Demoniaca: Everlasting Night Review

Dark, Gothic, mature, and sexy are descriptors that I like attached to my games. Demoniaca: Everlasting Night by developer AKI and publisher EastAsiaSoft has all four. It’s a 2D Action RPG with Metroidvania elements and a fighting-game-style combat system as well as a detailed pixel art style. With all these great-sounding characteristics there’s no way I could resist giving Domoniaca a go, but I definitely went in wondering if it was too good to be true.

The story in Demoniaca is simple and straightforward. Demons decide to rebuild the tower of Babel and in order to do so, they destroy a town to make room for the tower, killing everyone who resides there. One woman barely survives, waking up in a pool of her own blood and somehow patches herself back together. She might have stitched herself back up but she has more than just physical scars – her blood was contaminated with demon’s blood, giving her new powers. She vows to avenge her fallen family and friends and enters the tower to confront the demons.

The combat system is one of the most interesting aspects of the game and probably what sets it apart from other similar-looking games; unfortunately, I think it falls short. You have four attack moves: regular punch, strong punch, regular kick, and strong kick. These four moves are mapped to the four face buttons (A, B, X, Y respectively). That makes the jump move the odd man out, being relegated to the right trigger. Right off the bat I thought having the jump assigned to a shoulder button was extremely awkward, this is a 2D game with a fair amount of platforming and the movement is far from precise, all of which compounds the issue. There are a few basic combos you can do right at the start of the game and as you play you will learn and/or purchase new moves; all of which are activated by doing fighting-game-style button inputs. You start with a flame fist attack which is performed by pressing down, forward, and punch in quick succession. Overall there are a large number of moves and abilities you can acquire. None of the ones I unlocked were overly complex, which on one hand is nice, but on the other hand I would have liked to see a super-powerful move that requires a long input of buttons. I always feel satisfied when I pull off a complex move in a fighting game.

Perhaps the most useful moves are the healing ones because the game is difficult. The enemies don’t really get stunned by your attacks so they will usually attack you in the middle of your own attack, but they can definitely stun you, sometimes to the point of a stun lock where you get hit multiple times in a row and there is nothing you can do. At the very beginning of the game, they throw some easy enemies at you and I thought “ok, this is fun”, then right afterward you come across an enemy that looks almost exactly the same as the ones you just fought, but it turns out that this one can turn you to stone with its attack. This doesn’t kill you in one hit; however, you only have a split second to escape once the effect wears off, otherwise the enemy will attack turning you to stone once again. There are many more extremely annoying status effects like this that make the game extra difficult for no real reason. Poison drains your health incredibly fast and will take you all the way down to one health point if you don’t cure yourself. There is also a status effect that makes it so you get injured every time you land a hit (on enemies or breakable objects). Another super annoying effect is confusion, which swaps the left and right buttons on your controller. Each of these status effects lasts for a minute or so, but it definitely feels like more, especially when you’re just standing around waiting for them to wear off, or clicking through your inventory to see if you have an antidote (the inventory screen is in real-time). Once you unlock the cleansing ability the status ailments aren’t too bad to deal with, but everything before that is pure agony. Overall the combat is just not fun, I found myself cheesing most of the enemies once I learned a safe strategy to defeat them, or I would just avoid the ones that I didn’t know how to beat safely.

The game is structured like a Metroidvania, giving you a little freedom in how you explore the tower and allowing you to access new areas once you have gained certain moves like a double jump and a ground pound. I normally like Metroidvanias, I enjoy exploring the game worlds and doubling back to scour for loot once I have new abilities. The world of Demoniaca however, had no draw for me whatsoever. I thought the level design was completely uninspired, lacking any real distinguishable features. It’s pretty much just vertical and horizontal corridors with some larger areas that require you to platform your way to the top, which is not enjoyable thanks to the awkward, imprecise movement mechanics. To make matters worse the game doesn’t have a typical in-game map. There is a mini-map that just shows the surrounding area as well as a map of the whole tower, but this map only depicts the outline of each section of the tower and how they connect. Getting around the tower is very difficult, the only fast travel system I came across was the teleportation scroll (a consumable item), that teleports you to a save room of your choosing. Due to the high difficulty, you’ll find yourself dying quite a bit. During the first loading screen, the game points out that there are no auto-saves so you’ll be replaying quite a few sections. I normally like a challenge in the games I play, but Demoniaca does so many things poorly I had little desire to continue playing. If I wasn’t reviewing the game I would have abandoned it before hitting an hour of playtime.

You might be wondering what RPG elements are in Demoniaca. There is a standard leveling up system where you gain experience from killing enemies and you earn a point each time you level up which is used to permanently increase one of your stats. It took me a while to realize this and when I did I thought “Oh, that must be why the enemies are so tough and I keep dying”. I had roughly twenty-five points to spend, but it really didn’t make much of a difference. There is also a loot system consisting of a decent variety of different types of items, all of which give you stat bonuses or other buffs when equipped. Some have negative effects as well so make sure to use the best ones. This was one of the more interesting aspects of the game. After I acquired some equipment I would always check to see how it compared to what I had equipped. You have a limited amount of inventory space so you’ll have to destroy any unwanted loot, but each time you destroy an item you get a small amount of currency (Dust) which can be used to purchase high-end items. 

The art style in the game is a mixed bag, on one hand, I think the main character’s pixel art and animations are relatively good. There are also a few enemies that look pretty neat, but there are many more that don’t stack up in terms of quality making their poor designs stand out in contrast to the main character. The environment art is also somewhat odd as it looks like a different style than the character art so it doesn’t really match. I found most of the background art to be bland and monotonous with many patterns and tiles being reused over and over again. Perhaps the aspect I disliked the most were the objects the designers stuck in the foreground of many of the levels. I’m sure they thought that it would add depth and make it look interesting, but it doesn’t. It just makes it hard to see where you’re going. There were a few sections of the tower that stood out. I think the entryway with the chains looked interesting (these were the only foreground object that looked good). There is also a mirror-themed area that places a sort of cracked mirror overlay on the screen which I thought had a unique look to it.

If there’s one saving grace in Demoniaca I suppose it is the soundtrack. I thought the guitar and piano tracks fit in well with the theme and setting of the game. The soundtrack definitely did the most to evoke a feeling of darkness while playing the game when pretty much everything else was a disappointment.

Conclusion

Now that I think about it I don’t think I’ve ever played a game advertising itself as dark, sexy, and mature that’s actually any good. Demoniaca: Everlasting Night continues that trend. There was a lot I didn’t like about this game, but I have to give them credit for trying something different. I think most players should steer clear of this tower of terror, but if you are looking for a Metroidvania that’s a little different as well as a frustratingly challenging experience then it might be worth checking out. It’s not the worst in the genre, but it’s far from the best.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.