Overall 8.6 Graphics 6 Sound 5 Addictive 2 Story 3 Depth 3.5 Difficulty 6
7.2
Demonic Evil-ution to save the World scout360pyro
Overall, I think this is a very interesting GBA game, with a fairly interesting plot, well made graphics, and a well made battle system with some truly unique twists to it that I have never seen nor heard of anywhere else. The chat function with your companion can get a bit annoying at times if you keep accidentally pressing it, and the menu system is not really to my tastes color wise, but even so it is easy to learn and use. This game is meant to challenge your brain tactically, to try and make you go out of your way to explore all the possibilities, but without making it impossible or too hard to complete the game without finding everything. If you are honestly having trouble figuring out the game then you are either not paying attention and missed something important, or you don't have the common sense to be able to figure things out. This is not Super Mario Galaxy where everything is as obvious as possible to the point of insulting your intelligence, and if you cannot handle a challenge for your mind like that, as I have seen in some people reviewing the dark version of this game, then look elsewhere. At some point in the introduction you DO seem to be thrown into a fight scene out of nowhere, but do not worry! That is part of the intro, meant to give you an introduction to the battle system basics. There is no logical way you could lose that fight, so just go with the flow on it. This is how retro games were meant to be back before making sequels became a thing. Each game was meant to be a stand-alone product, not part of a hook to get you to buy more of the series. This extended to replay value as well, so many games were made to take a long time to make up for that fact. This is why grinding was invented, but unlike Pokémon, this game does not require anywhere near as much of it. I will admit that the sound is not the best it could be, but it is well within GBA standards. The language is not too bad, considering that bad English is so commonly encountered on the Internet, even among native speakers, I don't really understand how that would be a turn-off. (Especially since the people complaining do not use proper English either)
OVERALL RATING : 7.2
Overall, I rate this game as a 7.2, due to the sound and the conversations with the main demon dragging it down.
It has a great battle system, and plot that manages to avoid being too cliche in most aspects. The general world may seem a bit barren in terms of animation, but on GBA hardware that is actually rather tricky to pull off, so the lack of it does not surprise me.
GRAPHICS : 8.0
The graphics I rate at a solid 8. The textures used are worth a full 10, but the animation use is a bit minimal for a GBA game, even taking into account the hardware issues with extended animations on that platform. There is definitely more room for animation in the battle system.
SOUND : 5.7
The sound I rate at a 5.7; its ok, but it is not the best. Part of the issue is certainly the GBA hardware limitations, but the developers are definitely not putting the same effort into the sound that they did into the textures of the game world.
ADDICTIVENESS : 3.0
The addictiveness... 3. Its not really that bad a score, when you consider that games like this were not designed to be replayed after you completed them. The unique features of the battle system were enough to hook me into the game long enough to become committed, but it takes enough time that I probably will not play it through again for a long time.
STORY : 5.4
The story I suppose would be somewhere around a 5.4, in my opinion. It does sound a bit canned at times, but I can't tell if that is because of the developers or because of how jaded I am to some things in life. In any case, I would say it is certainly good enough that it doesn't turn me off to the game in any way.
DEPTH : 4.3
The depth of the game I would put at 4.3. There may not be a bunch of hidden Easter eggs and side quests, but there ARE a lot of hidden items in the game, and a lot of depth to the battle system itself.
