[Demon Gaze] Is Well Done! *huff* *huff* You Can Do It

bss

Demon Gaze is an upcoming PlayStation Vita RPG where you, having a room at the local inn and no way to pay the tab, take the most logical course of action to pay it off --- dungeon crawling. Map and fight your way through dungeons in search of loot, befriend the staff at the inn on your time off, and customize your ranks by recruiting more party members you can customize. And then go back in the dungeon and seal demons to gain their allegiance in combat.

The game was a surprise hit in its native Japan, developed by Experience Inc., initially published by Kadokawa Games, and brought to our shores by NIS America.

Wait, what's this dungeon crawling stuff about? Maps?

Dungeon crawlers are a time-honored genre of RPG most easily recognizable as games with first-person dungeon exploration and lots of turn-based combat. Standing among the original greats are Wizardry and The Bard's Tale, with more contemporary examples including the Etrian Odyssey series, The Dark Spire, Unchained Blades, and Legend of Grimrock. Each game does things a bit differently, but to summarize, you should like pushing your party of characters to the edge of their lives as you explore dangerous vistas and engage in lots of combat, which plays out on a field with the enemies directly in front of you as you direct the party to kill and survive on.

To illustrate, in Demon Gaze, you will be exploring areas...



...getting into fights with all sorts of creatures...



...and having fun chats with demons.



You said something about befriending people that aren't trying to flay or immolate me?

Oh yeah, your R&R back at the inn includes being able to get to know the innkeeper and variety of shopkeepers. This is, of course, secondary to the business of exploring new locations and binding demons, but still. They seem nice.



So you create a party and stuff?



You create a party and stuff. As you start making money, you rent out more rooms in the inn and that allows you to recruit more characters. When doing so, you choose their race, class, portrait, and voice. There are five races: human, elf, dwarf, migumyi (a spriteish race), and ney (cat people), and seven classes: fighter, paladin, samurai, ranger, assassin, wizard, and healer. Aside from humans, races each have their own specialties and thus will be better at some classes and not able to choose others. Like with many dungeon crawlers, part of the game is having a great pool of allies, and making the right party for the job.

The main character has his/her own class as well. The Demon Gazer can bind and store defeated demons, unleashing their special abilities in combat or using them to help explore the labyrinths.

What else am I doing?

Mapping, for one. To a degree, all dungeon crawlers live and die by their maps, but Demon Gaze makes survival a bit easier by having automapping. There are some convenience features as well, like an autopilot navigation between areas, and the ability to draw routes and share maps with other people playing the game.

There's also a deep item upgrade system that expands as you progress, so equipment management is, naturally, an important factor as well.

This can only make sense to me in the form of a trailer with anime and lots of character profiles.

Here's NIS America's trailers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OduN5GzU1v0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6JrFMRZ4EY

Can I get a gamep ---

Short little clip of gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOJvP8A_fKA

I need this in my Vita.

You and me both, friend. It comes out in both physical and digital versions April 22 in North America and April 25 in Europe. As a nice little addition, Disgaea portraits will be available as DLC, free at launch, for use when creating your party members. There's also a limited edition from NIS America if you want a little more bonus swag.

vagrant_winds

You forgot to mention the western version getting Disgaea-character DLC.

bss

It's there at the bottom. I'm hoping to see some screenshots of it soon!

PLA

Fabulous elven fighter?

Didn't know what kind of game this was, but I think it's been mentioned in newsletters.

Edit: Here you go.

bss

Neat. That link reminded me, I wonder if we'll also get the IA Vocaloid DLC that Japan got. Seems unlikely that we'd get all of it, but maybe they can at least toss us the portrait?

And yeah, that elven fighter is pretty swag. There are a lot of great designs.

PLA

To clarify, any portrait can apparently be used for any race/class. By default, there are fortyfive portraits plus one set of paletteswaps.

Elves, Ney and those hobbit-things have higher base-evasion than humans. Dwarves have lower. It seems to be a hidden number, and doesn't increase by level, though there are evasive skills and equipment.
There are some pieces of equipment with racial restrictions. Mostly hobbits being too small, dwarves hating elf-things and elves hating dwarf-things.
Str, Int, Mys, Vit, Agi and Luck seem to be assigned manually on levelup. So it might be worth doublechecking what stats are actually used for what skills. Agi and Luck seem important to a bunch of classes.
There's also some system for adding a few skills from different classes.

