Demon Gaze (Vita) Review

Demon Gaze is dungeon-diving first person RPG where players must defeat several powerful demons and seal them away in keys.  The game is very old school, and is a lot like Wizardry, Etrian Odyssey or Class of Heroes.  Admittedly, I don't really like those game, even if my wife absolutely loves them.  However, a strange thing happened when I spent time playing the game...I actually started liking it.

The game starts out by picking a character graphic, voice and name for the main character, then you are thrust into the story.  Compared to other similar types of RPGs, this one has a lot more focus on story.  While the main character (the Gazer) and his or her party aren't very outspoken, they added a bunch of other characters to move the story along and provide all the dialogue.  I also appreciate that there are lines that mention your other party members, making them feel like part of the story.  Considering the other similar games that I have some very limited experience with are very light on story, it's refreshing to see it included in Demon Gaze.

Dungeons are basically laid out on a grid, although the environments don't look like it.  Each dungeon has a different motif, be it graveyard, underwater city or castle.  There's also several hidden items, secret passageways and traps to make it all more interesting.  The damaging floors are really annoying until you beat the second boss, Chronos, since equipping her will negate those.  And sadly, there are damaging floors you have to step on before fighting both bosses...yuck.  The first demon you acquire will show most hidden passages when nearby, so it's helpful to have her equipped early on, or your first run through somewhere.  I do like that there is some focus on exploration and not just combat.

So how are the fights?  Well, they are turn-based old-school goodness.  You select every party member's action at once, and then the turn will play out.  You have to plan in advance, which can make things harder depending on what the enemy does.  Abusing class skills really helps the fights go faster, especially the ones that allow you to hit entire rows of enemies at once.  Artifacts will allow characters to use skills that aren't native to their class.  If there's a particular skill you like (like the various "Slash"es), make sure to aim for those to increase your damage output.  To add other characters past the first two, you will have to fork up cash to rent the room for them.  This also increases your rent, which is due whenever you return to the inn.  At least you get fully healed!

The most unique mechanic in the game is the demon keys.  The bosses you fight are usually the "raging" form of a demon, and beating it will allow you to equip the demon's key and use them in combat.  There's a meter that shows how long you can keep them out before they go out of control and slaughter your party instead, to keep you from needlessly throwing them out there.  The skills they provide are very useful (especially Chronos' immunity to damage floors), and you can eventually equip up to three at a time.  Learn when to use them, and fights become much easier... sometimes even the boss ones.

Each dungeon contains several magic circles that must be purified before the boss appears.  You place 1-3 gems that will determine the type of loot you get and then fight some monsters.  Winning will purify the circle and allow you to save there.  Any time you leave the dungeon, the circle will stay purified, but you can place gems again to do another fight.  Take advantage of this, since you can better control what types of equipment you get as loot at the end of the fight.  You get plenty of gems, so use them frequently, and either sell or break down the extra weapons and armor you acquire.  The artifact gems are limited, so use them sparingly.  Be warned, that one of the unpurified circles will contain the normal form of the demon boss.  These fights are obviously harder than normal ones, so be careful when doing them for the first time.

Demon Gaze is hard, make no mistake about it.  Regular fights are usually painless, especially when you have a full party and some good equipment and skills.  Sometimes, enemies will summon other enemies, and battles can quickly get out of control.  Bosses are a different story altogether.  They are strong, fast, and have a lot of HP.  Even if you can quickly dispatch all enemies in the dungeon, the boss is a big challenge.  Add in that most have little minions (I call them bits for some reason... probably because of Lavos) that will take hits for them, the boss' ability to summon them as much as they want, and the frequent auto-heals they do can drive you up the wall.  At least it did that to me.  It felt like trying to stop a waterfall with your bare hands.  Most times you end up hacking away and hope they either stop summoning the bits, or get knocked out for a few turns so you can make actual headway in the battle.

The game will take awhile to beat, but most of that is because it takes a lot of grinding to be able to purify all circles in the dungeon and beat the boss.  There are several dungeons to complete and even some extra content after the main story.  Most of the trophies will come while just playing the game.  Things like beating each boss, reaching certain points in the story and killing certain amounts of enemies will reward you with various trophies.  You'll also get some for doing various side quests.  All in all, nothing more difficult than actually beating all the bosses.  So, probably pretty hard, or at least long for all the grinding.

Demon Gaze was for me, the easiest and most enjoyable old-school first person dungeon crawler game I've played.  The demon key mechanic was fun to use and added a new twist to the old formula.  Bosses are frequently frustrating, but the game was oddly engaging, despite me not liking the genre.  If you are a fan of games like Wizardry and Etrian Odyssey, like my buddy DTJAAAAM is, you will really like the game.

Clan of Champions Review

Once again, thanks to NIS America, I can bring you another review, this time of the PSN game Clan of Champions.  In this game, players will take on the role of a mercenary for the king and root out the evil in an ancient ruin.

Graphically, the game is fairly standard.  There's some good detail on some of the equipment like rust, dirt and such.  There is also a good variety of armor and weapon designs, which is a plus.  However, there are not many different stage designs.  You will see similar courtyards and stone hallways several times while progressing through the game.  In a similar vein, there aren't many enemy types, just the three playable races and skeletons.  Though in a nice touch, enemies will have cuts on their bodies when you damage them.  There's also lots of blood, especially when you damage and enemy near a wall, and leave huge splotches of blood on them.  Thankfully, the skeleton enemies don't leave them, though.