DIFFICULTY : 6.2
This is a game that requires you think a bit before doing stuff. I would give it a 6.2 because of the difficulty in predicting the enemy behavior, despite how easy it is to learn the game mechanics. (as long as you actually read what people say and don't just skip it all)
Starting off with a philosophical mini lecture about light and darkness, and the need for both, you see a brief glimpse of a unknown civilization with a boy and a girl, Shin and Amy, exchanging words. After this you are sent though some sort of gateway by a goddess through space and time. You then play as Jin, a school kid in a modern day world. Jin who loves to play Internet games and is fascinated with anything involving demons, is our protagonist. After we meet him a female friend, Lena, drags him off to school, where we meet Amy from the introduction, and learn that our Lena has discovered a book in the school library that contains a spell for summoning a demon. Jin, Lena, his buddy Akira, and Amy head to the library only to find the demon book missing. After some searching, the book is found, and everyone gets excited but Amy, who acts a bit subdued, saying it could be dangerous to summon a demon. Jin and Akira are unfazed, and without hesitation perform the spell, summoning a demon that claims to be from the same place as the doomed society we saw in the intro. The demon recognizes Amy, and attacks, only for Lena to intervene. The demon takes Lena hostage and demands Amy return to Valhalla. Amy tosses a pair of odd devices to Jin and Akira, and Jin is given a choice of whether to use them or not. Jin and Akira are revealed to be DemiKids, half human, and half demon. They then summon a demonic familiar to fight for them and take on Lena's kidnapper. Upon his defeat, however, the dying demon claims they are doomed anyways, and that due to a time rift, the human world will eventually be destroyed. Amy introduces you to Shin, and the two ask for you to come with them to Valhalla, where they are fighting a losing war as rebels against a force known as the Imperium. Lena, despite being completely human, with no powers, refuses to stay behind and jumps into the portal to Valhalla before you can stop her. From here your journey begins...
The demonic familiars fight on your behalf similar to how Pokémon do, but the battle system is more like a typical turn based rpg. A new spin is put on the combat in that special skills to attack with will come at the cost of your familiar's health, rather than their magic. Another, even bigger twist is the option to try and persuade an enemy to join your side at the beginning of the fight. If they agree to join, that particular demon will disappear, and you can try to recruit the remaining demons if you want. When you try to recruit them, there are several possible responses beyond them simply accepting. Some of these are outright refusals, and result in you being unable to try and recruit anyone else for the battle. Others are offerings of a deal, where the demon agrees to join if you pay them a certain amount of money or give them an item from your inventory. Finally, a demon may lose the will to fight and let your party go. They may heal everyone in your party or give you some money in the process as well. These are not ALL the possible outcomes, however, so be on your guard. You never know what might happen when you try to recruit someone, or how they might react to certain statements...Through all of this you will need to build up your party of friendly demons, upgrade them to be stronger, and fuse them together into new, even more powerful demons in order to be able to fight against the strongest Valhalla has to offer.
The movement system uses the same 8 directional movement that can be found in the GBA game Lunar Legend. Unlike the infamous tile grid pattern in Pokémon games where you move a minimum set distance, DemiKids gives you a system more like the Legend of Zelda Game Boy games. The game menu's remind me more of the MegaMan Battle Network style, but with a fondness for hexagonal window icons.
The overall environment of the game is carefully textured to try and get the maximum effect of imagined detail from each and every pixel. The individual sprites of characters are a bit simpler in order to make them stand out from the environment better, but it does not make it easy to spot interactable objects. You need to move around and check the environment the same way you had to in the original Pokémon game boy games when looking for hidden items. Some elements of scenery will quickly become common places to look, but others will be more subtle, enticing you to explore the world around you to its fullest.
This game can be challenging simply because its battle system, while similar in some ways to Pokémon and rpg, is so very different in others. Because your demons do not simply get stronger and level up, you cannot simply reach an area and start grinding till you get stronger. Each and every battle in the area will be a tactical fight that is decided by careful decisions and a bit of luck, not one settled by brute force. If your party is badly injured, you can pay an inn to let you rest up and restore them. But if any of your party is completely knocked out, you need to go to someone else and pay a much greater amount of money to revive them. Starting out in the Valhalla realm, it costs roughly 200 M to revive each party member (250) for the first demon you met) but each battle gives you only 50 M per enemy demon. Battles are 2 on 2, and you will not be able to win a fight without taking damage, unless you get lucky with a recruit option, which voids any monetary gains.
Choosing the auto battle option may be very tempting for newcomers, but do NOT pick it if you are trying to get through an area, instead of simply grinding at the entrance. You may very quickly burn through your party members without realizing it, because the auto system only uses basic attacks, and the game does not prompt you when a party member falls, it automatically sends out the next demon in your line up. You will need to be watching your demons' health bars and using healing spells when necessary.
