Demoniaca: Everlasting Night is a flashback to all those Metroidvania games of yore, with a slight twist. It’s got gorgeous sprite work that channels the aesthetic of Symphony of the Night-era Castlevania, but its soundtrack draws on rock and metal. At first I was put off with it, but after a few minutes I was in love. It’s a hack-and-slash game and the difficulty of a Soulslike.
The story for the game is pretty standard fare, a clan of ancestral demons is trying to build a new Tower of Babel. This leads them to sacrifice an entire village, but one girl survives. Demonic blood now flows through her veins, but this corruption gives her a terrible power. Sewing her mangled body back together, she sets off on a journey to avenge her brothers. This quest will lead her into a world of blood and violence and force her to face her own true nature. All of this setup is conveyed in the game’s opening text scroll and a few well-chosen, visceral images. Then you enter the Tower and things really start to go to hell.
Demoniaca: Everlasting Night’s hard rock and pixel art aesthetic is a sight to behold, I often found myself lost in the art and the soundtrack, and as readers of the site know, I’m a sucker for the soundtrack. It combines a nostalgic retro beat ‘em up flavor with the look of an 80s or 90s metal album cover, Seriously I could see a lot of this stuff on an album cover, and it would fit right in.
There is a deep and complex combat system that takes heavy inspiration from the beat ’em up and hack-and-slash genres. There’s gore everywhere (Lots and lots of gore), plenty of monsters will afflict you with status effects, and there’s a constant stream of new enemy types. You can check the command list from the pause menu This is must as there are so many moves and combos that I found myself forgetting what they were, or what I could do.
Starting on Easy mode if you want to explore the game’s lushly detailed world. But trust me this is no cakewalk, don’t let the easy mode name fool you.. It’s going to kick your ass over and over, Classic mode is just crazy, like why would anyone want to do this to themselves, you will die a lot, as did I. No matter which mode you’re playing on, save often! Don’t forget this, as it might pull your ass out of the fire if you get overconfident. Like many retro games, Demoniaca: Everlasting Night features complicated multi-stage boss fights. The first one sets you up for the pain you are about to get in the rest of the game.
The one thing that I really hated, and got super frustrated with was the game’s heavy focus on platforming can be a real nightmare, like rage quite inducing nightmare. I hope you like Wall Jumping, as levels require you to wall jump around 50 times to get where you’re going. If you don’t enjoy that then you probably won’t enjoy the game. This was my biggest problem, it just is required to much, like every level has some of this, and it was like ok I get it, you want me to wall jump, but can’t we mix this up with something else? And then there are the hazards that are levels, what’s that or it’s a landmine, welp I’m dead. Let’s try that again, or wait, I jumped on that wall and bounced back to another landmine.. dead… Thanks, I guess?
Demoniaca: Everlasting Night is a heavily flawed game, as I listed above, but it’s got some shining moments that made me enjoy it a lot. Just make sure you know what you’re getting into with both the game’s mature content and its platforming elements (trust me there is a ton of this in the game) The game’s combat system and hidden secrets provide lots of replay value.
The artwork and Soundtrack drew me in, but the game was super trusting with all the platforming, And Perhaps the worst thing, though, is that the load times in Demoniaca on Switch are atrocious. I’ve never seen a game with this long of load screens, I don’t know if it’s just not coded well, but you will get LONG load screens.. and after you die a few times, which see above you will, it’s not fun. There is much here to like, but a lot not too as well. I can’t really scream from the rooftops go buy this now! Wait for a sale, and give it a go, but be prepared to get frustrated and jump on damn walls a lot.
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