[h1]Great Concept, Awkward Execution[/h1]
A game is typically comprised of four key elements: [b]Visuals, Audio, Gameplay, and Story.[/b] I intend to walk you through each of these elements to address the giant demonic mammoth in the room.
[h3]A Visual Mess-terpiece[/h3]
[b]Let me be clear,[/b] there are certainly praiseworthy elements to this game's visuals. The overworld map is serviceable and makes noteworthy areas relatively easy to spot; if you think an iron mine would be at the base of a mountain, that is certainly where you will find it. The areas within the game are all visually easy to navigate and, while perhaps a bit cookie-cutter, serve excellently as a medium by which the story can unfold. The UI, special effects, and menu elements are pretty clear, and important information is easy to find and digest. [b]That is where the visual praise stops.[/b] We now get into a crucial part of the monster-taming genre: [b]Character Design[/b]. Whether it is the demons themselves or the human characters, cohesion issues and AI influence are abundantly apparent in the worst way. You have battle-hardened leaders with eyes like an anime schoolgirl, character portraits that have massive inconsistency in how much of the character is shown, and some demons that look like they should be in entirely different games. The shiny system is well-implemented, and the color variants are easy to find and often reskin the demon to add variety, but it doesn't help the cohesion much. Look at something with high visual coherence in the genre like SMT or DQM, and just how short of the mark this game falls is readily apparent. Character portraits also often don't quite mesh with their sprite representations. While nothing makes this game a visual slog to get through, it may best be described as "uninspired."
[b]4/10[/b] Below industry standard.
[h3]ServiceableSounds.exe[/h3]
This is another mixed bag, and one that is not full of goodies and treats. The general soundscape is fine; the music works well in every area I explored and, while not memorable, was also not bad. [b]The voice "acting" slew my soul.[/b] Who in their right mind decided that AI beep-boop slop garbage, text-to-speech, wannabe Speak & Spell trash was acceptable? If this was some revolutionary new RPG with dynamically generated dialogue, I could forgive it, but this ain't that, chief. The audio ranges from nearly forgivable to "take a hammer to my headphones" level and serves only to cheapen the experience. If you want to take anything seriously, disable the VA—but be warned, this game thinks it is a visual novel half the time, so be ready to read lots of dialogue.
[b]4/10[/b] What were you thinking? Disable VA and it is better.
[h3]Yup, that's gameplay alright[/h3]
Gameplay is a difficult category for me on this one. The game makes smart decisions, such as breaking up the flow with the occasional (simple) puzzle and a singular minigame. It serves to nicely complement a derivative but fun combat system. Demons have unique weaknesses and resistances, and balancing the two makes finding the right team composition matter. You aren't going to faceroll the keyboard and win despite how pathetically easy most boss fights are. Over-leveling will help, and bosses are not damage sponges, so nothing will lock you out of progress (except the bonus boss fights, which are genuinely harder than the main story). If you have a one-note strategy, there is probably something in the game that can punish it; missing attacks or hitting a resistance will end your turn early, and the same is true of the opponent, which lends itself to thought-provoking strategic decisions. With a bit more difficulty, I can see this really working. Your demons each get four skills (both active and passive count toward this total), and you can use them to cover weaknesses, buff, heal, or provide attack options. You can also have demons absorb the skills of their equipment by using a slot in the skill menu, which I [b]REALLY[/b] like. This means that you can train with an axe to allow basic attacks to hit every enemy, imprint the skill, then switch to a mace that can put an enemy to sleep, effectively giving you automatic crowd control with a little luck. If you think certain skills should mesh together in a certain way, they most likely do work that way. The demons themselves are underwhelming, though; stronger demons have access to better spells, but equipment teaches them too. Most demons have comparable stats, which means that while you can bring your first demon unchanged to the final boss, you don't have much incentive to add new demons to the roster, which brings me to storage. You can only bring 4 demons in the active party and a handful in storage to swap at will; you will have to register demons at a summoning table to store them long-term. This is great in that the registered demon retains its exact stats and skills minus equipment and can be resummoned later, but it also means that in order to catch new ones, you'll have to use old ones as fusion material. Essentially, it is the box mechanic from Pokémon with extra steps, and it is overall neither amazing nor terrible.
[b]5/10[/b] Great concepts, but it has been done before.
[h3]Once upon an exposition dump[/h3]
Aside from the audio, the story is the only other [b]Genuinely Painful[/b] part of the experience. I'll try not to spoil things, but the twists and turns are readily visible from miles away. There are genuinely interesting choices, like a mysterious UFO you'll see early but not know the significance of until nearly the end, or the revelation of the true nature of the afterlife. For every great choice, though, there are a number of poor ones. Everyone and their mother here loves to dump loads of pseudo-profound gab on you at every available moment. What might be interesting dialogue and genuine reflection on existence if it were written better instead becomes a lecture that will have you setting a snooze alarm. The game also heavily endorses a "tell, don't show" philosophy, having characters talk about events that would have been far more interesting to see, or even reiterating what you just played through minutes before. I don't need dozens of "on the last episode of Dragon Ball Z" moments when [b]we are still on that episode.[/b] Maybe if the vocal performances weren't given by a depressed Windows XP digital assistant, then some of the lines would hit harder, but as it stands, it actively sucks the emotion out of the game and leaves it a husk. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps the following is small, but I'm petty, so I'll share a personal gripe: after the final boss fight, you'll get a big-picture kind of conversation to cap off the experience. During that, a character who literally days ago (in lore time; in gameplay time it was an hour or so) committed a horrid betrayal has the nerve to contribute like he is a moral authority rather than a utilitarian psychopath. I wanted to strangle his pixels. So, basically, what I'm saying is this is a fitting ending for this game.
[b]2/10[/b] You will believe a man can fly (off the side of a building if pushed really hard, preferably).
[h1]Overall Thoughts[/h1]
[h3]TLDR[/h3]
This is well below what I expect from the industry standard. While the gameplay has high points, it is derivative of better games (even free fan games) in the genre and thus struggles to make good use of the player's time. The music is fine, but the dialogue paired with the best voice acting that text-to-speech from the '90s can provide which makes it genuinely unpleasant to play at times. They tried to bulk things out with a multiple-language learning function, but it is just slight bedding over a bed of thorns and used needles. The visuals are okay but lack consistency and reek of AI influence.
[b]3/10[/b] I fear no man, but that... thing... it scares me.
