Lost in a Darker Oz: A Review of OVER REQUIEMZ
I finished OVER REQUIEMZ two nights ago and still can’t quite shake it. The game released on the Nintendo Switch on August 20, 2026, and I’ve been circling back to certain scenes in my head ever since. It’s the kind of otome that doesn’t just ask you to fall in love with a cast of troubled men. It asks you to sit with them in the dark and decide what kind of person you’re willing to become alongside them.
For anyone who somehow missed the hype, this is Kogado Studio and Otomate’s dark reimagining of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, localized and published in the West by Aksys Games. You play as Yuhiru, an ordinary high school girl who gets caught in a tornado in Tokyo and wakes up in the kingdom of Oz. The place is ruled by a king and four witches. Yellow brick roads wind past overgrown ruins that look suspiciously like modern Japanese buildings. Because Yuhiru has black hair and black eyes—rare and feared in this world as marks of the “Bedeviled”—she’s sentenced to death on the spot. Her only chance at a pardon is to join a group of four death-row convicts and their secretive supervisor on a dangerous expedition into monster-infested ruins. Survive, clear the ruins, and maybe, just maybe, find a way home.
That setup alone already feels different from most isekai otome. There’s no convenient power fantasy waiting for her. No sudden magic system that makes her special. Just a scared teenage girl thrown in with actual murderers and told to stay useful or die.
The five romanceable characters are all tied, in one way or another, to Oz lore, though the game never leans too hard on the original book. Kaize Ozma is the second prince, cold-eyed and quiet, accused of killing his own father the king. Claude Grain is a soft-spoken researcher obsessed with the ruins, carrying the weight of having slaughtered his entire hometown. Molly Woodland is the smiling undertaker who never seems rattled by corpses and has a talent for locks and ropes. Noil Bestia is the wild, problem-child knight accused of massacring his own squad. And Dorothy—yes, that Dorothy—is the supervisor watching over the condemned, a witch who’s lazy, polite to a fault, and somehow the most unsettling of the lot. Voice acting is uniformly excellent. Youhei Azakami, Makoto Furukawa, Kaito Ishikawa, Ryota Suzuki, and Shun Horie all deliver performances that elevate even the quieter moments. When the stories turn raw, those voices crack and break in ways that stick with you.
What sets OVER REQUIEMZ apart from a lot of other otome is how it handles choice. There’s no affection meter. No little heart icons telling you which answer the boys want to hear. Most of the dialogue options simply let you decide how Yuhiru reacts—sarcastic, gentle, blunt, scared, stubborn. The men don’t reward or punish you for it. They just respond like people. It makes the whole experience feel more like roleplaying than the usual “pick the correct line to raise the meter” dance. Only a handful of choices actually branch the story in major ways, and the game usually flags them clearly so you can save beforehand. Those big decisions determine whether you head down a Fact route or a Dark route for each character.
The Fact routes are the more redemptive paths. You dig into the truth behind each man’s crime, help him face what he’s done or what’s been done to him, and work toward something that resembles hope or healing. The Dark routes… don’t. Those paths lean into obsession, possessiveness, and the kind of love that twists until it becomes dangerous. Some of them get genuinely heavy—abuse, violence, yandere territory, moral collapse. The game doesn’t flinch. If you’re the type who prefers pure fluff and guaranteed happy endings, this is not the title for you. If you’ve ever wanted an otome that lets the romance get messy and sometimes ugly, you’ll feel seen.
I went through all five characters, Fact and Dark. Roughly forty to fifty hours total if you’re thorough. The routes are self-contained enough that you can play them in any order after the short common prologue, which is a relief. No locking. No “you must finish X before unlocking Y.” The flowchart is clean and makes jumping around easy. Still, I’d recommend saving Dorothy’s route for last. It carries a lot of the larger world lore and hits differently once you’ve seen the others. Claude’s story felt the most immediately romantic to me. Molly’s Dark path is the one that left me staring at the ceiling for a while after the credits. Noil’s is energetic and chaotic in a way that sometimes works and sometimes feels a little thinner than the rest. Kaize grows on you slowly, the quiet ones usually do. And Dorothy… Dorothy is complicated in the best and worst ways.
