It’s not very often that you see something innovative these days, especially in the strategy field. The last time we saw something that really challenged the dominant designs of turn-based strategy was Redemption Reapers (review here) and it was a fundamental and compelling shift in tactical strategy thinking, even if it was widely ignored by gamers. Today we’ve got another strategy game that shakes things up in an unexpected way.
Demonschool from Necrosoft Games and publisher Ysbryd Games puts you in the shoes of Faye, a generational demon hunter headed to an obscure island with some weird goings-on. Along the way she meets up with Namako, a rather studious girl who doesn’t really have any idea what’s going on, Destin, who isn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the box, and Knute, a vintage VHS collector whose analytical skills will be invaluable. These four make up the core of your playable characters, though there are a total of 15 playable characters strewn throughout the game. It does take quite a bit to unlock the remaining characters though, and you’ll have plenty of fights under your belt before you start changing up your lineup.
As you might guess from the title, this is far from your standard school. First off, you’re trapped on an island. Second, your survival is far from assured and even your own professors are surprisingly laissez-faire about your lives, announcing extremely casually that failure to complete your assignments may result in your untimely demise. Demonschool takes a very comical, almost slapstick approach to some of its story elements, leaving a huge disconnect between characters and reality. The world that results from this is one where NPCs end up a bit too dimensional as a result, since real people would simply not be able to accept the events happening in their town with such ease. The overall vibe is very similar to a lighter version of Lovecraft’s small Eastern seaboard towns, but is very much inspired by Italian horror cinema from around 50 years ago. The very irreverence that gives the game its unique feel also ends up making it more difficult to connect with individual characters though, especially if you were expecting a more serious Persona-like experience.
There are plenty of mysteries around town to solve though, and you’re going to visit a variety of locations in order to do so, experiencing a ton of very weird dialogue while you do. There are also clearly some very cult-like goings on and the outsider-in-a-small-town vibe is very strong here, highlighting that Lovecraftian undercurrent. Faye is spectacularly enthusiastic about demon hunting; almost a bit too enthusiastic and makes for a strong counterbalance to Namako who just wants to study. However, hunt they shall and getting moving around the island will inevitably net you some demon combat. There’s more than a bit of Persona tucked away in Demonschool as well (excluding the dialogue unless you’re rolling with the original US translation of Persona 1), so expect to spend some time talking to demons, spending time with friends, and abruptly ending up in weird situations until the combat starts.
Demonschool is a turn based strategy game but it’s not a traditional one by any means. Instead of selecting your moves, waiting for the opponent to move, and then selecting yours again, Necrosoft has radically reimagined the standard approach to strategic gameplay. Your entire team selects all their movements at once, but you don’t initiate them immediately. Instead you can game out the potential consequences of your moves by applying and overlaying attack after attack until you are out of movements. The game shows you the damage you’ll do, which enemies you’ll kill, and where you’ll end up at the end of your combat. If you don’t like it, you back up and rearrange to maximize the impact of your attacks and movements. This allows you to layer your attacks, using your characters’ abilities as effectively as possible in order to defeat the enemies as rapidly as you can.
This entire approach has never been done in quite this manner before. Rather than a side effect of the structure of turn-based gameplay, Demonschool exploits the fundamental design of turn-based strategy gameplay in order to essentially teach you how to plan and how to best use your characters’ abilities. That doesn’t mean things will be easy though as enemy attacks are powerful and they can often summon friends or swarm you before you have a chance to escape. Instead, you have the edge when it comes to chaining your attacks together in order to do the maximum damage to the maximum number of demons. You can do this because attacks chain in direct lines and piecing together your attacks in the game involves planning out the angles and which demons will be left in order to best distribute damage effectively. Hit the right demons from the right angles at the right times and you’ll clear the entire screen of enemies quickly. But remember, you’ll need to leave some time to make it to the stage end as well! Once you’ve wiped out the requisite number of demons, regardless of what’s left on screen, you can zip to the edge of the screen where the glowing portal appears and complete combat. You rarely have to kill all the monsters that are summoned during gameplay, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to kill as many as possible to maximize your XP gains!
Essentially, the structure of combat changes Demonschool from a standard tactical RPG to a semblance of a puzzle game. Planning out move sets and finding the optimum approach to enemy patterns is an engrossing activity and you’ll quickly realize that certain combinations of hits and movements clear the boards much faster than a piecemeal approach. In fact, it does seem as you get the hang of the game that there are specific solutions for each combat and that finding them maximizes both your level and the time you spend in battles. It’s a neat feeling to suddenly be “getting” it so to speak and remarkably gratifying to rip through an entire line of enemies and slide halfway across the board to set up your next moves in one turn or manipulate your characters into pincer attacks that combine their abilities to wipe out stronger enemies. You’re not trying to kill everything here either and that’s weird. Instead you’re trying to kill a set number of demons and then reach the portal at the other end of the stage in order to seal them away again. There is a turn count as well, showing you the least number of turns this can be accomplished in. In other words, there’s a right way and a wrong way to play.
What becomes challenging rather quickly is sorting out how to survive levels. Attack enough and you activate special abilities, but since your group’s movement/attack points are communal, you can’t do everything that everyone is capable of. Instead, you’ll have to be familiar with each character’s abilities, the combos that are triggered when they attack together in certain patterns, and the type of damage or knockback. Shifting from row to row (the blue squares) with no movement points is essential to maximize your moves and half of the battle is lining up exactly where you need to be. Everyone moves in straight lines to the maximum distance or until they run into an enemy, so hopping one square to line things up just doesn’t work. The same goes for choosing your starting lineup. The wrong person in the wrong place with the wrong abilities is going to stymie your combat quickly. At that point, you’re trying combinations of moves in order to maximize your hits and placement for next turn while minimizing damage.