There are no voices in the game.  Well, unless you count the assorted grunts and moans as voices.  All of the story is told through text on the quest descriptions.  While it's nice that it so optional to read the plot, I fear most players will miss it and think it's not there.  There's not much music, and some of the battle music reminds me of God of War.

The battle system takes a bit to get used to.  If you have played the PSP game "Gladiator Begins", then you'll know how this works.  You can attack high (triangle), middle (square) and low (X).  There are three different styles: sword & shield, dual wield and close combat (fist weapons).  Each has different strengths and weaknesses and can combo the attack heights a different number of times.  For example, the close combat style can chain attack high three times, mid two times, and low once.  Most times I wish that you could chain more attacks together.  There's also a roll/dodge move, but it provides no invincibility (as far as I can tell).  The enemy AI is expert at rolling and will frequently use it to escape constant attacking.  The few times I need it, it doesn't seem near as helpful as theirs.  I don't know if they actually have a different roll, or if their agility score is higher than it should be.

What really sets this game apart is how armor and damage are treated.  Armor on different body parts takes damage instead of the player's health bar.  After sustaining enough damage, the armor will be knocked off (shield or helmet) or outright broken (chest, arm and leg armor), which allows characters to take damage in the exposed region.  It's fun to start wailing on a poor sap and shatter his (or her) armor so you can do some actual damage to them.  Head attacks do the most damage, but helmets can be picked up again, so sometimes the best bet is to break the chest armor.  Personally, going for lots of head attacks works more often than not, so I stick with that.

The only thing more painful than the cuts is using bactine on them later.

However, the same thing can happen to you if you aren't careful.  Thankfully, equipment is not permanently gone, even if broken or pilfered by the enemies.  Yes, pilfered because equipment on the ground can be picked up by anybody.  This makes battles can be very fluid, but annoying when an enemy grabs your nice helmet or weapon.  The only time this was a huge problem to me was the second to last level.  While fighting the target, up to 4 skeletons at a time can  join in to fight you.  They also spawn in with no equipment, so they can steal anything you or your team drops.  At first I thought the game was nice for spawning naked skeletons so they wouldn't be too hard to kill, but soon realized that it was worse for them to have nothing.

I suspect there are nuances to the combat system that I just don't understand.  The in-game tutorial is fairly basic.  I couldn't find any info for mastering the combat.  Sometimes and enemy seems to counter attack (and are not using the skill that does this), as if there was a parry move of some sort.  They also seem very adept at rolling out of harm's way, but I can rarely pull that off.  Several times they get in a shot on me and I stagger back while being completely open to their teammate's barrages.  Whenever I am double or triple teaming an opponent, my hitbox seems to push me to the side while my AI just gets in my way.  Also, some of the "boss" characters have ridiculously high agility, strength and equipment durability.  Later in the game, they are capable of destroying your at-level armor with a few hits.  It's frustrating to get completely destroyed by the computer because they block, then counter, then unload on you while you stagger and you can't roll or block your way out.

Most level ups for the different styles will unlock an attack skill that you can map to the controller or a passive that you can equip.  There are lots of different attack skills, magic spells and passive skills that you can unlock in the game.  When you first make your character, you get bonus stat points to customize them, but these are unfortunately the only time you can upgrade your stats without passive skills.  Most attack skills are useful, but all are fairly mundane.  They are meant to be somewhat realistic, so you don't shoot giant beams from your sword or crack the earth at your feet to attack.  The magic spells are what will give the battles flair.  I especially like the ones that give your attacks elemental effects, so you can do damage through the enemies' armor.  There are lots of spells and skills to collect, and trophies accordingly.

He's not The Rock, but he sure is electrifying.

There are 24 stages in the game, and completing one will open the next.  Each stage can be done on 4 different difficulties.  It would be nice if beating a stage would open it on all difficulties, but they don't.  So, to get all the trophies, you have to do each stage 4 times, for a total of 96 stages.  There's also 3 different weapon styles to level up and lots of gear to collect.  This ensures that my completionsit nature kicks in and plays stages many times to stock the store with all the equipment.  There's a lot of stuff to do, but it is still grinding.  The stages are fairly short, though, which is nice for replaying them.

First off, I was surprised the game had a platinum.  Well, since my friend claims there was supposed to be a disc version for the Xbox 360, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.  Most of the list is pretty standard, as you will have to beat all missions, on all difficulties, and get high ranks on them.  You'll need to max out your levels and sell lots of things to the shop.  Unfortunately, there's a few trophies for playing multiplayer (co-op and versus), but finding a game is near impossible.  After sitting in a lobby for awhile, I got one person, but it would boot one of us when trying to start the level.  I attempted it a few times to no avail.  Admittedly, I have little desire to play versus, but I would try it out if I found anyone in those lobbies.  It would be much more fun to play the game with actual players, since the teammate AI isn't too great.  They have their moments, though.

While the levels are short, you are meant to do them several times to get more money, experience and equipment.  So even though you grind a lot in the game, it doesn't feel very tedious to me, since the levels are short and you get stuff fairly quickly.  I don't know how fun it will be to do all levels on 4 different difficulties, but I would certainly try if I could find some co-op lobbies.  The game is very average on all counts, but I still had fun playing it.  If you want to spend the $30, Clan of Champions is a decent game to play in short bursts or when you have some extra time.  If I can ever get into a multiplayer co-op or versus game, I'll of course put an update here on my blog.