With the Gazer in the party, there are actually just four generic slots to fill. The Gazer is fairly versatile, though. Naturally gains some Mys-based healing and Str-based damage in addition to being a weird summoner-person.

vagrant_winds

Does The Gazer use the default portrait we see in all the official art, or can you set a different portrait/gender for them?

PLA

He does have a paletteswap. That's all I know about it.

bss

You can set the gender and art for the main character. I assume race too but I'm unsure. Oz is just one of the prebuilts. Here is a female gazer with one of the other portraits:

PLA

Neato!

Hmm. I recognised the stat-spread before I looked at the kana. And I haven't even decided to get this game.

Raggie

This game finally made me decide to purchase a Vita.

I wish they'd include the option to add custom portraits, like in Elminage: Original.

bss

Raggie wrote: »

This game finally made me decide to purchase a Vita.

I wish they'd include the option to add custom portraits, like in Elminage: Original.

That would be pretty cool. I forgot Elminage: Original had that. I never spent much time on that one.

There's less than 50% of the limited editions still in stock at NIS America, by the way. You get your standard little extra things:

Raggie

bss wrote: »

Raggie wrote: »

This game finally made me decide to purchase a Vita.

I wish they'd include the option to add custom portraits, like in Elminage: Original.

That would be pretty cool. I forgot Elminage: Original had that. I never spent much time on that one.

You really should, once you clear the first mission and the world opens up, it becomes an awesome game.

Custom portraits add a lot of enjoyment for such a small feature, so I don't understand why all dungeon crawlers don't do it. I played through Elminage with a dream team of characters from Lands of Lore, Eye of the Beholder and Might and Magic. It was like a nostalgia gridder all-stars. So much fun.

bss

Siliconera has Disgaea DLC screenshots! PRINNY MAIN CHARACTER SCREENSHOT!




aaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

KiTA

Ok, decision time. Do I preorder the Limited Edition, or go for PSN download? I already have one physical media game for the Vita - Persona 4 Golden - and really thought I was going to be done with this whole "physical cart" thing by 2014.

I really wish companies would do Limited Editions that include PSN downloads instead of physical media.

bss

I like feelies more than I like not having carts, so my vote is (and already was) for the LE. If it helps you choose either way, Demon Gaze is less than 1 GB, if I'm remembering the right game from when I was looking up a bunch of stuff on the JP store.

Stock on the LE is down to less than 25% now, on the subject.

KiTA

Yeah, I picked up the LE. Figure if worse comes to worse, I can sell the physical on eBay and buy the PSN. The decision would be a lot easier if Sony wasn't still pulling the proprietary media scam they have going -- a 64 gb SD card would make PSN things a lot easier to justify.

KiTA

So, reading the wiki through a Machine Translator.

Missables, and other ways you can screw up your game:


Things you can fix:
1. The default characters are apparently nothing special, except... maybe they get some special VA work? Not sure. You can recreate them and the game will auto-apply the graphics and VA to them.
2. Items with a Star next to their rank are unique, you cannot replace them. Don't use Alchemy(?) on them or sell them. You can get new ones in NG+.
3. There's an event (something something dragon something?) that has a character with a ? next to their icon. If you progress the story without talking to that character, you miss a story scene. You can see it again in NG+.
5. There's a point / few points where you have to go either/or for item rewards. You can get the other set in NG+.

Things you CAN'T fix
1. The Hero's stats cannot be redone or reselected. Everyone else you can dismiss and recreate, not the hero. Since this is a Wizardry descendant it shouldn't be a huge deal though, right?
2. The Hero's default equipment "Gather Chain" (name's probably going to be localized better) is non unique, but... either you never get new ones (if it's a special slot?), or cannot replace that one, ever, so DON'T sell it. Even in NG+, you can't replace it.

Maybes:
1. Before Patch 1.03, if you had a unique item equipped or in storage, new ones wouldn't drop, even on NG+. Now they do. Yay.
2. Before Patch 1.03, there was a specific bug condition where plot items which were also equippable items could be destroyed, making the game unwinnable. Apparently they added a chest in a basement somewhere that will give those items back in this specific game ending instance.
3. AFTER Patch 1.03, apparently there's a bug with that same box, which means if you have a specific magic sword due to NG+, it can't give you a different sword from that chest when the sidequest sends you there, which causes the game to wig out and become completely unwinnable (something about demons replacing every encounter?). No idea what it's about.

