Kind of an old school dungeon crawler. Silent protagonist who you can pick their design, a craft able team of your choice, some hard fights and weird mechanics. I actually really enjoyed it. Easily my favorite dungeon crawler to date. Wonder how much that is due to the new item window that pops up every time you ind something new, there’s just something about being told you made progress that makes me feel better. Of course the core game was fun too, this one just spoke to the inner completionist in me.

This is a re-release of a Vita RPG, so expect some lewd content. Strangely enough, the original game didn’t have a cg gallery. Having played this, I get why. It kind of sets up expectations and dashes them thoroughly.

Story-6

You wake up in jail cell with no memories. A man wearing guard armor finds you and tells you its dangerous. He looks around a corner and his screams echo around you. You run and run, and escape the prison only to be attacked by the guard’s killer, a demon. You get help from an eyepatched women on how to deal with the threat and manage to seal the demon in your eye. You are a demon gazer, one who captures demons in your gaze.

Fran, the owner of the inn with that dungeon in the basement, takes the demon out of your soul and makes it into a key. She then tells you that you owe her money for saving you and giving you room and board in their dungeon. You need to capture two more demons to pay off the debt, which apparently you did sign a contract for. The game offers the appearance of choice on where to go and gets happy go lucky as it introduce its main cast. Loin cloth idiot elf, gnome wearing a shirt with a shirtless girl on it, a built weapon owner, a catgirl maid named Piney, and the weird mortician named Prometh who might be human. The eye patch girl takes you under her wing for a bit, as she was the previous demon gazer.

Shit happens after the third demon is caught and then the real goal is given, get into that big castle and stop the real big demon from reviving. It just so happens you need more demon keys to do this, so you hunt every demon around. Oh, and Fran falls in love with your mostly silent protag. It just kind of happens and is part of the main plot. Pinay and Prometh also get vague romance arcs as part of their sidequests with Pinay even calling out getting a harem of the main guy and Fran.

So it starts spooky, gets happy go lucky, then turns grim until it kind of settles in this half hopeless half hopeful lull until you reach the big bad. For a dungeon crawler it works, and the supporting cast really do a good job of helping the world breathe when your main character is a silent sack of nothing.

Gameplay– 8

Easily my favorite dungeon crawler to date. It managed what Mary Skelter and a few others totally failed, making a big part of your move pool actually useful. The quality of life additions to this version of the game help a lot with endgame grinding and traversing old areas and is just generally a smooth experience.

The positives are mostly from how enemies show up and how they are handled. Many waves of enemies can show up, with big enemies in the middle and weak lines throughout. They can shift their own formation and which line you can hit is dependent on your weapon. All hits are basically endgame only, and are too expansive to actually spam until basically you are set for NG+. So you need to mix line hit skills and spells with big hits, while your tank draws fire so you can survive. With some enemy types being resistant to physical until you use skills from healers and wizards, this means just spamming attack is inefficient. Accuracy and evasion are also pretty important, with many bosses needed multiple stacks of accuracy up or evasion down before you can reliably hit them with your big attacks.

Basically, the game actively works to make you use your entire move set, or at least more then one move on all your units. By end game it does kind of default to spamming either a single big hit or wave hit, but even getting to that point requiring mixing things is better then any other dungeon crawler I’ve played. It kept me invested and paying attention.

All the stats matter as well. Obviously agility matters for evasion and accuracy, but it also is needed to be around 25 so dual wielding does full damage. Mystic ups healing but also max MP, healer attack spells, and the Mana Burn skill which is passive MP healing that makes endgame healers have infinite MP. Int just does spell damage, same with how strength is just physical damage. Luck does a lot of things, and is worth raising on a damage dealer and a tank.

There’s also the artifact system, a set of separate equipment that give class skills to anyone equipped with them, and there’s no limit to who can wear what. So your healer can get the big attack spells, or your main character can get some actual AOE stuff. There’s even a bonus class to this rerelease whose whole gimmick is equipping more artifacts. So good customization of characters. Staves also act as infinite spells, letting the spellcasters do things at low levels.

