demon son

Intro

"Demon Son" is a turn-based RPG that was being developed by william098 using RPG Maker XP that never got past the early demo stage. In fact, the demo for this project is so early in the development process that I question if william098 should have released it in the first place. In fact, this demo is so small and lacking in content that the only other project I can compare this one too off the of my head is "Suteki" by KAD. This is because the bulk of the content of the demo is just being able to walk around a few maps with little to interact with. Though, I suppose this game does trump that project in that it does include an infinitely repeatable training battle. So at least I know what the combat system was going to be like when it comes to the basics at least.

Story

Story wise the only hints we really get at what this game was going to be like come from the game's summary page since the demo itself is so lacking in terms of dialogue. And the few choices you can make aren't particularly story relevant. In fact, the only story element that might exist at all is you can start a few 'mistions' by talking to a dragon, but both of these missions consist of a single map with very little to interact with. And upon starting those missions you'll now find yourself trapped in a new area with no way back to base unless you load a save file or start a new game.



Strength

Sadly this project really doesn't have a narrative strength on display in the demo. I suppose I could point to william098's plans to create a story with branching paths that would have allowed the player to experience five unique endings, but none of that stuff actually exists. So it's a strength only in theory not in practice.

Weakness

The game suffers from a ton of spelling and grammar issues. So much so that I wonder if English wasn't william098's first language or if they were a young kid. At any rate there are enough issues here that they would need to be addressed. And sadly none of them are as funny as Trump's claims about 1,000 'hamberders'.

Gameplay

Outside of walking around a few maps as previously mentioned and interacting with a few characters. The game also includes a training battle the player can repeat an infinite number of times. Albeit that battle is pretty boring since the AI for the enemy tends to just guard. As a result it's pretty easy to win the training battle without taking a single scratch. In fact, I've only been attacked once while partaking in this battle. Which is pretty sad considering I've fought the training lizard at least three times at this point and it takes three hits to kill it.

To make matters worse the only skill the player has access to at the start of the game is a basic healing spell that costs 80 MP to cast. And while you do start with 534 MP. This means your still limited to being able to cast the most basic of basic healing spells a grand total of 6 times at the start of this game. Admittedly this isn't too unusual for RPG Maker XP, but I've always found the starting numbers in these games really annoying since they feel excessively high in my opinion. As if the game is trying to appeal to the player by making them feel stronger than they are. As a result the damage values have about as much impact as a hitting for 20 or 30 points of damage in the early stages of "Breath of Fire II". Though I suppose this is less a complaint about this game specifically and more of a complaint about RPG Maker XP in general.

Graphics and Sound

As far as I can tell the bulk of the assets in the demo are from the RTP or edits of material from the RTP. And even the edits aren't that noticeable beyond one of them involving inverting the colors of one of the starting character classes. A decision that makes me scratch my head since inverting the colors of an image rarely results in anything particularly cool or interesting to look at in my opinion. If anything it tends to just be hard on the eyes.

To make matters worse the mapping in this game is absolutely horrible. And I'm not alone in thinking this. In fact, the most complimentary statement I could find about this game's maps comes from Mary 4D:

I like it for some reason. But yeah, it looks like unfinished crap.

And for the curious the mapping is horrible because the developer really didn't know about the three tile rule. As a result there are a lot of massive areas in this game where the same tile is used.


My eyes!

And on the sound side of things the game is largely devoid of those. And the few that are there come from the RTP and are the standard picks for title screens and combat. In fact, the title screen and the training battle are the only places the game has background music. The only other sounds you'll here are the default bleeps you here as you navigate the game's menu.

Conclusion

"Demon Son" is a long abandoned project whose only remnants are a broken mess of a demo. A demo so broken and rife with spelling errors that it would take longer to point out all of those issues than experience the game first hand. After all, you can get through about all of the content in this demo in under six minutes in my experience. On the other hand it took me the better part of sixty minutes to put together this review.

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How to get this Demo to Run

In order to make the demo playable you'll need to paste a copy of rgss102e.dll into the game's folder. You'll then need to modify the line "Library=RGSS100j.dll" to "Library=RGSS102e.dll" in the game.ini file.