• Price: $49.99 USD (digital & physical)
• Developers: Kogado Studio, Idea Factory
• Publisher: Aksys Games
• Release Date: August 20, 2026

A review code was kindly provided by Aksys Games on behalf of Kogado Studio and Idea Factory. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: rated T. Blood splatter animation + sound, descriptions of wounds + body horror, mass murder, mention of suicide + suicidal ideation, human trafficking, kidnapping + confinement, torture, mind break, unethical experiments, emetophobia triggers, obsessive behavior, disordered eating, cannibalism, non-consensual elements

L. Frank Baum may have intended The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) to be full of “wonderment and joy” without “heartaches and nightmares,” but considering that there’s dismemberment and slavery in the book version it wasn’t quite so joyful… 😅 The classic movie isn’t as extreme, although there is a Disney “sequel” of sorts in which Dorothy is institutionalized. 😬 Needless to say, the writers of otome OVER REQUIEMZ had a lot of material to inspire their even darker interpretation of the land of Oz.

OVER REQUIEMZ opens with Tokyo in a state of emergency; “gigantic tornadoes” have hit the city hard. (Apparently tornadoes do occur in Japan, although they’re much rarer than in the United States.) Our heroine Yuhiru gets caught in one of the tornadoes, and she’s transported through a mysterious rift to the Land of Oz.

On the plus side, she doesn’t kill anyone with her house upon her arrival. But she doesn’t get a fun little song and dance number, and she’s kind of…given the death penalty for accidentally trespassing in one of the country’s sacred sites. 😳 She also finds out that the people of Oz consider her to be a bad omen due to her black eyes and black hair, calling her “Bedeviled.” Yeah…Not off to a great start for poor Yuhiru!

There is a small glimmer of hope, though. Every once in a while monsters appear in ruins across the country, and no one wants to deal with them, so death row convicts are offered the opportunity to earn pardons if they manage to wipe out the monsters. Yuhiru does not know how to fight, but as the ruins may offer a clue as to how she can return home (and to avoid the death penalty) she agrees to join the expedition.

The party – our love interests – consists of an ostracized prince, an expelled researcher, an undertaker, a disgraced knight, and their supervisor. All of the other convicts have been accused of murders, so Yuhiru is a bit nervous about traveling with them at first.

Thankfully these men seem to be pretty reasonable, although Yuhiru trusts them way too quickly after a few nice interactions with them. The justice system in this version of Oz is clearly flawed, so it is possible that the situations surrounding their charges aren’t so black and white. Or perhaps their positions on death row are justified – you’ll find out as you play through each route. 😈

You get to choose which character route you want to experience at the end of a brief prologue. They chose to minimize the number of dialogue options that affect the direction the story takes, with only 2 points in each route that truly matter.

Apparently there are no affection points associated with any of the dialogue choices, and the majority of them are considered “Normal Choices” and don’t affect the story. Additionally, in each chapter there’s a “Reward Choice” where one of the three dialogue options unlocks a bonus voiced line in the extras section. (This also doesn’t affect the story.)

I think that some players may appreciate not having to constantly check a walkthrough due to the small number of decisions that matter for story purposes. It’s pretty obvious which choices are the important ones, and the story is split into Fact and Dark storylines for each love interest, with 2 Fact endings and 2 Dark endings each.

The game doesn’t have any routes that require you to play one of the others first to unlock them, so you don’t need to look up information for that purpose, either. But I do think that playing based on the order of the characters in the extras menu isn’t a bad way to play the game.

So I started with Kaize Ozma, whose last name is based on Princess Ozma, introduced in the second book (of fourteen – written by Baum, at least) in the series. I’m going to preface my thoughts on Kaize by saying that while I enjoyed the rest of the routes, I found Kaize’s route really boring for the most part.

Kaize is the second prince of Oz, but the problem is that like Yuhiru, he has black eyes and black hair; he’s been considered a plague on the kingdom by not only its people, but his own family as well. They blame him for pretty much everything that goes wrong.