Yuhiru herself is one of the stronger heroines I’ve played in recent years. She starts out overwhelmed and a little passive, which makes sense given the situation. Over time she hardens, not into some invincible badass, but into someone who can still choose kindness or cruelty depending on the path. She argues. She freezes. She digs in her heels. She relies on the others when she has to and stands up for them when it counts. The writing never turns her into a pure vessel for player wish-fulfillment, and that grounding helps the darker moments land harder.
Visually the game is strong. Character sprites are expressive, the CGs are often gorgeous (especially the more intimate or high-emotion ones), and the backgrounds sell the strange mix of fairy-tale Oz and decaying modern ruins. My main complaint is that secondary characters sometimes lack portraits, and a few important flashbacks play out on plain screens instead of illustrated ones. It doesn’t ruin anything, but you notice it. The UI is clean and fits the tone. Localization by Aksys is excellent—natural dialogue, solid emotional beats, almost no awkward phrasing. The soundtrack does a lot of heavy lifting too. The opening theme, “Muted Expectations” by Hisano, sets the mood perfectly, and several of the route-specific tracks stuck with me after I put the Switch down.
Sound design is mostly effective, though a few of the more visceral effects during violent scenes can be a bit much. You know the ones. The wet, ugly sounds that make you wince. They’re intentional, but I still found myself turning the volume down once or twice.
The biggest strength of OVER REQUIEMZ is how well it understands that love and darkness can sit in the same room. The Fact routes give you the classic otome satisfaction of helping someone heal and choosing a future together. The Dark routes ask what happens when love becomes the thing that destroys both of you, and whether you’d still reach for it. Some players will hate the latter. Others will replay them more than once. Both reactions are valid. The game doesn’t pretend the Dark endings are secretly good for anyone involved. It just lets them exist.
Pacing is generally solid, though a couple of the mid-route stretches drag slightly before the big decisions hit. Because the stories stay focused on the chosen love interest and Yuhiru, the world of Oz itself can feel a little thin at times. You get enough to understand the politics and the fear of the Bedeviled, but the game isn’t interested in building a massive lore bible. It’s more interested in the people in front of you. That focus works for the most part.
I kept thinking about the title while I played. Requiem. A mass for the dead. OVER REQUIEMZ feels like a series of funerals for the versions of these characters that might have existed in a kinder world, and for the versions of yourself you leave behind when you choose one path over another. It’s melodramatic, sure. Otome often is. But it earns a surprising amount of that drama through careful character work and a willingness to sit in discomfort.
Is it perfect? No. Some choices in the early common sections feel low-stakes compared to the later branches. A few CGs I wanted simply aren’t there. One or two routes peak earlier than others. And if you’re looking for light, fluffy romance with zero moral gray, this will frustrate you. The content warnings are real—violence, blood, sexual themes, trauma, toxic relationships. Go in with your eyes open.
But when it works, it works hard. The voice acting alone is worth the price of admission. The freedom to actually roleplay Yuhiru instead of chasing meters is refreshing. And the dual-route structure gives the game a depth that a lot of safer otome never reach. I’ve already started a second playthrough of my favorite pair of routes just to hear certain lines again.
OVER REQUIEMZ isn’t the kind of game that leaves you with a warm, uncomplicated afterglow. It leaves you a little hollowed out and oddly grateful for it. In a year that already has no shortage of visual novels, this one stands out by refusing to look away from the darker corners of its own premise. If you’ve ever wanted an Oz story where the yellow brick road is cracked and stained and the people walking it might not make it home clean, this is the one.
I don’t know if I’ll ever fully shake the feeling of those Dark endings. Part of me doesn’t want to. That’s probably the highest compliment I can give it.
