Amicia de Rune is a popular action toy inspired by the character from the video game "A Plague Tale: Innocence." The toy is designed to resemble Amicia, the main protagonist of the game, and comes with a range of accessories and features that make it highly interactive and engaging for children and collectors alike. One of the standout features of the Amicia de Rune action toy is its attention to detail. The designers have gone to great lengths to accurately depict Amicia's appearance, from her facial features to her outfit and accessories. This level of detail not only makes the toy visually appealing but also adds to the overall sense of authenticity and realism. In addition to its accurate depiction of Amicia, the action toy also comes with several accessories that allow children to recreate exciting scenes from the game.
These new toys add renewed energy and a semblance of strategy to encounters, especially in areas where the game opens up and allows you to navigate past enemies in more ways than one. Aside from offering multiple paths through a section, these larger maps also encourage you to adopt a particular playstyle--which is further incentivized by Requiem's skill system. By opting for the pacifist route, for example, and sneaking past enemies without being spotted or killing anyone, you'll unlock skills geared toward improving your stealth abilities--such as increasing your speed when crouched and dampening the amount of noise you make when moving. If you're aggressive, on the other hand, you'll gain access to abilities including a push that lets you shove enemies into fire or rats, and another that speeds up the amount of time it takes to choke out foes with Amicia's sling. You can mix and match approaches to unlock skills in each category, so there's an element of freedom present in how you shape Amicia's repertoire. If you have your eye on a particular skill, though, it's easy to find yourself compelled to adopt a specific playstyle.
War and the rat-carrying plague are yet to puncture this region of France, so the game takes every opportunity to capture these quiet moments where you re surrounded by the vivacity of life and nature. And it combines with dramatic weather effects and enormous scenery and set-pieces - and an incredible array of atmospheric sound effects and music - to stunning effect.
In addition to its accurate depiction of Amicia, the action toy also comes with several accessories that allow children to recreate exciting scenes from the game. These accessories include a slingshot, a pouch for storing supplies, and a rat companion named Hugo. Each of these accessories adds a unique element to the play experience, allowing children to fully immerse themselves in the world of the game.
‘A Plague Tale: Requiem’ conjures hope amid the cruelty of a pandemic
It starts with a body. Amicia de Rune and her little brother, Hugo, have escaped the battlefields and pandemic spreading throughout their home in 14th-century France and fled to an area called Provence in search of a safer place to live. At first, it seems they’ve found it. Along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, Amicia and Hugo arrive at a city that seems as if it’s been spared the terrors of the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death. Then Amicia finds the first body, crumpled in shadow, face scarred and distorted by the plague’s telltale signs: dark, necrotized flesh and pus-filled bumps. The discovery of this body leads to another. And another. And another. Soon, Amicia is picking her way through piles of corpses kept hidden from the public in an old stone auditorium and its surrounding alleyways, the arrival of the disease concealed from those living nearby.
“A Plague Tale: Requiem” is the sequel to “A Plague Tale: Innocence,” which released in 2019, when fiction set during a medieval pandemic didn’t immediately conjure up all-too-familiar scenes of mass death and illness in the real world. Now, three years into our modern pandemic, the game’s depictions of disease — from the ubiquity of sick, dying and dead bodies to its story about characters struggling to find hope amid so much impersonal cruelty — feel queasily recognizable.
Fortunately, “Requiem” portrays the waking nightmares of life in its blood-soaked 14th-century setting with an over-the-top expressionist flair that keeps its terrors from too closely mirroring reality. It justifies staring into a reminder of what we’ve endured in the modern day with a message of hope that’s amplified by the outsize dread of its mountains of chittering plague rats and dead bodies.
AdvertisementPicking up immediately after “Innocence’s” conclusion, Amicia must again shepherd her younger brother through a France straining under the weight of war and plague — and persevere against a world determined to not only show her the full extent of human brutality, but also steal her brother, whose cursed blood holds mysterious powers.
Compared to the first game, “Requiem” leans much further into a tendency to inject its historical fiction with colorful fantasy regarding mystical bloodlines and supernatural explanations for the Black Death’s destruction. In the process, the game loses some of the ground-level horror from its back drop of the Hundred Years’ War, using its hillocks of corpses and labyrinths of writhing rats as broad stand-ins for violent death and inhumanity, rather than as expressions of specific historical nightmares.