So that’s terrible and I felt bad for him, but I found him kind of cringeworthy. Kaize switches between a pleasant demeanor and acting like a creepy jerk, and tries to excuse it by saying he’s just nervous. The way they wrote his character made him feel like a caricature to me at times.

Kaize is really not a bad guy and ultimately tries to take care of Yuhiru. He’s pretty, I liked his cape with a hood, and he’s a bookworm. But the main conflict in his route was so predictable that I was sitting there just waiting for the route to end. The Dark endings were anticlimactic and the expedition felt pointless. There was at least a really nice CG with the antagonist in the Fact branch, though.

And then we get to Claude, who’s based on the Scarecrow, and he’s a breath of fresh air for me after Kaize’s route. This is a pretty dark story for the most part, but I was laughing already in Claude’s first chapter. Something I found particularly humorous was his ignorance of his “pretty privilege” as they traveled.

I liked how Claude and Yuhiru kept teasing each other back and forth in his route. Yet he’s also considerate, and encourages Yuhiru on their journey to the ruins. It seemed like there was a better sense of camaraderie among the party members in Claude’s route than there was in Kaize’s storyline, too.

Claude’s Fact route was probably one of the more emotionally impactful ones in my book. I did think he had some predictable elements in his storyline as well, but I still found it interesting. I could at least see the subtle Oz inspiration for the way they dealt with the antagonist in Claude’s (Fact) route.

Next I played through Molly’s route; Molly Woodland is based off of the Tin (Wood)man. He is kind enough to Yuhiru across all the routes, but he does seem to have a slightly sadistic side even before we play through the Dark route.

And speaking of Dark routes, Molly’s reminded me of this one episode of Criminal Minds. His storyline – both before splitting into Fact or Dark routes and after – contained some of the more disturbing scenes in the game, and I found myself averting my eyes from certain parts of the screen in some scenes because I was grossed out.

Despite my squeamish nature, I did like Molly as a character more than I thought I would. I think I just wanted more closure on an important character in his past.

Despite recognizing that Noil was inspired by the Cowardly Lion, it took 3 routes for me to realize that his name backwards is “Lion.” 😭 😂 He starts off on the wrong foot with Yuhiru, as he’s pretty abrasive at first and even scares her. I (correctly) assumed that he’d be one of my favorites since I tend to like the love interests who are a bit rough around the edges yet have hearts of gold (wait, wrong Oz character 😂).

Noil is a big guy with a big heart, and he tries to take care of Yuhiru on their journey to the ruins because he knows she’s not used to traveling. Claude praises Yuhiru a decent amount, but I think that Noil outdoes him on that front because I remember him just heaping praise on Yuhiru. In Noil’s route she feels encouraged enough that she actually looks for more active ways to be of use to the group.

I was really pleased with the greater sense of camaraderie in Noil’s route, as I felt the other guys take more of a backseat in Kaize and Molly’s storylines. Poor Claude and Dorothy were like the team parents in this one, which I found entertaining.

The way they incorporated the Cowardly Lion traits into Noil’s personality was really creative. He had one of the worst antagonists to face, which probably contributed to the other guys participating in this fight to a greater extent than in other routes. The villain in his story really squicked me out, but I’m having a hard time deciding if it’s worse in Noil or Molly’s route.

His route may have some of the more unsettling content, but I just loved Noil’s happy face with his cute little fangs. He’s so affectionate and comes up with some of my favorite lines (“We’re better together than butter on toast”). Also, he cooks. Perfection. ✨

Like me, you may be confused as to why one of the love interests is named Dorothy instead of the main character. You may find that out. 👀 Similar to Molly, Dorothy “jokingly” says things that disturb Yuhiru – except he does it to the point that Yuhiru almost immediately thinks he’s kind of creepy.

Dorothy is super protective of Yuhiru in each route for some reason, but of course he ups the ante in his own storyline. He could be somewhat overprotective so he wasn’t my favorite love interest (Claude and Noil are just about tied for that spot), but Dorothy’s route had the big reveal(s) that blew my mind. That’s why his route is best saved for last.

