A large portion of my university time was spent playing a classic 2D dungeon crawling game made by Jagex on my iPod Touch. I remember fondly how I couldn’t put it down. So eager was I to see the next place, find the next secret, and evolve my party up into an unstoppable force of destruction. News of a Dungeon Crawler coming to the PS Vita published by NIS America was met well, it even ushered a slight “squeak” from me. Once I learnt that it will feature strong anime characters, unique RPG elements, and full party customisation, well let’s just say that sealed the deal. This is Demon Gaze.
The game follows the adventure of your character (or Oz if you didn’t rename him) as he awakens in a strange dungeon, in a far off place. After escaping the dungeon you discover that you are in fact, somewhere along the frontier of the world. A place where civilisation is mostly gone and the only people around are misfits and mercenaries that all reside in a single secured hotel. There is a living to be made from scavenging in the ruins across the Frontier, and the residents of this hotel all do just that. After you’re found by the enigmatic hotel owner Fran it is discovered that you hold a special power in one of your eyes, a power that lets you confront and capture Demons. Fran recognises this power and immediately offers you a room at the hotel, with orders to work capturing Demons for her. Once these demons are caught you can then utilise them for yourself while exploring and in combat.
As someone that doesn’t remember anything about where they came from, or what kind of power they hold, you naturally decide to go along with Fran’s offer. It’s not as if you really have any alternatives. You form a party and begin your career crawling through dungeons for loot and demons. As time elapses though, it becomes increasingly evident that there is something more going on here at the hotel than Fran initially lets on, only time will eventually reveal the truth. Not before you get to know the numerous residents of the hotel and encounter them in one too many awkward situations, often involving implied nudity.
The game’s design is 1-part 3D dungeon crawling and mapping, to 2-parts 2D stylised characters and enemies. The graphics have a stylised feel to them, the dungeons don’t utilise the full power of the Vita’s graphical capabilities, but rather give you a 3D space to explore that fits well with the theme of the game. A lot of floor tiles and textures are used repeatedly and the textures can look a bit low res in places, but at no point did I find myself really bothered by these things. The nature of the dungeon mapping lends itself to a very repetitive looking environment. There are, however a variety of different tile sets that define each dungeon you explore, so no two dungeons look alike.
The 2D features involve the dialog and combat. All the characters are unique and in their appearance, and high quality to boot. The large pool of characters you can pick to form your party involves cute, to cool, to badass in appearance. Each one is portrayed in such a way that you know what type of character they are supposed to be, even if you are given the freedom to make the hooded staff-wielding magic girl a warrior in full plate if you desire. The environments and enemies are all well-drawn and match the equally good quality of the characters.
The gameplay is where this game really shines. Your dungeon exploring parties consist of moving around in a gridded map one square at a time, as you move your map it begins to fill out, showing you the layout of tiles you’ve been through. The dungeon exploration gameplay is similar to titles like Might & Magic and Legend of Grimrock, but with the turn-based combat system reflecting games like Final Fantasy, or other classic RPGs. As you explore you run into monsters, hidden secrets, and all kinds of loot that you can utilise and/or sell to help pay your rent. Each time you return to base Fran will ask you for your rent, which will steadily increase over time. If you can’t pay you’ll have to owe it to her, and pay back when you can. Fran is rather keen on her money and won’t take kindly to being made to wait, so make sure you have enough coin before you return home.
As you make money you can unlock more party members up to a cap of five. Each party member (and yourself) is fully customisable, and I do mean fully. You are able to set the character’s Race, Class, Voice, and pick an appearance for them. None of these are required to match up logically, so yes, you can have a tiny Migmy girl avatar with a macho Human voice wielding a two-handed hammer of death. For those that enjoy freedom to customise in games, this party building element is very enjoyable. When you aren’t in a dungeon you’ll be at the hotel, which is your base camp for all the micro-managing you may need. From here the plot will develop too, you get regular cutscenes with all the hotel residents, and you can pick up quests from the notice board.
It is worth mentioning however that Demon Gaze does have its issues. While the game does have a tutorial, and Fran does instruct you what she would ultimately like from you, there are moments when I still found myself lost and unsure of what to do. More than once I would reach a point where I was certain I explored an area only for me to have been missing a secret door. In addition to this, the game’s difficulty has a tendency to suddenly spike for certain bosses and encounters. I would be well ahead of the enemies in an area then progress to the next and have the first one I encounter take down my entire party. One boss in particular forced me to go back to and spent a significant amount of time killing monsters and farming gear until I could handle the encounter, as it was needed to progress the game.
The game is fully voice acted in both English and Japanese with the option to toggle between the two as you desire. The voice actors have all been selected very well and help bring the personalities of the various characters to life. The game’s soundtrack is worth mentioning too. Each dungeon zone has its own unique track for exploration, some more subtle, while some are epic and tense. The game’s battle music is great and fitting to the awesome standard of turn-based RPG tracks that fans are used to thanks to the Final Fantasy franchise. Unfortunately there isn’t a large variety of tracks and some can be repetitive, but for the most part the soundtrack is a pleasure to listen to.
The game only features a singleplayer campaign with some networking extras; there is no multiplayer to speak of. Due to the static layout of the dungeons and the large amount of time required to grind levels for encounters, it’s hard to see the game having a large amount of replayability. Like many other titles, it may well be something you come back to after some time has passed, but there isn’t anything substantial to drive a second playthrough immediately after the first.
Overall I found Demon Gaze enjoyable to play and would heartily recommend it to anyone interested in dungeon crawler RPGs. Due to its simple gameplay and structured exploration Demon Gaze works well as an entry-level game for those new to retro first person Dungeon Crawling. The game doesn’t exactly “blow minds”, and it can take a little while to understand how everything works, but to its credit, the instantly available ‘help’ feature did serve useful in understanding certain terms and GUI elements. I got a solid 24+ hours of enjoyment from this title, and it’s definitely a game you’ll struggle to put down when you just want to push for that next boss or level.
A review copy was provided for Demon Gaze.