Here's the data on #3 there, in raw Japanese, if anyone's interested in translating it for us. It may have spoilers, I don't know enough to know:

「プロメスの宝箱」から聖剣がもらえず、デモンスレインが消滅する(Ver1.03) † Edit
Ver1.03以降に発生するようになったバグ。
Ver1.03のバグ対策により、ゲームクリア時にデモンスレインが魔剣のままであれば、
「プロメスの宝箱」を通して聖剣デモンスレインが貰えるようになった。
しかし、プロメスの宝箱を開けてもメッセージが表示されるだけで聖剣デモンスレインが貰えないことがある。
つまり、「魔剣デモンスレインが消え、しかも聖剣～が貰えないため、デモンスレインが消滅し進行不能」
という事態となり、この状態のままセーブした場合は詰みデータとなってしまう。

この現象についてサポートに問い合わせたところ、
「保険として、魔剣デモンスレインのままでも「黒の檻」に入れるようにしてあります」とのこと。
なので、この現象が発生した場合は直前のセーブデータからやり直すか、
プロメスの宝箱を無視して、魔剣～のまま進行を続け、次の周回まで進めること。
その周回でのエクスブランド入手は諦めることになるが、進行不能になるよりはマシ。

デモンスレインが進化しないバグが再発しているのかは不明（要調査）

bss

Cool, thanks for finding that.

As for your last bug there, I'm probably not much better than a machine in the end, but you have the general idea right that it's an interaction between swords and the chest. (I didn't see anything about demons replacing encounters, but I wouldn't really trust me myself, haha.) Anyway, what I fumbled through to get, which is a bit spoilery but not that specific:

It is something like "Without taking the holy sword from Prometh [to use the translation's name for the NPC]'s treasure chest, (Demonslain? Demon's Rain? Another sword or sword fragment, I guess) vanishes."

I'm getting kind of lost contextually but it sounds like in the course of the game the cursed sword Demonslain becomes a holy sword, and I think the general gist of the bug is that if you have the holy sword in Prometh's chest at the point in the game where a message would pop up telling you the cursed sword has been placed in the chest, the cursed sword doesn't spawn. And without the cursed sword, you can't trigger the events to create the holy sword and thus you can't progress. (It is unclear to me if you'd still have your old holy sword or what's going on there, but it seems to hinge on the fact you don't get the cursed sword to spawn.)

The wiki seems to suggest not using her chest in a NG+ until you get the cursed sword, I guess? It'll probably make sense once you see the course of events in the game once.

In any event some safety saves should be made.

KiTA

More random tidbits:

Game uses the old OLD school Wizardry races, only renamed slightly - pretty standard for Wizardry descendants in Japan. Human, Elf, Dwarf, Migumii (Childlike race, probably a renamed Gnome?), Nei (Halflings turned into Catgirls, possibly a reference to Phantasy Star 2?). Migumii are healers and not much else, Neis are Thieves and not much else.

MP instead of Wizardry's old system.

Apparently there are these "Holy Relic" things that unlock special gear or ability choices that you can only use once? A lot of discussion of the classes revolves around if you're using them on that character or not.

Hero has a unique class, Demon Gazer. They get special abilities based on their demons they have summoned (equipped?). Their gear choices aren't as good as Samurai or Fighter. Looks like they get that long range ability thing that lets them attack from the rear (several classes in Elminage get it). They get some basic magic, apparently. Apparently they're all about summoning / equipping demons which do stuff during combat, via a bar that raises as you do stuff. The game makes it sound like you allocate stat points instead of them being random gain/loss during levelup, and the Wiki has several builds for Demon Gazer -- melee, berserker, summoner, support, etc.

