[Story]
With your ability as a Demon Gazer, you are tasked to capture demons hiding in monster-infested ruins and labyrinths. In between your dungeon excursions, the story will move forward as you mingle with the folks living in the Dragon Princess Inn.
While the narrative isn't a big driving force to progress in the game, it's interesting enough that you would want to know what will happen next. The residents of the inn have their own quirks, often clashing with one another for you to see their latest antics and schemes. In any case, the narrative is more of a topping that you can enjoy along with the true highlight of the game.
[Gameplay]
- Turn-based Dungeon crawler, First Person
- Rent System:
Even the Demon Gazer doesn't receive special treatment! Just like the other residents of the inn, you have to pay rent. Party size and strength determine the amount of rent. If you can't pay the rent, you will lose some important privileges in the inn. Also, the inn manager will give you special prizes if you always pay on time.
- Dungeon Crawling and Demon Hunting:
When exploring dungeons, there are magical circles that can be used to gain rare and special items with the use of gems. For the Demon Gazer, capturing all these circles will lure out the dungeon's resident demon. If you are successful in defeating it, you will be able to use that demon to bolster your party through different means.
Different kinds of traps, hazards, and puzzles are already a given in dungeons. Monsters are all around the place, but you can speed up battles thanks to the repeat button. However, you have to pay attention even during normal encounters as monsters can do crazy things here.
[Party and Character Customization]
You can create up to seven characters max. Five races and seven classes are all available at the start. While you can only bring four additional party members in dungeons, you may equip Artifacts to be able to use skills from other classes. Lastly, any of your character's appearance, voice, and portrait can be changed anytime in the inn's bath.
[Performance, Presentation, Music]
Everything is just clean and pretty on the Vita screen. The illustrations for the characters, demons, and monsters are very detailed. Soundtrack is nice and catchy. The selection may be few, but I never got tired of hearing the game's battle themes. Ambient music in some areas is a nice extra too, making things more immersive.
The game runs smoothly with short loading times and controls work as intended. Basically, a comfortable, painless experience for me!
[Other Bonuses]
The Gazer Memo feature allows you to interact with other players in dungeons. They can be helpful, bothersome, or downright silly to read. Plus, the Vita's near app can share your profile to other players.
Intuitive tutorial menus are highly appreciated. The best part is, you can open it up anytime, anywhere depending on the currently displayed screen. I also like the freedom of changing the game's difficulty. If you're having a hard time, it doesn't hurt anyone to set the difficulty to the easiest one.
[Nitpicks]
It's hard to find faults in a solid release like this one. I guess it would be nice if all the dialogue are voiced so we may hear more of the quality voice work. And for a game where you will rely on maps a lot, allowing the players to mark key points on them is surely helpful. I'm also wondering why Warp Tiles aren't marked on the map.
Post-game content could use more things to do, but if you want to go over the story again, there's New Game+ for that.
[Conclusion]
It's hard not to recommend the game with this level of polish. The game mostly conveys a lighthearted tone, but it can give you a decent amount of challenge. The sense of accomplishment for blowing away an obstacle that kept you stuck for an hour or two feels awesome. And thanks to the game's superb pacing, you're progressing without unwanted frustrations in the way. Well, you will still feel frustrated anyway after hitting the next wall face-first, but I think that's part of the fun too.