@Dio_Senrab @damagecontrolblog

I was gonna post this to howdoyouspell.cool/sodiumreactor/ but I think the owner took the whole site down and I didn't even know. This was meant to be a blog post but....

Let's talk about #Demonschool

It's a surprisingly shallow, overly generous tactics RPG married to a fun, very charming visual novel with a great cast and a lot of heart. I liked it, but I'm conflicted by it and also don't wanna return to it.

The cast is fun. I like their dynamics, and they all feel unique and enjoyable. They've all got quirks and personalities. This is particularly high praise cause I very seldom enjoy this many of the characters in an RPG. The cast of Demonschool is an absolute high point of the game, and the story is good too. I typically dislike RPG story tropes and instead find my enjoyment moreso in the combat mechanics, so a game where I prefer the story to the combat is novel for me.

Unfortunately, I prefer the characters and story to the actual combat.

The game is interesting and the characters are great and the combat is a letdown.

Several characters do the same thing as another, but better, and a few of the mid/late game characters could have been ommitted entirely. I come from fighting games and RPGs and think a lot about which characters get to "play the game," that is, which characters are designed to take advantage of the game's mechanics, and which characters largely feel orthogonal to the way the game is actually played.

The game goes for a thoughtful, simplified, puzzle kind of combat system without leveling or experience points. Instead, you modify your characters by adding or removing passive perks. This prevents members from falling behind, thankfully, at the cost of any sense of progress besides those abilities. The later ones often offer new ways to deal more damage at the cost of other drawbacks, but late game I was desperate for damage.

A few characters get abilities or mechanics that feel poorly implemented, and at least one only becomes useful when a late game ability is unlocked that changes their mechanic entirely. Tragically, the weaker-but-still good version of that mechanic shift is supposed to be available much earlier but is currently bugged.

The fights are eventually boring, and they don't mix in enough new enemies or mechanics to keep things interesting. Weeks 5-9 were a absolute slog and I began dread quests because they featured the same 5 enemies. A-ranks feel trivially easy in most situations and also don't provide much benefit since A-ranks only increase the already generous money payouts.

The game hands out money but then the shops run out of things to sell so that by week 8 I was buying the entire week's inventory on Monday. They give you time to upgrade your relationships but if you do everything you can as soon as you can you can go from "acquaintance" to "soulmate" in 2-3 weeks (except for characters where progress is gated by timed events).

I'm left wishing the fights were as fun or as challenging as they are in something like Devil Survivor, since they both feature "young adults navigating a spooky demon apocalypse while cut off from the rest of the world."

The 15 characters and 10 weeks could have easily been paired down to 10 characters and 6 weeks and I would have had no complaints about being bored. A few characters don't actually do anything in story and just feel there to pad out your roster for the inevitable team split.

Don't get me wrong; I like the cast of Demonschool FAR more than I do any cast from an SMT or Persona game. The characters here are great. But the combat manages to be boring, and I like tactics RPG combat a lot.

None of the bosses have second phases or overly complicated gimmicks. It's just a matter of figuring out what makes them vulnerable and doing it 3-6 times in their fight

In other words, the combat so far feels like an overly simplified afterthought, and there is no resource scarcity at all. I'm left feeling like the game isn't challenging at all. Instead it's a great visual novel with a frustratingly easy tactics #RPG attached.

#PCGaming #Gaming #RPGs