of everything its creator considers cool and interesting. Passion means the world to me, and nobody does passion like Goichi “Suda51” Suda.

I’ve been playing Suda’s works since I was in school, enjoying his distinctive stylistic sensibilities, his gameplay experimentation, and of course, his wonderfully self-indulgent, trivia-loving vibes. Not every game Suda has had a hand in has hit me perfectly, unfortunately; the last game he was involved in, Hotel Barcelona, left me out in the cold a bit, but I think that was because he was only involved in that game.

Suda’s newest work, Romeo is a Dead Man, is definitely his creation, and it’s got everything I anticipate about a new Suda production with a healthy dose of modern sensibilities... and a lot of blood, violence, and random soccer trivia, but that’s hardly new.

The Tale of Romeo- I Mean DeadMan

Romeo is a Dead Man follows Romeo Stargazer, a young sheriff’s deputy in the sleepy town of Deadford. He was living a quiet life until a chance run-in with the mysterious Juliet sent him into a whirlwind romance, followed by having half his face torn off by some manner of interdimensional horror.

With the help of his genius grandpa Benjamin, Romeo is resurrected as DeadMan, a cyborg super-cop, and is then swiftly recruited by the Space-Time FBI to hunt down time-hopping criminals, potentially including Juliet. Also, Benjamin is now a living patch on the back of Romeo’s jacket. Don’t worry about it.

Most of what I just said is explained through a quick recap cutscene at the start of the game, though details of the situation are gradually revealed over the course of the story. It’s a mildly obtuse setup, perhaps, but no more so than anything else Suda has made. It’s the kind of game that throws a lot of plot and set dressing at you and leaves you to piece it all together yourself after the fact, wiki deep dive-style.

Romeo is neither a career combatant nor particularly ill-tempered. He’s a nice young man.

I do want to highlight Romeo as a character in particular. Unlike Suda’s previous protagonists, like Travis Touchdown, Garcia Hotspur, or Juliet Starling, Romeo is neither a career combatant nor particularly ill-tempered.

Romeo is a nice young man who’s just been dragged into some unpleasant circumstances. He’s still willing to dice up monsters and baddies should it come to that, but that’s not his first choice, which makes for a nice, fresh perspective compared to Suda’s usual assassins and monster hunters.

Chopping and Shooting Through Time and Space

Romeo is a Dead Man is a little tricky to categorize, but if I had to call it anything, it’d be a Souls-Lite, emphasis on the “lite” part. The game’s chapters are semi-linear; you run through a mostly planned sequence of battles, puzzles, and setpieces, occasionally shifting between reality and the mysterious subspace to collect the pieces of a key that open the way to the chapter’s boss.

Along the way, you’ll find Space-Time Pharmacies that restore your health and refill your healing items, though using them will cause any normal enemies you’ve defeated to respawn. That’s the Souls part. That said, unlike in a Souls game, if you get stomped, you don’t lose any currency or materials; you just pop back up at the last Pharmacy you used.

Romeo can swap on the fly between melee and ranged weaponry, with four weapons to unlock in both categories. Every weapon has its use case, from the regular sword and combining spear to the machine gun and recoil-less rocket launcher, though I was personally rather partial to the dual fists for their speedy attacks.

There’s not much in the way of combo variety, unfortunately; you only have light and heavy attacks, though they can flow into each other fairly cleanly, and every melee weapon has a secret combo ender you can figure out to maximize damage. Every weapon also has a special attack called Bloody Summer, which deals large quantities of damage while restoring some of your health, which helps to preserve the game’s overall damage-dealing feedback loop.

Romeo is a Deadman Reanimated Merged boss fight

Throughout the levels, you’ll find entrances to subspace in the form of floating TVs with a little pixelated dude giving cryptic messages. There’s no combat in these segments, just some light puzzle-platforming, though these bits are typically quick enough so as not to kill the pacing. I should note, though, that these segments were where I most frequently experienced slowdown in the build I played, especially when walking in the ankle-deep water at the bottom of each. Nothing game-breaking, but it was noticeable.

Romeo is a Dead Man Dead Gear Cannonball

Both between chapters and from any Space-Time Pharmacy, you return to the game’s hub, the Space-Time FBI spaceship, the Last Night. While aboard the Last Night, everything takes on a cute pixel art aesthetic, which also makes it easier to quickly run around. This is good, because the Last Night is also your main source of character and ability upgrades.

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As you accumulate resources from the levels, as well as while cruising around in outer space, you can put them toward making items, upgrading your abilities, and making new abilities altogether.

Random culinary ingredients dropped by enemies or found floating in space can be given to Romeo’s mom to play the katsu curry mini-game, which yields various stat-boosting curry plates. Your main currency, Emerald Flowsion, can be used to unlock your other weapons, buy various items from the store, and, most importantly, to upgrade your base abilities in the Dead Gear Cannonball mini-game.