The romance probably could have been stronger, but all in all I was pretty happy with this group of love interests. Yes, I found Kaize a little bland, but he’s not the worst love interest ever (I say staring at Yori from Illusion of Itehari).

Personally I’m not a huge fan of yandere characters, so I didn’t love that all the guys transformed into one for the Dark routes. If you really can’t deal with yandere shenanigans, it is possible to only experience the Fact routes (although you’ll miss out on some content).

I was torn on the Dark storylines because I must admit that they did a good job of writing an alternative way for the love interests’ traumas to manifest and make them activate “Yandere Mode.” However, the way they expressed their yandere impulses felt too similar across all of their Dark routes.

They definitely delivered on their promise of a darker version of Oz, though. OVER REQUIEMZ differs from other otome in that I would consider 3 out of the 4 endings (per character) bad ones. I assumed that both Fact endings would’ve been different degrees of happy endings, but they’re not. Only one Fact ending is a happy ending.

I did like that the endings were limited to 4 per character because I swear that so many otome I’ve played in recent years find it necessary to include like 3-5 bad endings per character, and many of them seem so abrupt and unnecessary. This has a reasonable amount of endings.

As far as Yuhiru is concerned, she kept saying she needed to go home, but for her it was really more of an obligation. To her Japan felt “stifling,” “boring,” and “routine,” with her life planned out for her. In an interesting contrast to the original (female) Dorothy, there are times when she wonders if she wants to return home.

And I was just sitting there like, Yuhiru sweetie they tried to execute you, people freak out based on your appearance all the time, the crime rate seems much worse than in Japan, and there are MONSTERS! Why would you want to stay there? (Also no technology! 😭)

My judgmental comments aside, I do think she’s a fairly complex heroine. She’s overly optimistic and naive at times, but then she’s also very brave and almost cunning in a way.

Yuhiru does have her breaking point like anyone else, but I could never stay strong the way she does in the many dangerous situations she finds herself in. Yuhiru notices when something doesn’t seem right, and she occasionally tricks people into giving her more information by pretending to know about the subject already. She has good instincts, and wants to feel useful to the group.

I liked Yuhiru and wanted her to have a happy ending with her love interests whether she managed to return home or not. The story is well written overall, but I did have a few complaints. One of my biggest issues was the way that characters almost constantly repeated a line that another character just said. (“It will give my life meaning.” ‘His life will have meaning…’). This happens in other games but it felt extreme here.

I was a little disappointed that none of the characters – including those granted the title of “Witch” such as Dorothy and Glinda – could use magic, and that Glinda didn’t have much screen time. Technically speaking, loading previous lines from the log took longer than it usually does in otome games.

Other than those issues I liked a lot about OVER REQUIEMZ. For one thing, there are a few silly and just plain absurd dialogue options that are fun to choose before rewinding to see what happens when you choose the more reasonable option that makes more sense. I did not expect that in a game with such dark themes, but I liked it.

One of the best parts of the game is the way they subtly gave the characters the traits of the characters they represented without hitting us in the face with it. They’re good non-literal interpretations of the characters from the original Oz.

This subtlety extended to the character designs. Okay, with Noil it’s slightly less subtle given the wild hair and fur, but there are small details like Dorothy’s braids (which you may barely notice) that reference the character they’re based on. I think Yuhiru’s outfit could’ve been cuter, but that at least uses the blue and white from the original Dorothy’s outfit.

I thought the guys’ outfits were the best. They did a great job with the graphics in this game in general. I wanted to see some group CGs with more than Yuhiru and the route’s love interest together, but I liked the ones they did have. They’re lovely! It was nice to see that all the guys had an equal amount of CGs, too.

With a well-written story loosely based on a popular series, well-designed graphics, and music that really suits the mood of each scene, OVER REQUIEMZ is an otome that does a lot right. While I’m usually not as into the darker stories with disturbing themes, I still enjoyed this, and would be interested in a fan disc. Even if you’re like me and prefer something that’s more sunshine and somewhere over the rainbows, if you think you can manage the content warnings it’s not one to miss.

8/10