Demon Tamer

Foreword

I’m not sure why I played this game for as much as I did. Sometimes, I find games to be enjoyable, even when I know damn well they’re bad. Perhaps, it was the extreme unfairness of this game that drew me in. Most lewd RPGs I have played are mind-numbingly easy; in those RPGs, combat generally consisted of holding down the “Enter” key until I won. This title, however, kept me at the edge of my seat for hours. Until I optimized my party with the best gear, every battle rendered one or more members of my party dead. Demon Tamer is also one of the few RPGs I have played where healing items and spells aren’t overpowered. As a matter of fact, I’d say that they are underpowered. You simply cannot rely on healing during combat to stay alive.

It’s all or nothing for every battle. There are no mistakes.

Gameplay

. . . in a nutshell

Battle demons and monsters to tame them and add them to your party; I suppose this game is a bit like catching Pokémon, except the monsters are not as cool (or cute). Demons can be recruited as members of your party, or banged when you get home. Combat is otherwise turn-based, and not unlike most RPGMaker titles. It’s best to spam magic and technique abilities whenever possible, ideally every turn. There are no side quests, but you can raid cities for hidden monsters and supplies. This game is stupid hard — it took me two or three hours just to be able to survive a random encounter.

out the shell. . .

Catching new monsters is straight forward; captureable monsters are displayed on the overworld, and random encounters are not captureable. After defeating an overworld monster, they are automatically added to your party. You may modify the members of your party at any time. Most monsters are unable to be equipped, limiting their combat usefulness outside of being meat shields. However, a select few monsters can be equipped with the same gear as the protagonist, allowing them to be transformed into powerhouses. Demons are much, much stronger than monsters, but successfully defeating them is a feat in itself.

When in doubt, water-shock stun-lock to win.

Speaking of the stun-locking, there’s more to magic than basic elemental pairing (e.g. fire beats water). There are a wide variety of status ailments, which can be used to enhance (or negate) the effects of follow-up spells. For exactly, an enemy afflicted with “oil” is highly susceptible to fire damage, and will experience burn-over-time damage. This system is cool on paper, but I found it to be more tedious than interesting. Often times, you’re better off not wasting a turn or two “prepping” your spells.

Unless that prep is the water/shock stun-lock combo, the only way to win the game.

. . . but hey, you can play this game one-handed!

Wombat Woes

Combat is frustrating, slow and tedious. Basic enemies appear in large crowds, each capable of sustaining tremendous amounts of damage. If you run out of magic, it’s time to reset to the game. Slow attack animations insure that each battle takes longer than they should, and makes losing battles that much more frustrating. Enemies drop few resources, making it nearly impossible to earn enough materials and money to stay alive; don’t even think about trying to profit from battles. I was killed again and again and forced to reset the game several times to save time whenever a “surprise attack” nearly wiped my party.

The awful battle system absolutely ruined my experience from the get-go.

I suggest raiding houses once you’re capable of fighting more than three enemies at once. Villages provide a tremendous amount of resources. I found that selling potions is a good way to generate profit in the early game; be sure to invest into “Potion Recipes” so that you may craft Mana Potions to restock precious Magic and sell for a (meager) profit. Magic is the key to winning the game. Until you have access to Magic regeneration, you’ll be needing a lot of Mana Potions to get-by.

Magic does not regenerate. Ever. Unless you have a Ring of Drain.

You are intended to fight demons and monsters in a certain order. There is no indication on where to go, and once you initiate combat with a captureable monster or demon you can’t escape. You can’t even quit the game to revert to a previous save. I ended up accidentally sequence breaking a few times, getting into fights well above my level. At one point, a demon I never met showed up in my party for a cutscene, because I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed be yet.

My party was then wiped by her opening attack. Oops.

Story

The protagonist is intended to be named by the player following the first battle. The default name that is entered is “You”. I think it’s safe to say that the protagonist’s intended name is in fact, You.

During a stroll, You rescues a gnome named Dormer from an demon wolf. After defeating the monster, You recites to the wolf the rules of the Demonic Registry; it states that if defeated in combat, demons must submit to the victorious party as servants. The wolf is bound to his Registry, allowing You to do with him as he pleases. Dormer offers to take You to his secret hideout, where he explains the state of the world.

Gnomes and humans share this world, and both are either dead or hiding from the ongoing demon invasion.

With the Demonic Registry in hand, You hopes to repel the demon invasion. He had rescued the book from a library before it was burned to cinders. He deciphered its contents, and learned that demons “follow a simple rule of dominance”, and “when they are defeated and spared, they bound to serve the victor as a servant.” However, enslaving demons requires a ritual, which is outlined in the Registry. The Demonic Registry was considered to be outlawed literature, preventing its contents from sparing humanity when demons took the world.

Eventually, You meets (and defeats) a demon named Vianca.

She reveals that there are another four demons spear-heading responsible for the chaos. Apparently, they were brought to the human realm to as sort of refugees of civil war from the demon realm. As demons, all they know is battle; they take what they want, unless defeated by a superior force. She joins You’s side, and together they pursue Lier, an old friend of Vianca’s. She’s. . . less than eager to be claimed by You.

You intends on capturing an army of demons to beat-back the invasion, but he’ll learn that he may have bitten off a little more than he can chew.

Visuals

I was not impressed by the titlescreen; it’s a cluttered mess of clashing art styles and stretched portraits. From “Options”, you may adjust audio and gameplay preferences. To make the application go fullscreen, hit the “F4” key. Though there is no “gallery”, lewd artwork can be easily accessed in-game when it is unlocked.

However, the user-interface cannot be hidden, and sex scenes cannot be skipped.

Visual novel segments are rendered using fullscreen backdrops, which appear to be nothing more than photos with heavy filters applied to them. I strongly dislike this method of illustration, as it strikes me as cheap. The sprites are colorful and generally pleasant to look at, though at the same time they strike me as amatuerish. The monsters look derpy and character sprites childlike. There were many areas with jarring, visible seam lines where sprites did not line-up correctly.

The Goods

There are quite a bit of static CGs in this game, if I had to guess there’s probably at least twenty base CGs (with variants showing progression). The artwork isn’t remarkable; it is in my opinion that it is grossly amateur, and it’s what I’d expect from an aspiring hentai-artist. Compared to most other adult-games on the Steam market, the art quality is unacceptable. Less-than-stellar art is okay if it touches on taboo themes or is joined with high quality writing; however, the adult-content simply falls short overall.

. . . expect male-on-female sexual content.

Verdict

I don’t recommend this game. Sometimes I had fun playing this game. After the first three hours of misery, I made a team that could infinitely spam powerful, all-enemy attacks and send bosses into infinite stun-loops. . . if the RNG gods allowed it. Yet even with my power plays, this game was still too hard. This game is flawed in so many ways, and the payoff isn’t exactly top-notch.