That damage comes hard and fast if you make a mistake but even the hits you are likely to take are shown on the planning phase. That’s good because each character only has three hit points and you only have one healer. The less you heal, the more movement points you have and the less hits you take, the easier it is to progress until you kill enough demons. You’ll never kill them all so don’t even try, but hitting that number fast is going to up your rank on the stage and taking no damage does as well. Once you’ve completed a stage, you get a ranking and that ranking directly indicates how well you’ve done or how badly you’ve failed at reading the patterns in combat. Sometimes you’ll just have to start over and rearrange your party in order to get things right.
Unlike some strategy games, Demonschool has a fairly high degree of challenge and the chances are high that you’re going to be getting a lot of average ratings or making it by the skin of your teeth unless you end up being some kind of planning savant. Fail to meet the expected turn count to kill a certain number of demons and seal the portal they are coming through and you lose marks. Lose a teammate and you lose more marks, translating to less income in opals. Honestly, if you’re surviving combat, you’re probably doing good, at least on standard difficulty. The optional side battles make that clear as they are much, much harder than the story and you’ll need to really know what you’re doing to survive them at all. Completionists are going to have a tough time with this one as Demonschool really pushes the limits of your planning abilities with a chess-like need to see multiple moves and turns ahead and then spitting out additional enemy spawns to mess up your plans.
Demonschool triggers core memories for older gamers with its visuals too. If you grew up playing old PS1 RPGs, this is basically a new Persona experience with heavier line art and more detail. The overworld outside of combat looks much like Persona did and the isometric combat areas are reminiscent of Ogre Battle. The pixel art is lovingly crafted here and the attention paid to environments is commendable. Monsters are particularly cool too and the bosses are weird and unexpected in the best way. The visuals channel quirky weirdness in such a way that you would not be remiss in thinking that this is a vintage title. There’s a lot of focus on edgy goth looks and teen overdramatics here but it ends up adding to the aesthetic rather than taking away from it and the unique look of Demonschool is both fun and creative.
Music on the other hand is a bit of a weak point. The house mix that’s constantly playing in the background is chill and has a slight creepy edge to it, which is nice, but it’s also almost a bit too relaxing. It’s got a bit of an old Genesis MIDI vibe too it and that’s not a bad thing. However, it’s a bit too chill, lulling you as you wander about talking to various island denizens and experiencing their weirdness. There are plenty of tracks though and the combat music is solid, even if it doesn’t stick with you after play. It’s a shame there’s no voice dialogue but honestly with how weird the script is, it’s hard to imagine that the voice casting wouldn’t be odd too. The soundtrack would be nice on its own as a relaxing album to read to or something though. Sound effects are limited but they fit nicely in and the gouts of blood are particularly enjoyable to listen to.
As mentioned earlier, the dialogue is simply weird in some parts of Demonschool and while it adds to the aesthetic, the overall feeling may be one of disconnection to the characters depending on who’s playing. We found that Faye was particularly strange and that’s a shame because it does make it a bit harder to focus on the plot. If combat was a stronger focus in the game this wouldn’t matter but plot and combat take up equal places here and that makes the script a bit less fun. Controllers are a must here as well, and if you’re playing on the PC, you will need one. The keyboard and mouse controls feel tacked on for the Steam version of the game and they massively disrupt the flow. This vanishes as soon as you use a modern controller (we were using an Xbox One one) and controller based play is realistically the only way to play Demonschool. Setting those issues aside though, the game is well-designed, easy to navigate, and allows for a fair amount of exploration considering that overworld navigation is limited to location selections on a menu sidebar.
Combat on the other hand is creative but randomly challenging and the occasional high degree of difficulty for optional battles was a bit of a turn-off. Part of this has to do with a bit of a steep learning curve for effective combat and teamwork and part is just that some battles are genuinely tougher. Constantly backing up and scrapping all your plans might also be frustrating for some people that want to move through the wild plot and not spend too much time on the puzzle-style planning required. Once you see everything go off without a hitch a couple of times, it feels really good though. Basically, expect to take some hits and have your plans get shattered from turn to turn and you won’t be too surprised. The script makes this feel like a casual game but the tactical elements are quite challenging and it’s a bit of a dichotomy for player expectations when that becomes apparent.
Demonschool is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, there are all kinds of neat side stories, weird niche characters, and general strangeness that make the game incredibly atmospheric and unique. On the other, tactical combat is sometimes challenging and requires a high degree of thought and skill while being incredibly easy at other times which may frustrate some players. The pacing between combat and storyline is decent and the battles aren’t long but the two almost feel like two different games, one where you’re sweating the right moves and another where you’re following along with a strange anime your friend recommended that no one has ever heard of. Regardless, the tactical design is something new we’ve never seen before and while challenging, it’s also a breath of fresh air in a typically stale genre. We’ve seen other interesting takes on tactical combat recently (such as the wonderful Unicorn Overlord), but this is a radical departure from the expected and that’s both commendable and engaging. At $25, it isn’t a huge cash commitment either so if you’re into strategy and you like the aesthetic, this is a no-brainer of a purchase that is definitely going to surprise a lot of gamers!
This review is based on a digital copy of Demonschool provided by the publisher. It was played on PC via Steam where it ran exceptionally smoothly and on Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes. Demonschool is also available for Playstation, Xbox, and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.