The game is a good, mildly addictive but generic button-masher that has “Dungeons and Dragons” stamped on it.
Don’t be deceived by the “Forgotten Realms” or “Dungeons and Dragons” on the box. That’s only on there to attract fans of D&D who are desperately waiting for another Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights. There’s very little character development or role-playing here. You basically enter an area, bash your way through fifty opponents, maybe defend something or smash a door, and then move on and repeat. The formula is pretty simple, but it works very well. The game manages to never get boring or overly repetitive by putting enough variety in the challenges and bosses to always keep you on your toes. The action is always exciting and some of the boss battles are marathons where you slowly wear him down while fighting dozens of his minions at a time. Combat has a very visceral feel. It involves mostly slamming the same two or three buttons over and over, but there’s enough variety in the attacks that you have available to keep it from getting too monotonous.
One of the best parts of the gameplay is how it weaves the three unique characters into the gameplay. There’s a melee character, a stealth character, and a magic-user, which is essentially a ranged combat character. You will spend a lot of time on the melee guy, but the stealth character comes in handy when there are shadows around. If you hide in shadows, you can one-hit stealth kill enemies easily. This is an excellent tactic for thinning out a large herd. The magic-user comes in handy when you have to take out foes from a distance, but it can be hard to use him, since he can’t fight in close combat very well. You will switch between characters very easily and you will do it often, using them for their own strengths when you need them.
Demon Stone is a decent looking game, but the blocky and low-res environments truly betray their Playstation 2 origins. The bosses and main characters of the game though, look very good and are nicely animated. The large amount of enemies that can appear on screen is pretty impressive too. The audio for the game is excellent. It gives you the feeling of really being in a war. There’s never a shortage of explosions, blades hitting flesh, or screams of pain in any area. The voice work is very good, although Patrick Stewart sort of sticks out, because he is so familiar as Jean Luc Picard. The music is fairly generic, but it’s also high quality.
The game only lasts eight hours at the most, maybe even less if you’re experienced with this type of game. That isn’t all bad, since each of the game’s ten levels is unique and the game avoids repeating challenges too much. Some of the missions where you have to defend an area or a person will require a few reloads, and that can be frustrating, given the game’s checkpoint save system. A short game like this isn’t worth forty or fifty bucks, but if you find it in the bargain bin, it’s worth paying ten or fifteen for a weekend’s enjoyment.