Love live the PlayStation Vita.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/59651/demon-gaze-extra-switch-review-faq
Review FAQ time, ya’ll. I utilize this format when a traditional review isn’t really coming together. For some recent examples, check out my reviews of Hyperdimension Neptunia V-II and Senran Kagura: Peach Ball. With that introduction out of the way, let’s get to it.
I hate to say it, but your prediction is coming true—the one about the Switch becoming the new Vita.
Oh, isn’t that lovely? The Vita was once the home of bizarre anime waifu games with questionable content, but now those games have arrived and continue to arrive on the Switch. We’ve already got two Gal*Gun games, a couple Neptunia games, and a few Senran Kagura games—with a third on the way in April. And today we can talk about another one: Demon Gaze Extra.
Uh-huh.
Demon Gaze was a 2013 Vita dungeon crawler (think Etrian Odyssey) that was mildly successful and received largely middle-of-the-road reviews. For some reason, it’s been cleaned up and ported to the Switch as Demon Gaze Extra (DGE) and, well…
Yes?
It sure is a video game.
Hold on a second, what makes this version "Extra?"
I have no idea. Based on the videos I watched, there don't appear to be many noticeable differences. In fact, I've included a Vita screenshot in this article (on purpose) because I thought it was a Switch screenshot. I saw that exact same thing, although some of my player character portraits were different.
Not a fan?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the game, but it’s wholly underwhelming for a lot of reasons. First of all, the dungeon crawling isn’t nearly as interactive as Etrian Odyssey. Since you can’t draw the dungeon map yourself (which probably would be possible on a system that boasts at least one art program), maps feel impersonal and simplistic. They also tend to be loaded with damage-dealing tiles like lava or poison gas, which can be negated by using a specific demon (more on this later). Enemy encounters are usually random, but there will be times where encounters show up as icons that you can’t avoid.
When you’re not trying to find and battle demons in dungeons, you and your party are encouraged to take up quests, but most are poorly explained, or accessible before you can really do anything about them. Quests also inevitably involve leaving, and then returning to, your home base. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but in DGE, every time you come back home, you’re charged rent. You could leave, go to a dungeon, realize you forgot to buy a critical piece of equipment two seconds after arriving, and go back home and you’ll be charged rent. And like Etrian Odyssey, rent increases each time you walk through the door.
In Etrian Odyssey, at least, you’re only charged if you decide to sleep (restore all HP/MP).
That’s not great. Is it a problem, though? Is casheesh hard to come by?
It’s not actually that hard to find cash. You’ll collect gems throughout your journey, mainly by killing monsters. Gems are sorted into several categories, like “Sword Gems,” “Hat Gems,” or “Shield Gems.” Each of the game’s dungeons has a handful of spawn points where you can place up to three gems, which triggers an encounter. Different gem rarities produce different results. Winning the fight nets you a random piece of…well, sword equipment, hat equipment, or shield equipment in this case. The most common gem type is the “Nameless Gem,” which gives you a random prize, but often something low-level. I fell into a nice rhythm where I always bought two or three “Nameless Gems” from the Inn’s item shop, used them in the dungeon, and then sold the spoils back to the item shop to recoup the cost of the gems and my rent, along with any other equipment I found but didn’t want. I eventually amassed a nice nest egg by doing this.
What do you use the money for?
Buying increasingly-expensive equipment from the item and/or weapon shops, of course. You can try to rely on gem drops to improve your party’s firepower, but that’s not going to get you very far. You’ll want to buy mid-level stuff pretty quickly out of the gate. You can also find/buy furniture, revive downed party members, and recruit new party members—although each new party member (up to five) costs an order of magnitude more than the last.
Did you say furniture?
Yes! One of this game’s admittedly charming aspects is that you can place a piece of furniture in a party’s member’s room at the Inn to give them a permanent stat boost, and you can swap it for better furniture later on. You don’t, unfortunately, see the furniture. And that, in fact, speaks to my biggest issue with DGE: the aesthetic.
Lay it on me.
