Ok, so I finished this yesterday.
I enjoyed the story - in which you rarely made good or bad choices - but rather had to choose between different sorts of evil. It was either the necromancers or the demonologists, religious fanatics of the Twelvegods or the demon worshippers, taking away all hope from the people suffering from the plague - or giving them false hope and allowing them to be taken advantage of. Fucking your sister or... not fucking her :D. Basically, every major choice caused me to stop and ponder the alternatives. It is reinforced by the save system - that while irritating (the game autosaves at certain locations and plot points), encourages you to accept the - often disastrous - consequences of your decisions. It was definitely a strong point of the game. Too bad the ending always plays out the same, no matter which path you chose. And there are no ending slides, probably due to rushed final stages of development. A lost opportunity - I'd love to see how the world (or rather a small chunk of Shadowlands) changed due to the deeds and sacrifices of my PC.
The character development system can be considered successful transplantation of rich pen and paper rules into an action-RPG. The fixed protagonist, Cairon, has 8 stats, 4 of them strictly used for combat, 4 useful for interacting with the game world. Attached to those stats are skills that are constantly checked during exploration, conversations, almost every undertaken activity. You want to heal a sick man? Skill check of medicine. Find a hidden door? Skill check of perception. Open locked door? Skill check of lockpicking. Discover a lethal trap protecting treasure you wish to loot? Another check of perception. However, in order to disarm the trap, you'll need to pass a check for blacksmithing. Which is also checked when you upgrade your weapons and armor. There are skills for talking, plant-gathering, lore-discovering. Each successful check grants Cairon ability points (APs) that are needed to increase stats and skills. There are also combat abilities (several skill trees unlocked with APs) and magical abilities (3 offensive spells with 4 upgrades and a powerful buff, mostly purchased with gold). The good thing about the system is that every advancement was significant in some way. After reaching each level of perception I traveled around the city of Warunk to find all the new loot and hidden locations my PC finally could spot. After unlocking the next level of haggling I visited every trader to get cheaper prices (and additional APs) etc. Those frequent treks through the central hub of the game allow you to get to know it pretty well.
Ah yes, the city. Fortunately Demonicon is not an open-world RPG. The game has a hub structure and the most important of all hubs, to which you return several times during the story is the troubled, war-scarred city of Warunk. It's reasonably big with several districts - refugee camp, marketplace, upper town, east town, the slums and although some of them might feel a bit empty, there is still a lot to explore. The only problem with Warunk is that it's such a well-defined and characteristic location that the other hubs might feel inferior (which is totally true).
The worldbuilding is neat - the Shadowlands, the dark side of Aventuria is a much better setting than the generic fantasyland presented to us in Drakensang. It's dark, grim, and rotten to the core, and yet filled with likable characters, like Parel Notgelf, leader of the criminal syndicate, or the wiseass Magus who dispenses lorebombs with grace and style badly needed in higher budget titles like Pillars of Eternity. BTW when it comes to lore, it's actually worth reading. The writers of Demonicon had lots of quality source material and were not afraid to use it. The writing is uneven however - sometimes very good, sometimes cringe-worthy (especially during early interactions between Cairon and Calandra). The sidequests are few and not very interesting, mostly of fetch and kill variety, but the main questline feels pretty solid. In what other game you get to set up a new Church, and write its catechism, by deciding the cult's governing principles? The doctrine of Borbaradianism is quite flexible and you can come up with quite different results (through my choices I molded it into something akin of a Sith ideology from KOTOR). Too bad you don't get to see whether your creation succeeds or fails in expanding throughout the Shadowlands.
Combat, usually the core of action-RPG is... acceptable. Not great, not terrible. In the beginning, it can be quite challenging but once you learn enough combat moves, gather some spells and upgrade the basic stats your Cairon will blast through legions of enemies without much trouble. It's not all about mindless button-mashing though. Different enemies require different approaches and boss fights usually also offer some interesting gimmicks. However, due to the fact that Demonicon's strongest aspects are the story, characters, and worldbuilding, combat simply becomes something you get through as quickly as possible to get to the best parts.
Visuals are nothing to write home about - Demonicon is a budget title and it shows. The best thing we can admire here is Calandra's cleavage. Plus, the "drawn" cutscenes are pretty nice. However, we're not graphics whores here, are we? Lack of outstanding presentation should not discourage us from enjoying the finer qualities of Demonicon - and they are many. I'd recommend the game, especially to those that value a good story. You can get it pretty cheap those days - with the 70% discount on Steam it now costs less than 3 euros. For such a price it's basically a steal.
