Demon Gaze: Ce n'est qu'un au revoir

Now is the time to craft my ultimate post about Demon Gaze, before other dungeon crawlers take the scene. I'll keep it neat and nice, with a digest of my run followed by a list of the points that charmed me the most and a list of the points that moderately annoyed me and that I would love to see corrected in an hypothetical sequel. Without further ado, here are my final thoughts about Demon Gaze!

So, here's my run in a nutshell. I played for 38 hours, which is quite a reasonable amount of time for a dungeon crawler, and reached Lv. 72. I stuck to the same three Artifacts the whole time, namely Counter, Killer Edge and Slash (1 then 2), as they were perfectly fit for a solo run; the last two slots accommodated whichever extra Artifact I found, although none of them stuck for long. My favourite and most used demons were Mars, Chronos, Venus and Neptune; I occasionally cruised around with Comet, Hermes, Uranus and Pluto and never touched Jupiter and Astro. I obtained very few pieces of gear, usually sticking to the same ones for hours on end; this occasionally created slight unbalance problems, as I found myself overpowered by enemies because of my outdated equipment. I farmed gear very seldom and never needed to grind for money since I was playing solo; I level-grinded only twice, namely before the very first and the very last boss fight of the main game. And that, fellow gamers, is the gist of my run. Now let's move on to the good and not-so-good points of Demon Gaze!

The excellent:

I won't elaborate further on the lovely atmosphere, the solo run-friendliness and the awesome roaming since I already covered them in my first post. Instead, here are the new positive points that I discovered since:

•  The fan-service is pleasantly varied, catering to every potential audience in equal measure. There's plenty of bare skin, bosoms and revealing outfits, both on males and females. Shotacon and lolicon adepts should be most fond of Lulu, Kukure and Prometh, while the yaoi crew will lap up Cassel and Lezerem's constant bickering and sentences such as Astro's "Take me with those eyes"—addressed to the main character in a deep, nearly sultry voice, of course. Yuri aficionados are not forgotten and get a pleasant treat with Pinay's hilarious obsession with Fran. It's nice to find such an open-minded stance about fan-service, and the pervasive humour at work in the game makes that inclusive brand of fan-service even more palatable. 

• The boss fights are totally awesome, period. For a more elaborate take on the matter, check out my boss run posts here, there and there.

• Instead of getting steadily larger, the dungeons inflate and deflate at random throughout the game. The largest and trickiest dungeon of the main game, Grimodar Castle, is located at the halfway mark, while the last and second-last dungeon are even tinier than the very first one, and in-between can be found dungeons of all sizes. This variety keeps the crawling fresh and interesting and injects a modicum of pacing into it. Cherry on the cake, the dungeons always remain easy to navigate and don't overuse cheap traps and tricks to disorient the player and increase the game's longevity.

• The soundtrack is pure ear-candy—to the point that I was just that close to purchasing the special edition of the game for the OST only. A special mention to the theme track of Fall Palace, a.k.a. "Eden of the Monarch". These choirs!! This orgel!! Oh, the delight!! This track is the epitome of grandeur and one of the best pieces of music I've ever heard in a video game, period.  

• The demons ooze charisma, so much so that I grew seriously attached to them. I really appreciate that so much effort was put into designing their looks, clothing, attitudes and speech patterns, making them sparkling and magnetic despite the fact that they are not even animated. Cherry on the cake, the voice acting is absolutely stellar, and I couldn't get enough of my demon foils' babbling. And it certainly doesn't hurt that they shine in battle and grant so many passive abilities, now does it? They are simply awesome, and I wouldn't be surprised if I miss them when playing my next first-person dungeon crawler. 

• The romance with Fran was heart-warming and refreshing—just like the rest of the story. I half-feared that Fran would turn out to be the Real Final Boss in disguise, but these fears were unfounded; instead, I got a lovely "let's live together at the Inn forever!" ending that warmed my soft gamer's heart.

The "could have been a trifle better":

• I was none too pleased with the fact that the best gear had to be farmed in Demon Circles, preferably with Increase, Strenghten and Gold/Silver/Bronze gems. Regular monster drops are few and far between and mediocre for the most part and the selection available at the Inn is absolutely pitiful, which means that farming is not an option but rather the only way to get something valuable; and to be honest, I resented that. I love grinding, yet I dislike farming; and I would definitely have preferred to grind for money in order to buy ludicrously expensive yet powerful pieces of gear in Cassel's shop rather than to try my luck in Demon Circles and manically reload my save file until I got a good drop. I'm not saying it's an horrible system per se, mind you; it just didn't click with me.

• The Ether Forge was an awesome idea, but why put limitations on the strengthening? And why are these limitations totally random? It doesn't make sense that some pieces of gear can be strenghtened up to Lv.30 while others can only reach Lv.10. I would have preferred to have access to unlimited strengthening, be it against a hefty sum of money. 

• The Treasure Maps were an great idea on paper, but the execution was flawed. Each individual map occupies one of the 99 available item slots in the inventory, so carrying these maps around at all times quickly becomes impossible; and once they are tucked away in the Inn's Storage, it's all too easy to forget about them entirely. It certainly doesn't help that most of them refer to places that belong to postgame territory and that they don't mention the name of the dungeon itself, but rather the name of the dungeon subsection where the item can be found, which forces the potential treasure hunter to do a lot of scanning and double-checking. Add to this the fact that the obtained treasures are items rather than pieces of gear and you'll understand why, as my run went on, I got into the habit of selling these maps as soon as I came back from roaming.

• Only three Demon Slots, no matter how much you level up. That's plain stingy, game! 

• Instant deaths because my "weakness was exploited", as the game kindly puts it. And no, Poinee Dolls don't work in such instances—tried and tested. Now that's plain cheap, game! 

Well, well. That's all about Demon Gaze for the time being, but I'm far from being done with that game. I loved it with a passion and still do, and I can assert with absolute certainty that this precious cartridge will grace my Vita slot again. And now, on to the next first-person dungeon crawler! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!