Demon fusion is a rather interesting and complex process. You can choose to fuse a demon with your primary one (the one you first meet) in order to simply level up it's capabilities, but other fusions are different. The resulting demon can be something else entirely, sometimes slightly weaker level wise or stat wise, but others can end up turning a demon back into one of the lesser demons that fused together to create it in the first place! Still other fusions can give very powerful stat boosts that put them above the majority of demons at their level. You will spend so much time recruiting demons and fusing them that you can easily end up spending countless hours on this alone. Even with the use of the emulator's speed boost and save state functions, this will take up hours and hours as you try to figure out what can make what. In addition to all this, a fusion demon has the option to inherit some of the magical abilities its "parents" had, allowing you to preserve rare and useful abilities as you continue to evolve your demons.
Some of the magical powers demons have can be used outside of battle to heal members of your party, revive them, teleport to a previously visited area, decrease your encounter rate, and many other useful features.
Graphics 8 Sound 6 Addictive 3 Story 5 Depth 4 Difficulty 6
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 06-15-15
Review Replies: 1
3.1
generic Atlus crap. TetraDigm
Lets starts this off with the big ones shall we?
Addictiveness. This game is NOT addictive in any way. Its kind of like a dumbed down version of pokemon that looks somehow better and worse then Pok?mon at the same time. You meander through badly translated engrish, and are given NO direction whatsoever. "leveling" your character seems to only add to how high a level monster you can use, and the ONLY way to level your main demon(the only one that CAN level) is by fusing other demons thousands of times with it. This ends up breaking the game because it wont take you long before you realize "hey, I'm only level 20....but I have around 250 attack and 1-hit every enemy I come across". Then there's the b button. every time you hit it outside of battle, you start in on some long winded speech to ask you if you want to talk, and when you say no, to tell you that you can ride your demon by hitting R. every. Single. Time. I honestly cannot be bothered to go through this whole game, as the language is terrible, the game itself looks worse then most games for the NES, the sounds are painfully dull and annoying, and the story itself is clearly something that was just thrown together at the last minute.
Story. There's a story here, but it doesn't matter. Its the generic ATLUS crap. You're some Japanese kid who for some reason is obviously a white European, you're in some special school, and for some odd reason you have special powers. What's your power? Why, you can play beyblade! Seriously. First thing they do is give you some kind of magical bracelet that holds all your demons in it. And then shoots them out. Back to the story, so for some reason your school has a DEMON SUMMONING MANUAL in it. Makes total sense right? Well the "new kid" at school is also a demon from Valhalla where the imperial forces are rebelling against.....you know what I cant do this. This is seriously the story. You can surely see already how this nonsense, coupled with the fact that it was obviously translated by a Chinese man to Russian, and then a Mexican man to English, makes this games story 100% irrelevant.
Sound. The sounds aren't exactly painful in the physical sense, but they are boring, and I'm pretty sure reused from the other 20 identical games atlus put out that year.
graphics. Oh I'm sure this looks good on a game boy, minus the good. This is one of those games(see ATLUS) where the developers decided "meh, lets make a small amount of effort at detail, and then just throw random paint schemes on everything and make the world itself a jumble of crap that is nearly impossible to navigate". That about sums up the graphics.
Depth. gonna be honest, I cant get far in this game because its just so uninteresting, but I imagine the depth is essentially non existent. lemme make a guess here. You go to hell, kill the demons from the LIGHT version of the game, and game over. The entire time you navigate through tiny maps filled with 3 or 4 enemies, all of which who are exactly the same. You get some extra wrist watches and fuse some monsters, but overall you just use the same 2 monsters for the entire game because everything else is crap. Play it and lemme know how close I am.
difficulty. Well seeing as it doesn't bother to tell you ANYTHING about fusing, leveling up, anything at all, it can be a bit difficult in the beginning. Until you find the place with the star of David over it (the Japanese seem to hate Jews, and thus ALWAYS make their holy symbol the symbol for summoning evil spirits), at which point you fuse about 30 monsters into your main, and the rest is history.
overall. id say dont play this game. if id have bought this game as a youngling, id have returned to the store and demand a refund. this game is slow, boring, and being one of the "shin megami" series, its just a bunch of random crap about demons thrown together. the game is essentially the same as every other atlus game ever made, so if you enjoy their other terrible titles, youll surely love this.?
Graphics 4 Sound 4 Addictive 1 Story 1 Depth 3 Difficulty 6
Review Rating: 2.5/5
Submitted: 09-10-13
Updated: 09-13-13
Review Replies: 10
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