Fighter is standard Wizardry Fighter type. Good attacks, good defense. Dual wields?
Paladin is like the Wizardry Lord. Standard tank.
Samurai is pure attacker. Dual wields, good against hordes (large but weak AOEs). No magic?
Wizard is your bod standard CRPG mage. Weak. Has anti-ghost ability (like Elminage). Gets dual cast later on. Redmage 4 life, yo.
Healer... Guess. Has anti-youkai ability (like Elminage). Has MP Regen skills. Unlike Wizardry's Cleric, these are back line characters.
Ranger is a standard ranged class. Apparently is really good against bosses.
Assassin is this game's Ninja. Apparently it can't outdamage Samurais and Fighters, unfortunately.

No mention of unlocking chests, maybe that's not a thing?

Anyway, my party is probably going to be:

Hero / Dwarf Paladin / Human Samurai
Migumii Healer / Elf Wizard / Nei Assassin

Which is pretty much what I used in the Wizardry PS3 game. If class changing is a thing that might affect things, and depending on how neat some of the various race pictures are I might fiddle a bit with the Paladin or Samurai's race, or maybe swap Samurai for a Fighter, Assassin for a Ranger, etc.

Bonepart

KiTA wrote: »

More random tidbits:

Game uses the old OLD school Wizardry races, only renamed slightly - pretty standard for Wizardry descendants in Japan. Human, Elf, Dwarf, Migumii (Childlike race, probably a renamed Gnome?), Nei (Halflings turned into Catgirls, possibly a reference to Phantasy Star 2?). Migumii are healers and not much else, Neis are Thieves and not much else.

MP instead of Wizardry's old system.

Apparently there are these "Holy Relic" things that unlock special gear or ability choices that you can only use once? A lot of discussion of the classes revolves around if you're using them on that character or not.

Hero has a unique class, Demon Gazer. They get special abilities based on their demons they have summoned (equipped?). Their gear choices aren't as good as Samurai or Fighter. Looks like they get that long range ability thing that lets them attack from the rear (several classes in Elminage get it). They get some basic magic, apparently. Apparently they're all about summoning / equipping demons which do stuff during combat, via a bar that raises as you do stuff. The game makes it sound like you allocate stat points instead of them being random gain/loss during levelup, and the Wiki has several builds for Demon Gazer -- melee, berserker, summoner, support, etc.

Fighter is standard Wizardry Fighter type. Good attacks, good defense. Dual wields?
Paladin is like the Wizardry Lord. Standard tank.
Samurai is pure attacker. Dual wields, good against hordes (large but weak AOEs). No magic?
Wizard is your bod standard CRPG mage. Weak. Has anti-ghost ability (like Elminage). Gets dual cast later on. Redmage 4 life, yo.
Healer... Guess. Has anti-youkai ability (like Elminage). Has MP Regen skills. Unlike Wizardry's Cleric, these are back line characters.
Ranger is a standard ranged class. Apparently is really good against bosses.
Assassin is this game's Ninja. Apparently it can't outdamage Samurais and Fighters, unfortunately.

No mention of unlocking chests, maybe that's not a thing?

Anyway, my party is probably going to be:

Hero / Dwarf Paladin / Human Samurai
Migumii Healer / Elf Wizard / Nei Assassin

Which is pretty much what I used in the Wizardry PS3 game. If class changing is a thing that might affect things, and depending on how neat some of the various race pictures are I might fiddle a bit with the Paladin or Samurai's race, or maybe swap Samurai for a Fighter, Assassin for a Ranger, etc.

Japans move to handhelds is KILLING me. I love their games, and this sounds awesome, but no Vita.

I have a 3DS but have a hard time sticking with any games on it because I prefer playing on my consoles and big TVs.

bss

I like hearing that you can come up with a couple different builds for the Gazer. That should make things really interesting.

I haven't thought much about what I want to do for a party; knowing me I'm probably going to build more than a party's worth of characters until I get a good feel for things. I'll almost certainly have a ranger of some sort though. I almost don't want to think about it too much until I'm right there in it and looking at all the stats, because I love that stuff. Can't waittttttttt

As for Vita vs. big TV, the Vita's portability and suspend just makes it so convenient, I don't know how people play tied to a TV all day. But I've been a sucker for handhelds since forever.

vagrant_winds

Bonepart wrote: »

Japans move to handhelds is KILLING me. I love their games, and this sounds awesome, but no Vita.

There's an easy fix for that.

Raggie

New screenshots posted: http://worthplaying.com/article/2014/3/19/news/91754/images/

Bonepart

vagrant_winds wrote: »

Bonepart wrote: »

Japans move to handhelds is KILLING me. I love their games, and this sounds awesome, but no Vita.

