…but I liked its predecessors better. Entaku no Seito had bigger dungeons and less fanservice, Stranger of Sword City had better graphics and a more interesting setting. If you’ve played those two, Demon Gaze doesn’t have much to offer except more of the same. Which is great, because I wanted more of the same. It’s just like the way people keep buying Dragon Quest games even though they’re all essentially the same thing. I wanted to kill a lot of stuff and get a lot of loot and that’s what I got to do so I’m happy.
But I probably should have written this post two weeks ago when I killed the last boss. I was happier and more excited then, flush with the thrill of victory or whatever they call it. The reason I delayed was because I wanted to kill the bonus boss in the Black Cage first. I did it yesterday and it proved to be a mistake because:
1. The Black Cage is a boring and annoying dungeon, with all the frustrations of past dungeons condensed into one small, unsatisfying package.
2. The Bonus Boss is a pushover. If you can beat the last boss, you can beat Aries easily. She (he?) comes in at only level 11 with no abilities unless you grind for them, which sounds like a pain because there’s only one dungeon after you get her.
After you beat Aries, she informs you that there’s a true boss out there that you have to beat. Okay, I’m game. Let’s go beat this true boss… who is at the end of a long corridor… with no save points along the way… meaning if I get wiped out I’ll lose least 30 minutes of progress… and if I warp out and come back I have to beat a series of bosses all over again. Riiiiight. I’m game, but I’m not that game.
So that killed my buzz a bit. Or more like a lot. We can argue all day about the merits and demerits of long gaming sequences with no save points, but personally they’re not for me. Especially once I’ve already killed the boss and gotten the “happy” ending. Now I remember why I almost never do post-game content. It’s the rare, rare game that has anything new to offer me while the credits rolls.
Anyway, my thoughts on Demon Gaze after finishing it are exactly the same as my thoughts in my first post on the subject, so you can refer to that. The only thing I’d add is that the game is really easy! Because there are a lot of ways to compensate for bad stats like furniture, demons and equipment bonuses so your characters turn out quite sturdy and fast regardless of what you do. And accurate too!
Yeah, uh, I’ll put that on my to do list.
In some of the other games you can forget about ever connecting if your AGI isn’t high enough. In Demon Gaze even my paladin and my healer could connect against bosses with just one or two casts of Mult-Hit. And they could actually do damage because their weapons were so powerful. It’s… disconcerting, frankly. But it’s good if you’re nervous about building a character wrongly. You can’t really mess up unless you deliberately put all your points into LUC or something. Speaking of which, LUC doesn’t really seem to matter in this game.
Well enough of Demon Gaze. I’ve been too busy to start anything and we’re already a fifth of the way into December. Decembers are usually busy for me but this one looks even busier than usual. I want chocolate! I want to sleep! I don’t wanna go anywhere or do anything, waaahhh! Being an adult sucks. I think the sweet spot in life is between 5-10 years old… you’re still cute enough to be fawned over, you don’t have many responsibilities, puberty hasn’t hit yet, school work is easy and fun, you can still enjoy books and games and movies and cartoons and… you know what, I think I need a nap. See you later!
Ahhh, the post game boss rush, I guess they didn’t conveniently give you consumable items that let you just save anywhere like the Operation Abyss games huh?
I would have settled for just one of those items, to use right before the boss. There’s nothing I hate more in gaming than wasted progress. Even if that progress is just a long corridor instead of big meaty dungeons like Entaku no Seito’s post-game content. I’d say you’re not missing too much by not playing Demon Gaze, but Demon Gaze II sounds really good.
Honestly, that’s where I stopped playing Stranger of Sword City: The final dungeon where you have to re-break some seals and go through like two or three bosses plus all the traveling back and forth on the way every time you want to get to the final boss. Though I was already plenty annoyed by the Odin boss fight somehow killing me like a dozen times after an otherwise easy romp through the game. Just wanted the game to end already at that time.
Ah, I remember that part. That was annoying. But I didn’t have such a hard time with Odin or most other bosses so I was still fresh and eager by that point. My tolerance for pre-final boss shenanigans is low already but for post-game content it’s ZERO.