I finally finished Demonicon, or as I like to call it "The Adventures of Mr. Bi-Polar".
So I guess I should write-up my final thoughts on the game. Ultimately the metric used to judge a game (or any piece of art) can be broken down to two basic categories: Is it technically good? Or Is it entertaining?
On the former, the game is for the most part a failure. Terrible animations, ugly character design, pitiful combat with practically no feedback, repetitive enemies, ham-fisted storytelling, a lack-lustre graphics engine with some occasionally nice lighting effects and the odd decent texture, banal, uninspired art-direction and completely forgettable music. Oh, and the checkpoints (the game auto-saves with no way to manually save, although it does create many historical saves so you can always roll-back if there's a problem) were arbitrary in nature.
On that list alone you wouldn't give the game the time of day. However, the game is in many ways one of the most entertaining I've played in years. Why? Possibly because the atrocious dialogue options, hilarious voice acting and the variety of graphical glitches turned the game into something well beyond the sum of its parts. It's effectively a soap-opera set in a medieval fantasy world with a main character who vacillates between disconnected concern, sarcasm and UNFETTERED ANGER. Coupled with the binary voice acting (softly spoken or yelling into the mic), the bizzare, single-minded obsession with incest and the preponderance of the main character's voice actor to scream "WHAROOOOOONG!" at the top of his lungs when occasional taking damage (and in one particular cut-scene, making it all the more hilarious) makes this a game that will have you doubled-over with laughter. My wife ended up watching me play through the entire game, 20 hours according to Steam, just so she wouldn't miss any of the hilarity.
Is the game good? No. Is the game entertaining and memorable? Absolutely, just maybe for all the wrong reasons.
Oh, and I will say despite being a dodgy PC WRPG made on the cheap in Germany it was for the most part a very stable game. I only had it crash once and never suffered any game breaking bugs or was forced to restart sections. You can't say that about a lot of AAA games out there.