Your other major currency, Sentry, is used to upgrade your weapons and can also be crafted from junk bits you find out in space in yet another mini-game. It might sound a little daunting to have all of these baseline elements be mini-games in themselves, but they’re easy to access and quick to use, and pretty amusing besides.

The most in-depth mini-game revolves around growing and raising your own undead helpers, known as Bastards. Enemies occasionally drop Bastard Seeds, which you can plant in the ship’s farming field. You can harvest them immediately, but if you wait up to 10 real minutes, their stats will get better.

Once you’ve got a Bastard, you can equip them and use their abilities in the field, generating healing zones, blasting enemies as stationary turrets, putting up shields, and more. You can also pit two Bastards against one another in gladiatorial combat to create a newer, better Bastard with higher stats or even an entirely new ability. It’s a deceptively deep system that kind of reminds me of fusing Personas.

There’s Always a Path Forward, Even if You Have to Work for it

Being a Souls-Lite, even if it is an especially light one, Romeo is a Dead Man does have some distinct difficulty spikes, particularly when you encounter chapter bosses. Most enemy encounters can be surmounted with some old-fashioned hack-and-slash, as well as targeting their flowering weak points, but the bosses require a bit of slowing down and optimization.

Don’t be surprised if these fights take you a few tries; it took me like five tries to beat the second chapter’s boss, one of which was stymied when one of his attacks inexplicably ate my entire health bar. That felt a little unfair, but I probably just needed to get good, and get good I did, thanks to the game’s helpful systems.

Every time you die, you get to spin a little wheel, which can reward temporary buffs like increased attack or defense, or faster blood generation for using Bloody Summer. Since enemies respawn every time you use a Pharmacy, it’s easy to jog through the level to farm Emerald Flowsion for upgrades, though alternatively, you can visit Palace Athene, a randomly-generating dungeon accessible from outer space that regularly yields both upgrade materials and occasional equipment like stat-changing badges.

Even when the game had its hard bits, I never felt like I was stuck in a completely unwinnable situation.

After a certain point, you can also re-challenge defeated bosses, wagering your Emerald Flowsion to clear time limits for big payouts if you’re running on empty. Barring certain setpiece segments, you can leave a level whenever you want to go bum around elsewhere and grind up; we’re traveling through time here, after all, so it’s not like we’re in a rush.

Even when the game had its hard bits, I never felt like I was stuck in a completely unwinnable situation. If I were ever struggling, I could usually manage with a different weapon, some grinding, and reshuffling my selected Bastards a bit. The game wants to give you a challenge, but it also wants to be experienced, a lesson I think some similarly difficult games could stand to learn from.

Suda Welcomes You to His World

I’m particularly glad for the accessibility considerations in Romeo is a Dead Man, because it means I get to keep experiencing Suda’s world at a steady clip. The game is jam-packed with both experimental cinematic moments and all the random trivia you could ever want. During one chapter, the game shifts to linear horror with light stealth gameplay.

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Every time you pick up a cooking ingredient, it comes with a little blurb about what part of the world it typically comes from and what it tastes like. At one point, Romeo’s little sister, Luna, launches borderline unprompted into an entire Rakugo performance. One of your allies, GreenRiver, is literally just Midori Midorikawa from No More Heroes 3, and Romeo has an ongoing side-story with her where they try to figure out the greatest striker in the history of soccer for a trivia challenge.

Besides these random events, it feels like Romeo is a Dead Man is kind of a culmination of everything Suda has tinkered with over the years. It has similar swordplay to No More Heroes and Killer is Dead, comparable gunplay to Shadows of the Damned, the same commitment to flashy, crowd-busting action as Lollipop Chainsaw, and even the same blood-powered special mechanics as Killer7.

The shopkeeper guy aboard the Last Night even talks to you in the same interface as The Silver Case. You would think it would all feel token and disjointed, but even if you don't catch the references and similarities, it all comes together almost seamlessly.

Yeah, the game is weird, not to mention covered top-to-bottom in blood sprays and particle effects, but it doesn’t… languish in its own weirdness, for lack of a better phrase. It just shows you the weirdness and lets you draw your own experiences and reactions from it. As Benjamin frequently says, whenever something bizarre happens, these things just happen sometimes.

Not only is Romeo is a Dead Man the most delightfully Suda-flavored experience I’ve had in a long time, but it’s presented in its optimal form. No meddling from other companies or directors, no hardware limitations, just unfettered, bloody action and unrelenting, delightful weirdness. It’s consistently fun to play and fascinating to experience, from the sudden, wild shifts in tone, level, and story setpieces to the surprisingly tense boss fights and emotional monologues. No matter how dense it all gets, there’s always a method to the madness, a consistent, player-friendly path forward that ensures you can keep making progress at a steady clip, even when the game gets notably difficult. Any complaints I could make are nitpicks at best; if you also love Suda’s works, you owe it to yourself to play this one, and if you’ve never played any of his games before, this is an excellent one to start with.