[Mini Review] Demon School (Demo)
Demon School was one of the game demos featured on Summer 2024's Steam Next Fest. It's a Role-Playing game focusing on challenging battles, mystery solving, and school-life relationship-building. Demon School shows a lot of inspiration from Persona by ATLUS.
The game is set in 1999 and follows Faye, a teenage demon hunter who attends her new school to hunt the demons that are there. She managed to rope her three new friends into joining the newly-founded Black Magic club.
The Demo drops us in the middle of the game's second week to let us experience a normal week in the game's story. It starts with the teacher giving them their second bizarre assignment: "Find a paintbrush that's believed to be from the demon world." Thus the main quest of the demo begins!
The main gameplay loop of Demon School is going from one place to another and talking with people to solve mysteries while occasionally getting into battles against demons.
The battles of Demon School took me a bit to get used to. It's a turn-based battle system in which your character's position on the grid matters. Each character comes with multiple actions. When it's your turn, you can move your party members in any order that you like, and then the opponent "demons" will do the same.
Characters die very easily. I lost more battles than I'd like to admit, and it feels like the battles were too hard, or I didn't understand the game mechanics enough.
At one point, I realized that you don't have to defeat all the enemies to win. As long as you're able to "seal" the enemy's side of the screen you'll be able to win. On the other hand, if the demons managed to "break" your side of the screen, you automatically lose. The battle system of Demon School is very unique in that regard.
The visual style of Demon School is quite distinct. I like the art style for the characters' facial expressions and their mannerisms. They remind me of DanganRonpa games for some reason.
Sometimes I felt like the sprites were too small, and it'd be harder to "read" what happens on smaller screens. Still, I think the visual direction of the game deserves praise!
Faye and her friends have vibrant, distinct personalities. Faye reminds me of a 'shonen' anime protagonist like Luffy and Naruto. Despite being a girl, she's the most eager for a fight in the whole cast, rather to a reckless degree.
As for the other characters. Destin is the other fighter of the group. He doesn't do anything important as far as I remember... Namako is a typical shy girl who enjoys her hobbies. She's also one of the more attentive characters of the cast.
Knute is a dark-skinned healer, and for some reason, I find that description refreshing. I thought he was the best character to use in the battles because of how easily you can die in this game.
I enjoyed the friendship of the main characters of this game, and while the vibe of the game is closer to games like Persona 1 and 2, the relationship between party members felt closer to Persona 4, and I like that!
The demo didn't overstay its welcome, it wasn't long nor was it short, (it took me 2 hours to complete but I lost many times.) My final verdict for what I played so far is that I'll be putting Demon School somewhere near the top of my wishlist and will keep it in mind when it releases and/or goes on sale!
Thanks for Reading!
- All images are screenshots/gifs of the game taken by me.
- People who supported me on HIVE, @master-lamps, @eturnerx and @magnacarta share 5% of this post's rewards.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha