Although Penumbra: Requiem is without the Survival aspects of Overture and Black Plague, its puzzles provide a challenge worth conquering as you unravel more about Philip and what goes on in his head. However, due to this, the game does tend to feel more like Portal without a Portal Gun than a game from the Penumbra series. While it not may live up to expectations brought to the table by Black Plague, it's a satisfying conclusion to a great trilogy.

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First of all, Penumbra: Requiem is a DLC to Black Plague, and I will review this as a DLC.

If you played Penumbra: Black Plague, you probably wondered what happened to poor unlucky Phillip. Well, you get an interesting answer in Requiem, which kind of poses more interesting questions than answers.

Requiem is all about the puzzles. There are 9 levels (puzzles) and as you solve each one, there are interesting books, artifacts, and audio recordings to discover that piece together the current reality you are experiencing. This game isn't scary like the first two in the series, but it does maintain that dark and foreboding atmosphere. Personally, I'm glad there were no monsters stalking me, since I died enough trying to solve the puzzles.

Now are the puzzles hard? Yes....and no.....sort of. The puzzles start off easy, then even though you know how to solve it, you have to execute it just right or start over. Thats where it got kind of annoying for me, since my timing can be less than great. I also like to overjump platforms a lot and jump to my death. So, if you have an excellent sense of timing and depth perception, you should have no problem.

Now there really isn't a story per se, since it just build off from the last two games. There are two endings plus an optional extra ending if you find each artifact hidden in each level. I was content to get the regular two endings and Youtube the special one, since I was in no mood to look for all the artifacts and solve the puzzles. This game gave me serious feelings of nausea since I had to repeatedly try to do puzzles correctly (jumping platforms, falling, moving puzzles).

I really enjoyed the dissent into madness and "meeting" the fellow insane people that have been dropped in the facility. The sound really keeps you on edge. The graphics would only let me play on the lowest settings, despite me trying to change the screen resolution repeatedly. If anyone ever finds a fix let me know. This was a minor annoyance to me, since graphics in a game like this is secondary criteria.

I feel a sense of accomplishment after playing this, and while it is not really a full "game" like the two previous Penumbra titles, it should be played to enrich the Penumbra experience. I am also looking forward to playing Penumbra: Necrologue!

If you just play Penumbra for the monsters Requiem is not for you. However, if you liked the story of Penumbra this is a great conclusion for the series.

Requiem takes a whole new approach to the Penumbra series: no monsters are encountered, so instead of being a horror game with puzzle elements this is now a puzzle game with horror elements. Keep in mind that Requiem is about 4 hours long (Black Plague is about 8 and Overture is about 12) and is not "Penumbra 3" but instead an expansion pack for Black Plague. Don't expect a full length story like the first two games, but that being said the story in Requiem is great for an expansion pack. It's actually quite scary at times, and it takes true horror craftmanship to scare the player while there is no physical threat to their character.

The puzzles are by far the best of the Penumbra series. They blow the Overture/Black Plague puzzles out of the water and are a lot of fun. They're not too hard and not too easy, which makes for a nice difficulty. Requiem is the only game in the Penumbra series where I felt the pacing was uninterrupted; don't get me wrong, Overture and Black Plague are great games but were often *plagued* by clunky action mechanics (Overture only) and occasionally bad puzzles.

A fitting conclusion to the Penumbra franchise, or is it? I remember the introduction to the series with Overture. It was interesting and while some of the fighting sequences left much to be desired back than (roughly 10 years ago) it was all refreshing with its physics-based gameplay. Then came Black Plague which was considerably longer and had several scary moments; this was brought to fruition with Amnesia The Dark Descent. Plus, Black Plague also put a lot more emphasis on storytelling.

So, parallel to working on Amnesia work also began on the 3rd episode which was - in my opinion - completely unnecessary. It is still about Philip who finds himself in a room then has to proceed from one chamber to the other until the conclusion is reached after a couple of hours of playtime. The task is usually to move objects, pull levers, pile up boxes, do some platforming etc. all to be able to pick up 2 artifacts that open the portal at the end of each stage.

The scary aspect is completely missing and while the puzzles seem interesting enough all the audio and text were just thrown into this mess to tie up the loose ends. The first iteration of the HPL Engine seems already way too old but back then with Requiem the creators could showcase its capabilities. There's nothing wrong with this, it's just an episode that doesn't really fit the franchise which already has a sequel in the form of a community-made mod titled Necrologue.

If you loved the franchise but forgot to play Requiem (as you thought Black Plague finished Philip's journey) like myself then you might find the 3rd expansion exciting enough but don't expect a coherent narrative and scary moments - it's just puzzles all over and 2 endings that you'll either love or hate.

Overture and Black Plague albeit their age and other oddities are good games with a good story and definitely worth playing. Requiem is a dlc to Black Plague so one would naturally believe Requiem would be a continuation or at the very least an extension of the previous two. It's not.

Others who have traversed this series before me have indeed found out long ago what Requiem is. A crummy disjointed puzzle laden deviation and not in any way consistent with the two previous endeavors. Others have reviews which go into more detail and those reviews are more entertaining than Requiem.

Next stop: Penumbra Necrologue.

Disapointment. Thats all I got after finishing the 3rd and final chapter in this series. What started off solid in Overture and continued with a bang in Black Plauge just fizzled out here. The spooky atmosphere is really the only thing this has in common with the first two games. No real threat felt. Just puzzle after puzzle after puzzle with nothing. It offered no resolution to what the first two games. Hell looking back I would say Black Plague was a better ending. This was just Portal without the portal gun. Play if you love puzzles but if you want the horror these games offered in the first two titles than you'll be disapointed like I was.

Seems like Penumbra creators decided to mix unused assets from the game and put them together. The result is a collection of very little maps with some puzzles to solve on each. You travel to one map to another using a ¿magic portal? fueled by ¿magical eggs? you have to pick up. They are way too different from each other: tomb, facility, sewers... some of them don't make any sense at all (marble slide, super mario platforms).

They reused some rooms from the first game, too.

This maps were bundled together with some voice acting you get on picking up books or solving puzzles, but no real progress from the original story is made. You simply are ¿mad? and ¿join the mad?

There are no enemies, danger is scarce. Your worst enemy is falling down and boredom.

An excuse to sell unused maps and ideas from previous games. Not worth your time.

I am a huge fan of Penumbra, but this is different. Please note that this is a puzzle expansion pack. It is a game filled with puzzles, ubt it does not have the same story nd creepiness that the first game does. I wish there was more to it, and it strayed toofar from its original title, but can still be fun. 7/10

Penumbra: Requiem

Well well well..... what can i say about this 3rd installment of Penumbra... First of all it isn't a Horror Game, it is an escape room game. Secondly it got lots of bugs, mainly with the boxes in the sewer area. At some point the box you are carrying thinks it is a railgun projectile and acts like one.....no comment. Thirdly at some levels, even if you are a proficient gamer, you will probably need a guide or a walkthrough to solve the puzzles.... Last but not least, near the end of the game you gotta carry around a barrel of nitroglycerin (TNG), apart from the fact that this amount of that substance wouldn’t just move a few boulders away from the tunnel, but rather blow the whole place into pieces, i expect the damn thing to explode when i drop its barrel down from the stairway.....

I could only recommend this game to players that like hardcore puzzles, wasting lots of time dealing with the weird bugs and trying to find a way out of the area.... I expected a lot more from an expansion of Penumbra and that was a great letdown.