I cleared Demon Gaze II in 27 hours and 30 minutes, making a nice short and reasonably satsifying game. Any longer than that and I would have gotten bored, any shorter and I would feel robbed. The same complaints I had with the first game apply, namely:

•  Loooong cutscenes every time something happens in the story. This time I got a kick out of choosing the most trollish answers possible, and some of the responses were genuinely funny, so it wasn’t so bad.
• Very little dungeon variety. There are three or four main dungeons you visit over and over again. Demon A’s territory is near the start, B’s territory is a little deeper in, C’s place is beyond that. And the sad thing is, they don’t even bother to vary the decor or recolor the walls or anything, it’s the exact same scenery all the way through. Very boring.

That’s the downsides. On the plus side, they fixed a lot of things I didn’t like. For example the rent gimmick is gone, I have party members instead of generics, there’s much less fanservice, you don’t have to select individual demons any more, etc. I can tell they really listened to fan complaints about Demon Gaze and applied it to this one, just that they were too lazy to design proper dungeons to make Demon Gaze II truly superior.

Now I’m really confused by the people who said it was worse than the first. Recycling the same dungeons and having a weaksauce story is the main thing I can fault them for, and those are flaws the first game shared. TBH the first one felt a bit tedious while Demon Gaze II was much more comical and light-hearted so I enjoyed it more.

Story

An incomptent bunch of revolutionaries attempts to take down an incompetent ruler through the power of radio, many laughs ensue. The uselessness of the Revolutionist Party kept me playing even when I was irritated by their antics, because I thought, “The bad guys can’t be that stupid, can they? They’re going to swoop in and catch them any moment now, right?” But no, they’re really that dumb.

Or, more accurately, and to give partial spoilers, big baddie Magnastar didn’t care that much and bigger baddie Erik is enabling them for his own purposes, so the revolutionaries were never in any serious danger. It’s probably because I played Entaku no Seito and Stranger of Sword City first, so I’m used to darker moods and stories from Experience Inc. That’s why I was expecting a Sol Trigger kind of situation where… umm… things didn’t go so well, but Demon Gaze II isn’t that kind of game. Which is good, I guess. Now I think of it, I don’t play a lot of light, comedy games, so it’s a nice change.

Gameplay

Big bad Magnastar has the population of the city of Asteria under mind control. He does this through giant crystals guarded by demons, so what you do is, you beat the demons, smash the crystals and then… you don’t free the citizens from Magnastar’s mind control. Nope, you overwrite it with brainwashing of your own, in the form of a magical song. It’s briefly pointed out that what we’re doing is almost the same as what Magnastar is doing, but our boss says “Yeah, but we’re the good guys!” and that’s the end of that. Make of it what you will.

Actually, if you want some spoilers, post-game it’s explained that the boss Muse and her sister Prim are daughters of the Demon Lord. The Demon Lord who seems to be Ol=Ohma from Entaku no Seito, who is definitely not good people so it shouldn’t be a surprise. The real surprise is that Ol=Ohma was a woman all along…??? And Wyvie is that annoying wyvern sub-boss I had to fight before him… her? My mind can’t accept it.

Combat and stuff

The usual Experience Inc. gimmicks apply. The only change is you have is demons as party members. Some of them have the normal classes you’re used to, others have a mishmash of skills that belong to various classes. My party for most of the game was Signa, Peg, Capricon, Leo and Cygnus. I switched out Leo for Draco near the end because her damage is just unreal. You get a lot of other party members as well, and they level up pretty quickly, but I’m lazy and didn’t feel like experimenting so I stuck with the ones I got early on.

It didn’t matter anyway., I played the whole game on the second-lowest difficulty, “Warm” so there was no need to optimize my party or stats. Everyone was super accurate even without casting Hit or Slow, damage was puny so no need for Avoid or much healing, and so on. For the final boss, I used the strategy where you leave some of the front enemies alive and cast Veil or use a mirror item, blocking his (or her?!) physical attacks. Then I just killed him. On Warm difficulty you get a free retry even if you fail, so there’s no need to hold back.

I went back and forth in my mind a lot, trying to decide whether to stick to Warm or move up to Hot. Warm is definitely too easy so Hot would be just right for anyone with dungeon crawler experience. But at the same time, I don’t want to deal with any stress right now, especially not from a game this jokey and comical. So eventually I made peace with the simplicity and just enjoyed it.

Extracurriculars

There are almost no sidequests, and only a few optional demons to get. What you can do on the side is power up your demons through a touching mini-game and then go on date events with them. The touching mini-game is like hot-or-cold, where you touch various spots to see how the demon reacts, hopefully closing in on the Perfect spot to hit her for the most points. 9 out of 10 times this will be an erogenous zone like the lips, bust or crotch, so yeah, if fondling demon loli waifus is your thing, you’ve come to the right game.

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! started this touchscreen loli molestation gameplay gimmick trend, didn’t it? I knew that game was evil. But someone else would have done it in the end. With great power (touchscreen technology) comes great madness (game developer imaginations) after all. Actually, I don’t really care. Just that Demon Gaze II‘s version is a boring and crappy mini-game, so they should have designed something more interesting and worth my time.

Conclusion

Demon Gaze II will most likely disappoint hardcore dungeon crawler fans. The dungeons are just too boring and samey, with few dangers or gimmicks. But if you’re looking for something quick, easy and cheerful with a happy ending, it’s a great way to pass the time. If I gave out number ratings, it would be like 6.5/10. Gameplay is meh, story is silly, but somehow the whole thing comes together in a charming package that left me feeling pretty good when I was done. Recommended as long as you don’t expect too much.