Players spend the bulk of their time controlling a normal, fallible teenager, guiding her through encounter after encounter with groups of murderous but mundane enemies. The gantlet of stealth levels in which Amicia and her companions must outwit and outmaneuver the larger, organized forces of bandits and soldiers patrolling war-torn France have expanded beyond the simpler set of sequences featured in the original game. Gameplay still mostly consists of sneaking through thickets of tall grass, ducking behind walls and into the shadows of crumbling buildings to avoid open confrontation with enemies.
AdvertisementAs in “Innocence,” Amicia’s main weapon is a slingshot that doubles as both a puzzle-solving staple and deadly child’s toy, able to manipulate the environment (or end lives) by whipping hunks of rock or wads of flammable or rodent-attracting material at targets. But the layout of the battlefields has widened to allow for a greater variety of solutions and more player flexibility. The increased scale offers more opportunities to distract a wandering goon by tossing a ceramic pot and sliding underneath a table until it’s safe to slip past, or collecting materials to launch bait so the ever-present plague rats will emerge to swarm and devour an opponent. “Requiem” is designed to accommodate any of these kinds of approaches, always offering up enough ammunition to allow bloodthirsty players to crack the skulls of an entire regiment of knights while still providing the opportunity to quietly crouch past their field of view.
Though this variety makes “Requiem’s” action more enjoyable than the first game’s, these sequences can grow repetitive over the game’s roughly 24 hour length. This would be a bigger issue if these bits weren’t regularly broken up with alternating scenes of dialogue-heavy exploration. Luckily, “Requiem” never lingers too long on any one location or type of puzzle. And despite the game’s runtime stretching the appeal of its generally entertaining combat too thin, it justifies its length elsewhere with a propulsive plot and a beautifully rich aesthetic.
By shifting the setting from fall and winter in the former province of Guyenne to summer in the dustier, ochre-red valleys and palm-dotted Mediterranean coast of the Provence region, “Requiem” substitutes the damp and gloom of its predecessor for vibrant greenery, sunbaked stonework and seafront views. It’s a gorgeous game, framing the movements of Amicia, Hugo and their companions through each location with an eye for dramatic vistas of rushing mountain streams, towering mountaintops and sandy beaches. As before, its plague rats remain a grotesque highlight, emerging in great torrents of inky fur to mindlessly tear through stone walls, wooden roofs and screaming bystanders like horribly undulating and chittering black magma.
Amicia's family's background in herbalism also means she can make special kinds of ammunition, to ignite things or extinguish them or attract rats. Why would she want to do that? Because rats can work for you as much as they can against you. Light is the key: stay in a lit area, whether by sunlight or firelight, and the rats won't get to you. That means if you extinguish an enemy's torch, the rats will get to them.
The Amicia de Rune action toy's interactive features further enhance its playability. The toy is fully poseable, with articulate joints that allow for a wide range of movements and poses. This flexibility opens up a whole host of imaginative play opportunities, as children can recreate their favorite action sequences or invent their own adventures for Amicia. Furthermore, the action toy also includes sound effects and phrases from the game, adding another layer of immersion to the play experience. These features help to bring the character of Amicia to life, making the toy feel like a true representation of the video game character. In summary, the Amicia de Rune action toy is a highly detailed and interactive toy that allows children to bring the world of "A Plague Tale: Innocence" to life. With its accurate depiction of the main character, range of accessories, and interactive features, this toy offers a captivating and engaging play experience for fans of the game..
Reviews for "Enter the World of Amicia de Rune with This Action Figure"
- Name: Sarah
Rating: 2/5
Review: I was really disappointed with the Amicia de Rune action toy. The quality of the figure was subpar, with flimsy plastic and poorly painted details. The joints were also loose, making it difficult to pose the figure. Additionally, the accessories included were minimal and felt cheap. Overall, I expected better for the price and would not recommend this toy to other fans of the game.
- Name: Mark
Rating: 1/5
Review: I had high hopes for the Amicia de Rune action toy, but it turned out to be a complete letdown. The figure itself was poorly designed and felt fragile. One of the arms even broke off the first time I tried to pose it! The paint job was also sloppy, with noticeable smudges and inconsistencies. It's a shame because the character is so iconic, but this toy does not do it justice. Save your money and look for a better alternative.
- Name: Emily
Rating: 2/5
Review: I was really excited to add the Amicia de Rune action toy to my collection, but I was ultimately disappointed. The figure itself felt cheap and poorly made, with loose joints that made it difficult to keep standing. The accessories were also lacking, and I found them to be quite flimsy. The overall design of the toy was underwhelming, and I feel like it doesn't accurately represent the character from the game. I would not recommend this action toy to serious collectors.