Gear is easy to get, as the whole goal of the game in dungeons is to find demon gates. When you step on these you can insert gems and then start a fight. When you win you are rewarded gear based on the gems you put in. This is the main way of getting equipment and to progress the game, linking progression of gear and story together. You can then either sell that gear for money to pay the rent you pay each time you return to base, or convert that gear into mana to be used to level up gear of the same type to bigger stats.

There’s not a lot to complain about that isn’t nitpicks. Like a lack of side content. The only sidequests are two item collection quests that are based on maps. These maps are items you randomly find that list coordinates and a clue on which dungeon it’s in and which demon to bring. You then kick that spot to get an item. The two sidequests are mostly for getting the lewd cgs which is nice, but that’s really the only side stuff.

I guess I should mention the demons. These are basically extra equipment the leader of the party can summon or use special skills of. They all have passive abilities, like take less damage or get more xp and such and an active skill that usually does something similar. The demons can also be summoned to act as an NPC helper on the field. Summoning and casting their skills uses the gauge on the top left, which if it runs out the demon, if summoned, will rage and can attack the party. This should basically never happen. The demons level up with the party and are worth switching around to get their bonuses up for different boss fights and exploration.

There is a useless map marking feature they introduce early on. You can basically put down a sign with some words you select from a list. I just don’t know what use it would have. This isn’t a metroidvania, and the game is pretty clear on where to go most of the time. The signs don’t even show on the actual map, meaning you need to walk over them to see what they say.

Lewd-4

Not as much as you would expect. The game lets you choose from some presets on what your team looks like, including your protag. A majority of the female art is sexy women or fetishy stuff. That’s your greeting to the game. The first real cg is a catgirl sniffing the main heroine’s panties. This sets up some expectations.

Which the game doesn’t really deliver on. There’s around 4 lewd cgs, most of which come from the collection sidequests and are of Piney and Prometh, the flatter girls. Fran, the main heroine of the entire game, gets a single lewd cg.

There’s a small number of nude or sexual enemy designs and that’s about it. There is alluded to sex with the main heroine, but no cg follow up. I kind of get why the original game didn’t have a cg gallery now, there wasn’t actually a lot to put in it.

Final Thoughts

I liked this game a lot. The new item notification, team building meaning a damn, having my party morph as the game goes on as the magic attackers took over for the tank/DPS and the lead, and enemy groups leading to me actually using different skills. It’s weird to me how simple it felt for the game to be engaging where several other dungeon crawlers failed. I’m not sure if anyone else would be as hooked as I was, but I can at least say this my favorite dungeon crawler to date. Lewd’s definitely on the low side, the story acceptable, but the core game was great.

PC Save for Demon Gaze Extra

Saves to the end of game, ready for NG+. All cgs and enemies fought, maps fully explored. All artifacts obtained.

I decided to not do all items. I just don’t want to spend hours on farming items I won’t use. I considered editting, but apparently none of the cheat tables work on the current version and I have no idea how to add items I don’t have to my game. I’m only missing 3 maps, none of which lead to important items and everyone on the internet will basically just tell you to look up the spots rather then use the in game tools.

The real reason though the remaining items are all random drops from floating item points. There’s no way to weight the remaining missing things nor do I know which item pool they are in, so I’m going to cut my losses. It’s not a true 100%, which I’m not happy about, but luck based clears are a pain and I want to move on. Like it could be any enemy, any area, anywhere. With no clues. And with how little importance the remaining maps are, I give up. 99% will have to do. I’d rather cut and leave before I start hating the game.

If someone grabs this save and edits or farm the remaining items, I’ll take that and post it. I just don’t want to waste hours on basically nothing, completion number or not.

Gameplay: 8/10 Eroticness: 4/10 Story: 6/10

Completion: Beat the game, find the collection items, and farm gear and maps. I quit due to the 100% luck factor of completing the game, but that’s really what the end game is about. Farming gear by doing boss refights using the gem system. It’s kind of a pain since using the gems to up the rarity of what is dropped can actually loop the rarity back down to the bottom of the list, so it’s a balancing act. As your party level goes up the rarity of gems you want to use changes and it’s hard to pin down what you should be using to get the last few things.