Demonschool was a very interesting game to experience. This is due to the fact that despite its presentation and setting having influences from the old Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games. It’s a more linear experience with a lot of expedience in between combat and story beats instead of lots of filler in between important moments.

Demonschool is a pixel art game with tactical turn-based gameplay. The gameplay allows you to attack and position characters within a limit per turn, and you see the whole thing play out in one sequence. This approach is very cool, and there are a lot of cool combinations to pull off. But between all of the combat encounters is a story that unfolds and peels many, many layers. I just wish those combat encounters didn’t get in the way as much as they did.

As Demonschool has a really good story, setting, and atmosphere, with some a lot of hit and miss with the character designs.

The Cyclical Evil

Demonschool has a rhythm that becomes very predictable after a while. Every day consists of 3 small narrative beats that have at most 3 combat encounters wedged between those moments. When you factor in that there are 6 days in each in-game week, and then capping it off with a big boss battle, it all sounds good for the usual RPG. Until you realize every story moment can feel dragged out, and each combat encounter requires a lot of strategy and time.

Despite how genuinely interesting the island and its many layers of who all runs the joint are. When choosing to continue to the main story, the option to either proceed to a lengthy cutscene or a cutscene leading into a lengthy combat sequence can become very exhausting, especially after over 15 hours in the critical path. If a lot of the encounters were saved for side content around the island, it would add to the variety of different things you can do before continuing the story. Such as finding VHS tapes for Knute or the Karaoke mini game.

But for the story and setting of Demonschool, Necrosoft Games did an excellent job creating something unique.

A Hard Knock Life

The story is about how the main character, Faye, embarks on a mysterious island to learn what she can about a prophecy that predicts an apocalypse that will take place on the final day of the year 1999. With the help of a friend named Namako and several others she finds along the way, they discover the island is home to a much bigger mystery. Secret underground labs, crashed planes with ghosts, and more that I cannot talk about due to spoilers constantly kept me intrigued.

The biggest highlight of Demonschool, though, is the gameplay itself. As mentioned before, it’s a tactics turn-based RPG, where you plan out your turn and watch it unfold in one go. There are a lot of different characters with their own quirks. But I always found myself leaning on Namako for her ability to increase the damage enemies take, and Faye’s ability to knock enemies into each other. My favorite character came much later; she was able to slice through crowds like butter and made later game content a breeze.

The bosses can be a mix of frustrating elements and sometimes easy-to-follow scenarios. Like the skeleton above that plants fingers that, when you break them, his brain gets exposed, allowing you to hit him. My least favorite boss encounter involved turning valves to deactivate a machine that felt way too time-sensitive. All of this is mixed together with a very good soundtrack that can either feel mysterious, or very eerie.

Final Thoughts on Demonschool

Demonschool is an excellent tactics turn-based game with a great story and setting. However, the repetition when just going through the story can feel exhausting. Side content in a game should be a treat you seek out, not a break you desperately need. The character designs can either have a lighter tone to them, such as Ocean and Kestrel’s outfits. On the other hand, you can have very basic-looking characters like Faye. Without spoiling anything, the worst character design, to me, goes to the real villain of the game, who looked more like a joke than a villain to me.

I do recommend picking up Demonschool, especially at its very generous price tag. Just be aware of some issues that I ran into outside of the general experience. Such as certain actions in the game on PC, crashing the game to the main menu. I could never find what causes it, but it happened on 3 separate occasions in my playthrough and is the first time I have ever seen this in a video game.

Demonschool is going to be available on PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and the Nintendo Switch for $24.99.