Demon Gaze Review

First off, calm the fuck down you guys. I haven’t had non-phone internet access since Friday, so I only played this shitty fucking game (and wrote this review) because I had nothing better to do. Secondly, this is a terrible game.

//Intro\\

Demon Gaze is a really bad Etrian Odyssey rip-off. And I say this with confidence, having only played 10 minutes of EO1 before dropping it like I drop reviews.

Essentially, you roll through dungeons one square at a time, fighting monsters you can’t see until you come across a boss, and then you go to the next dungeon after killing that boss.

There is no progression; the enemies only seem to take longer and longer to kill as you’re death marched through the insipid story. And the gameplay won’t save you, because the battles are luck-based boredom fests.

What finally gave me an excuse to drop this game was being told to go to a place called the “clock tower” after beating a boss on, what I presume is, a level of the final dungeon. After checking the dungeon’s map and finding no new places to go, I spent about 30 minutes of aimless wandering around the shitty dungeon, hoping to come across an event, fighting mobs that offered very little EXP gain, yet had the potential to kill me if I so much as glanced away from the screen.

Faced with the option of walking through the entirety of the dungeon all over again, during which I might actually gain a level for one of my characters (lucky me~), or quitting and saving my body from having to force a shutdown to save itself, I chose the least bad option.

I pray that with this review you’ll make the right choice from the get-go.

 

 

//Art\\

As long as you have real life nerd friends, there’s no reason to play one of Japan’s shitty DnD rip-offs unless there’s a kawaii pay-off.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing in this game.

Some models look -okay-, but the vast majority look like they were scraped from a middle-schooler-who-just-discovered-Inu-yasha’s notebook. (Go ahead and pretend you never tried to draw anime characters; I know your secret.)

Here are all the art options available for the creatable characters for your party:

I’d list their race and class, since they were obviously designed around those concepts, but I’d just be making a relatively informed guess hypothesizing, since the game doesn’t have the courtesy to say. These are all just aesthetic choices, since you choose race and class later.

Males:

Females:

 

 

//Builds\\

One of the main problems with dungeon RPGs is the notion of “builds” — specific set-ups that are pretty much the only way to progress through the game in a manner more efficient than trying to cut your way through cement with a plastic fork.

And because builds aren’t listed in-game, you’re forced to either come up with the greatest party set-up in the game on your own, or have the internet tell you how to play.

Because of this, the very basis of this game is antithetical to the freedom the genre purports to offer.

Every party MUST have a Healer. Every party MUST have a Wizard. Every party MUST have a Gazer. Every party MUST have a Paladin.

Oh, but the fifth choice is up to you! Just so long as it’s a Samurai or an Assassin.

There aren’t any re-spec potions, so the only experimentation allowed is to delete your characters and create new ones. And with how long it takes to level up (after 19 hours of playtime, my main character finally reached level 19), you’d be stupid to waste any time on building up a new character if you “chose wrong”.

Though in general, you’d be stupid to waste any amount of time on this game.

 

 

//Spelling & Grammar\\

It’s a NISA game.

So 1/10.

 

 

//Story\\

I found myself dreading the completion of each level, as it meant I would be faced with more story sequences, involving hideous characters whose personalities were dredged from the bucket of bad ideas.

The only thing that kept me going was that the concept of spending any more time with the gameplay was an even more frightening thought. And like I said before, I didn’t have any actual internet access this weekend, so my choices were limited.

Not to spoil anything about the plot, but you’re a demon tamer who goes around to dungeons, capturing demons and paying rent to an innlady. But you’re also a demon yourself and you go out of control like 6 hours into the story, killing innlady’s girlfriend. And also innlady is a dragon or whatever.

I don’t much have a problem with generic stories, considering how much stupid fucking anime I watch, but the pacing, presentation, and characters all made me want to punish myself by going to Qdoba for lunch instead of Chipotle.

 

Overall score: 2/10.