Here’s the thing, guys: It’s 2022. Even the Etrian Odyssey games, which were exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS, utilized polygonal character models, and those character models were animated. Your party members were represented by static character portraits, sure, but the environments and enemies were very pretty 3D characters. That’s not the case in DGE, which looks like a mobile game.
Hey now, even mobile games have 3D character models. Some of them, anyway.
Okay, fair enough. DGE looks like a cheap mobile game. The environments are 3D models, although they’re pretty barebones, tile-based maps. All of your party members are represented by static character portraits, the quality of which varies greatly from illustrator to illustrator. But the thing that kills me is that all the enemies, too, are static portraits that don’t animate (aside from maybe floating around the screen). I know for a fact that the PlayStation Vita can do better than this, and you’d better believe that the Switch can, too. Hell, the 3DS can! This may be an unfair characterization, but DGE just plain looks cheap.
That’s disappointing. How’s the combat? So many RPGs live or die based on the combat. I really like the combat in something like Dragon Quest VIII, but couldn’t stand the multitude of confusing systems in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Where does DGE land on that spectrum?
It’s more towards the DQVIII side of things, but lacks that game’s sense of teamwork, in part because your characters are mute, static character portraits. DGE has several different races, which are then divided into classes. You can have an Elven Paladin, for example, or a Dwarven Healer. Ideally, though, you pick a class that capitalizes on the chosen race’s base stats. You can have five party members total, with some on the front line, and some in back line.
Always with this front line/back line nonsense.
It gets old, right? I’ve seen this dynamic creep into just about every JRPG in recent memory, and I don’t really like it. Front-line characters attack while back-line characters provide support. In theory, you store your weaker characters in the back line so they don’t take the hits. The problem is that you can’t control them directly. Taking control away from the player is never the way to go in my book. But combat basically comes down to hammering your melee or magic attacks, making use of items when necessary; the usual JRPG stuff, but it feels weirdly impersonal, like you’re going through the motions.
Is there anything that sets the game apart?
In fact, there is.
Do tell.
The core tenant of DGE is that you’re a human who can trap and control demons who you defeat in battle. There’s a demon hiding in every dungeon (who is the boss) and if you defeat them, you can eventually take them into battle, where they provide AI support. This support generally means applying buffs on your party and debuffs or attacks on the enemies. Demons level up in battle, but it’s unwise to bring them out for every scrap—they have a set number of turns before they become uncontrollable, after which time they may go after your party instead. Doing battles without them revitalizes their turn count. Plus, different demons have different effects, both in and out of fights.
Ooh, what’s that mean?
It means that one demon can spot fake walls in a given area, and another demon negates environmental damage, like lava tiles. Clearly, switching up your demonic companion gives you a new perspective on every map, so exploration is (sort of) encouraged. I really like this system, and you can swap demons at gem circles.
I guess that's something. Anything else worth mentioning?
A couple things. There’s a lot of character interactions back at the Inn (and sometimes in the field). This occasionally devolves into potentially creepy anime trope territory, like sniffing panties or watching the loli character parade around in her underwear. Your tolerance for that sort of nonsense probably varies from mine, but I generally find it annoying. DGE requires a generous amount of grinding in order to get past the frequent roadblocks it throws at you. You may beat the boss, for example, but they will run away and become much stronger, and only in that fight can you truly defeat them. You’ll have to grind for money, gems, and items in order to suit up for the next encounter. After you beat the first two demons (Mars and Chronos), you’ll be thrown into an unexpected boss fight that will probably decimate your party, and you don’t have too many options apart from further grinding.
Of course, grinding and questing usually means leaving and returning to the Inn, which also requires paying rent all the damn time. There’s a storyline, but since all of your characters are mute character portraits, all the dialogue and interactions come from the Inn’s colorful cast, most of whom I didn’t care for. I just don’t see the appeal of DGE. In the very crowded marketplace of JRPGs, there are way better choices out there.
Well, they can’t all be winners.
Very true.
Topic: Demon Gaze Extra (Switch) Review FAQ (Read 1272 times)