There's an easy fix for that.

To that end, a question!

What size of memory card would be recommended? I buy physical new copies where I can, but I live in a smallish town, so digital purchasing will see some use.

bss

Bonepart wrote: »

vagrant_winds wrote: »

Bonepart wrote: »

Japans move to handhelds is KILLING me. I love their games, and this sounds awesome, but no Vita.

There's an easy fix for that.

To that end, a question!

What size of memory card would be recommended? I buy physical new copies where I can, but I live in a smallish town, so digital purchasing will see some use.

I would recommend at least 16 GB. 8 GB is decent, but all it takes is one huge game like Killzone or Final Fantasy X to make it feel really small. Demon Gaze won't be huge but that "too large" game will eventually come.

vagrant_winds

Bonepart wrote: »

vagrant_winds wrote: »

Bonepart wrote: »

Japans move to handhelds is KILLING me. I love their games, and this sounds awesome, but no Vita.

There's an easy fix for that.

To that end, a question!

What size of memory card would be recommended? I buy physical new copies where I can, but I live in a smallish town, so digital purchasing will see some use.

64 or 32gb. If you're going full or mostly digital, even 32gb will fill up and force you to utilize the backup program and your computer to swap games/saves on/off. This is especially true if you have a lot of PSP and PS1 games tied to your account.

Anything less than 32gb and you'll clearly feel you're making a mistake eventually. Especially since a small but decent number of full games are digital-only, PS+ games are digital, all the Indies and PSN games are digital, and all your PSP/PS1 games will be digital.

Bonepart

Is it possible to delete a game and redownload it from PSN later, if you run out of room?

Donnicton

Absolutely. Keep in mind however that it's entirely possible for a game's license to expire off of the PSN store, and no longer be available to purchase.

If the license holder is a total douchemongrel(Magical Drop), or Sony finds out the game can be used in some sort of exploit to load other software, they also have the option of also removing access to it for people who have already purchased the game. While you have fuck all for recourse in this situation, this is also an extremely rare scenario and I wouldn't worry about it happening much if at all - just to make you aware that it can. (They can't delete it from machines you've already downloaded it to, however)

Bonepart

Thanks for the information everybody

Bonepart

Couldn't find one local. The Gamestop in town where I work was out of stock, as was the Walmart. I was looking for the old model with the OLED screen, but they didn't even have any of the new ones.

Ended up going to Amazon for it, which worked out since I got a better price on the memory cards. Wife said to just go with the 64G card and damn the price!

bss

Good stuff. Swing by the Vita thread, we'll help fill that up.

bss

New trailer, this one more about the gameplay features!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6JrFMRZ4EY

More screenshots, too!

KiTA

Is... that a vocaloid singing in that trailer?

bss

KiTA wrote: »

Is... that a vocaloid singing in that trailer?

It sure is! That's the vocaloid IA, she does a couple tracks, and Japan even got her as a DLC character.

RainbowDespair

When you say you can use any portrait with any character, does that mean the character's whole body or just their face?

bss

Yeah, I guess portrait is a bit of a misnomer, it's their entire design, though so far it looks like you only see their full character at battle results? Anyway, here's a picture from the Disgaea DLC preview:



I'm pretty sure they're changing the main character, in which case you must not be able to change their race I guess. But yeah. It's their whole body but it may not be terribly prominent.

vagrant_winds

bss wrote: »

KiTA wrote: »

Is... that a vocaloid singing in that trailer?

It sure is! That's the vocaloid IA, she does a couple tracks, and Japan even got her as a DLC character.

You shouldn't have told me this. Now if we don't get that DLC in the west I will be very, very cross. I need my Vocaloids slaying monsters and taking names.

I'm still pissed about the lack of Code Geass Tales of Graces DLC in the west, when the rights were owned by the same damn company.

KiTA

The rights were, but the voice acting work... that tends to be more difficult to license.

KiTA

Preorder billing just happened for this, so should be here in a day or 7. Can't wait to get my Wizardry on.

bss

I too am ridiculously excited! I've been avoiding knowing too much just so I can go in fresh and explore everything. I'm looking forward to builds and whatnot on this thread too.