Review - Demon Gaze II

Joshua Carpenter

Demon Gaze has made the jump to console for its second entry. While the platform options may have expanded, the Vita roots are still fully evident in this dungeon crawler.

[Review]

Budai

That’s a shame. Art is most important to me in a game. It’s not graphics on a technical level, it’s how the game presents the art. Story doesn’t matter because I’m an avid reader and games don’t meet the story of even the worst novels. Some games but it is very few.

Joshua Carpenter

Budai wrote: »

That’s a shame. Art is most important to me in a game. It’s not graphics on a technical level, it’s how the game presents the art. Story doesn’t matter because I’m an avid reader and games don’t meet the story of even the worst novels. Some games but it is very few.

If it helps any, the character art wasn't bad, but in the dungeons the lack of budget was more evident. It ultimately didn't impede my enjoyment of the combat and story, but I don't think the dungeons compare well to something like Etrian.

blurpo

I played this game recently. I want to clarify, grinding is NOT needed to win the game. I hate grinding with a passion so I never mindlessly grind and don't play games where grinding is required to finish. Boss battles can be hard but that's where you use strategy and proper use of the demonization process.

Now the game has a post-game content (think it's part of an expansion but not sure as I got both), grinding is indeed needed for that and I stopped playing it soon after I finished the game.

Joshua Carpenter

blurpo wrote: »

I played this game recently. I want to clarify, grinding is NOT needed to win the game. I hate grinding with a passion so I never mindlessly grind and don't play games where grinding is required to finish. Boss battles can be hard but that's where you use strategy and proper use of the demonization process.

Depending on the difficulty, grinding isn't necessary. However, there are HUGE stat differences between levels. The first time I died on a boss I was level 10; I did a bit of grinding, came back at level 12 and was able to manage the battle. I agree that the boss battles maximizing the party's abilities is essential and my only other gripe is that sometimes the regular enemies aren't difficult enough to force the use of abilities and I was figuring that stuff out in the boss battles. I mean, that's at least partially on me, but I appreciate when games get progression just right.

I'd finish by saying that you can totally get through the game w/o grinding with careful use of abilities. However, grinding is pretty painless, so that's a viable route as well.

Slayer

Thank you for your detailed review.

Phillip Willis

That's for the review. I enjoyed DG1 well enough, but I agree that it's not quite as good as EO or a few other DRPGs I have played in the past. Still, it does scratch an itch when I want something that is easy to jump in and out of. So, I was a bit on the fence about this, but the review convinced me to just take the plunge. And, I'm also thinking...how many more boxed Vita games are we really going to get? I better snatch them up! It's only $32 at Best Buy with the Gamer's membership dookickey.

UltraKev9

How does this hold up to DG1? That didn't have exemplary graphics but it was on Vita so the screen was small anyway. I played 100% of this game, including post-game content while at work and thought the music was some of the best I'd heard in a long time. The Forest piece and the Castle about midgame were incredible tunes. I plugged my Vita in to my work vehicle's sound system and was completely surrounded by the music.

As far as "ugliness" of the dungeons I don't think we really play these for good looking dungeon graphics, it's really more of an explorer's itch we're all scratching. I personally think the dungeon and sprite graphics of Etrian Odyssey weren't all that fantastic either, certainly on par with Demon Gaze 1. The music of EO1-3 that I've played to completion was good but not at the level of DG.

I wish more companies would do home console versions of games like this. I really can't seem to get enough of Wizardry/Might and Magic style dungeon tiled dungeon crawler games. I can't seem to get in to the Persona games and M&M started to lose me a little at game 7 and really lost me about game 8 or 9 because they deviated from the original stories and lore.

I really liked Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land and Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. We need more like this. Let's get away from crazy ways of reinventing the wheel and get back to the basics.

I'm currently playing Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary again and have DG2 on my PS4 when I get around to it but I need that old school, stripped down, raw console-ish RPG without a boatload of extra functions. Final Fantasy in recent years has gone off the rails. Phantasy Star is always lurking but rarely shows its face anymore. Dragon Quest series is much closer but other than story very little changes from one to ten. You can spend 50 hours playing the game and 50 more hours grinding abilities. Not really sure who thinks that's a marvelous idea but the older we get the less time we have to sit and grind stuff.

