A few thoughts on... Demonicon

Demonicon (2013) developed by Noumena Studios and published by Kalypso Media.

Demonicon (released in 2013) is a third person action/rpg that is based in the world of The Dark Eye, a German tabletop roleplaying game first published in 1989. This world might not be well known outside Germany as the first edition of the game to be released in English was in 2003 with the most current version due for release in 2016. Demonicon deals with the story of a brother and sister who become embroiled in dark magic, sinister plots and the machinations of demons.

Unfortunately, even though you are introduced to the two main characters driving the story, you only get to play one, the boy Cairon, and a large part of the story (which is broken up into chapters) is trying to track down your “sister” after she leaves town with a woman named Azaril, a woman who you are sure is up to no good. There are a few areas you’ll explore as you progress through the story, a mountain cavern, town, swamp town and finally the stronghold where you are reunited with your sister.

There are a number of side quests to complete along with the obligatory job board that can be found in both towns. The quests aren’t anything special but they do help you obtain action points. Demonicon is uses a classless style progression where you use the action points to increase your base stats, your skills and to unlock different attacks to use during combat. The magic system in Demonicon works much the same as the melee system - you spend points to unlock skills and can then spend more points to improve that level of skill, making cost less in terms of essence or increasing the length of time of effects. Both melee and magic skills are assigned to controller button and can be activated by either the trigger or bumper and pressing the desired button. This does take a bit to get used to but it does allow you to cast a spell and then follow it up with a specific melee attack right after. Players need to manage their resources in combat (endurance and essence) which are depleted as styles and spells are used. Endurance slowly refills on it’s own, but essence can only be restored by attacking creatures with your weapons.

All the characters in the game are fully voice acted, and while the quality of the voice acting varies, overall it’s reasonable. The biggest gripe I have with it is that the synching of the voice to the facial movements isn’t particularly good. It’s not as bad as an old, badly dubbed movie, but it’s not far off at times. The graphics aren't the highest fidelity you will find for a title only a few years old. At best, you could say they adequate, but the character models do have a fluidity to their movements in combat and the hits with a sword or axe do feel as if they carry some weight, particularly the special attacks.

Like most RPG’s these days, you are tasked with making “moral decisions” from time to time. These turning points in the game don’t have huge impact until you get toward the end, when your actions do come back to haunt you as you reach the final climax of the story.

Overall, there really isn’t anything new that’s been done in Demonicon, but the setting and lore (of which there is plenty to find) does make a nice change from generic fantasy worlds. I spent an enjoyable 20 hours wandering through the world of The Dark Eye, and there are some touches that made me wonder initially what I’d gotten myself into, but by the end it all makes sense and you are left with a final decision, one that will most likely be defined by how you have played through the story. One thing I did like is that Demonicon ended naturally, where it should from the perspective of the character you’ve been playing (at least in my play through) and it didn’t try to tie up all the loose ends and put a bow on it. For this alone, I salute the developer, Noumena Studios (an internal studio for Kalypso Media), for not trying to have a nice neat ending.