Just how far can vibes carry a game?
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/73359/demonschool-review-in-progress
Since we received a download code for the Switch version of Demonschool too close to the review embargo lifting, the content of this review is based on our experience with the PlayStation 5 version of the game. We will update and score this review at a future date once we have been able to fully judge the Switch version’s performance.
One of the first things you see in Demonschool is a group of students being led into a classroom where a teacher watches as they all mysteriously explode into a fountain of blood. It’s a dark, unsettling moment that sets a grim tone right at the start of the story. Shortly after, we’re introduced to our main character Faye—a loud and boisterous woman who punches her way through a group of gangsters while pressuring her uninterested and unwilling classmate Namako to join up with her and prevent the apocalypse. The scene is quick and punchy, speeding through to deliver hasty exposition while refusing to go more than a couple lines without a character dropping a quippy punchline or saying something silly. This tonal whiplash is what I’ve been thinking of as I’ve pushed my way through Demonschool, which landed on my radar after its demo in last summer’s Steam Next Fest received a lot of positive attention for its striking blend of sprite art and 3D environments. While the visual aesthetic certainly lives up to the hype, I unfortunately felt pretty disappointed with the rest of the package. Demonschool is a game that values style over substance, and I quickly struggled to find any enjoyment with it once the wow factor of the visuals wore off.
Demonschool follows Faye, the latest in a long line of demon hunters who is working to prevent the apocalypse. Her quest leads her to Hemsk College, an island academy where supernatural events have become a recurring issue. In order to prevent the end of the world, Faye must team up with other demon hunters as they work to solve the mystery of Hemsk Island. The premise sounds rife with potential for creepy horror vibes and a spooky atmosphere, but Demonschool’s writing is constantly undermining its own aesthetic and tone. Faye is a bit of a meathead who shouts a lot and gets in fights constantly, and she often forgets the details of the mysteries that it’s ostensibly her duty in life to solve.
The game’s first story arc centers around a cursed videotape that is said to kill anyone that watches it within three days. (A running gag that occurs no less than five times involves an exhausted Namako correcting Faye when she mistakenly says the viewer will be killed after three days, which I guess is supposed to be funny.) The majority of the week-long arc is spent on the protagonists trying to find the videotape, meeting one-note characters and getting into silly slapstick antics along the way.
After a few days spent gaining access to the abandoned school building where the tape is located, you immediately find the tape in the first room you walk into and have a boss fight with a stack of TVs. Faye smashes the tape, and the arc is over. Demonschool’s story is far less interested in its supernatural mysteries than it is with its wacky character interactions, so the writing will live and die based on how well its humor connects with you. The humor is reminiscent of an early 2000s sprite comic, so I found it to be pretty unremarkable and frankly annoying.
Unfortunately, gameplay doesn’t do much to save Demonschool. The game’s combat is purposefully simple, and all actions in battle are accomplished by simply moving your characters. You start your turn with eight action points for your characters to use, and the cost of an action increases the more times a character acts in one turn. While this quick and streamlined style of tactics starts out fun, its simplicity becomes its greatest weakness as the too-frequent battles quickly become repetitive. New enemy types are introduced pretty slowly and the battlefield is rarely more than an empty rectangle where you and your opponents can move freely. Boss fights manage to be engaging with their unique tactics and challenges, but they’re too few and far between to make it worth the slog of getting to them.
Outside of combat, the island of Hensk serves as an overworld to explore that frankly has very little to see. NPCs rarely say more than a few words, and the fast travel menu clearly marks wherever you need to go for whatever activities are available or where to go to continue the story. It’s simple and streamlined just like the battles, and unfortunately that means there’s very little to actually do in between battles and cutscenes. The prominent in-game calendar is mostly window dressing since time only advances with main story progress, so you have unlimited time for optional content such as social conversations and sidequests in the meantime.
Demonschool is a very frictionless game that makes it easy to coast along and just see its story play out as you watch its characters interact with each other. If the writing clicks with you, then you’ll probably have a good enough time just taking in the vibes and laughing at the characters, but unfortunately it didn’t click with me at all. With its characters that annoyed me, story that undermined its own appeal, and gameplay that was streamlined to the point of dullness, I found myself bored the entire time I was playing. The striking and vibrant visuals are the only thing that really shines in a package that is otherwise utterly and totally forgettable.