Joshua Carpenter

UltraKev9 wrote: »

How does this hold up to DG1? That didn't have exemplary graphics but it was on Vita so the screen was small anyway. I played 100% of this game, including post-game content while at work and thought the music was some of the best I'd heard in a long time. The Forest piece and the Castle about midgame were incredible tunes. I plugged my Vita in to my work vehicle's sound system and was completely surrounded by the music.

As far as "ugliness" of the dungeons I don't think we really play these for good looking dungeon graphics, it's really more of an explorer's itch we're all scratching. I personally think the dungeon and sprite graphics of Etrian Odyssey weren't all that fantastic either, certainly on par with Demon Gaze 1. The music of EO1-3 that I've played to completion was good but not at the level of DG.

I own DG1, but never got around to playing it so I can't give you a direct comparison. Everything I have heard makes DG2 seem like it's very similar, but slightly better and friendlier.

As to the graphics, I think this being on console made it harder to ignore the shortcuts it takes. A lot of things just stick out on the big screen: the arrows instead of staircases, skull and crossbones instead of enemies, and often there isn't background art to give the dungeons a sense of place unlike an EO where everything would have a forest motif and tie in together. Ultimately, the graphics didn't really hurt the score, it was just a shame that those nice little touches were missing.

Music... it isn't so much that I didn't like it, but that it didn't hold up for 60 hours. You know, everyone will have different tastes on that. I'm sure if you liked DG1, you'll be higher than I was on that for DG2.

Phillip Willis

UltraKev9 wrote: »

I really liked Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land and Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. We need more like this. Let's get away from crazy ways of reinventing the wheel and get back to the basics.

I'm currently playing Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary again and have DG2 on my PS4 when I get around to it but I need that old school, stripped down, raw console-ish RPG without a boatload of extra functions. Final Fantasy in recent years has gone off the rails. Phantasy Star is always lurking but rarely shows its face anymore. Dragon Quest series is much closer but other than story very little changes from one to ten. You can spend 50 hours playing the game and 50 more hours grinding abilities. Not really sure who thinks that's a marvelous idea but the older we get the less time we have to sit and grind stuff.

Do you listen to RPGBacktrack? I think you and I would get along :) Along those lines, have you played Wizardry 8? I've sung its praises numerous times on the show. Love that one so much. Do you have a DS/3DS? Tried the Etrian Odyssey games? If so, what are your thoughts?

Pimpalicious

Normally I prefer to grab games on PS4 but I think I'll stick to Vita with this one. I surprisingly liked the first Demon Gaze more than I expected so plan to get this one but have been in no hurry because of all the other games that came out last year.

UltraKev9

Do you listen to RPGBacktrack? I think you and I would get along :) Along those lines, have you played Wizardry 8? I've sung its praises numerous times on the show. Love that one so much. Do you have a DS/3DS? Tried the Etrian Odyssey games? If so, what are your thoughts?

Maybe I'll give one of the RPGamer podcasts a listen. I can probably find time to listen while at work.

Honestly, for me, Wizardry 8 was a tough game. I ended up cheating severely due to time constraints and it still took me 40-50 hours to get all the way through. I used some save file downloads to try starting with other factions but ultimately they didn't really change the game too much. My biggest gripe was not being able to move more than four feet without another twenty hour conflict. It caused the game to be far longer than it needed to be. With console commands I pared it down considerably but it still took a very long time. Other than that I really loved the Wizardry world brought to full 3D life.

I've played Etrian Odyssey 1 and 2 to completion and have been on the post game strata six of the third game but I'm trying to find time to finish. Unfortunately it's been some time since I played and now I've fallen out of practice and that will be part of the problem. I picked it up about two months ago for about a half hour and realized I'd forgotten a lot of my typical strategies. The DS is a system I'm a little reluctant to play at home since I have dozens of home console games to go through but work is letting up a little so maybe I'll find time to finish EO3 in the near-ish future.