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In Demonschool, this apocalypse isn’t figurative. It’s coming closer with every passing day, making it all the more important to live every day of campus life to its fullest. For one of the last demon hunters, Faye, this means punching up demons in satisfying grid-based strategy battles that you’ll be speeding through to get back to hanging out with your classmates.
You’re working against the clock to finish assignments, defeat Demons, build relationships, and stop a disaster only you can prevent. The difference here is that you’re in the shoes of someone who knows how to enjoy every moment along the way. It blends the surreal aesthetics of 90s Atlus titles with the atmosphere of vintage Italian horror films, resulting in a sleek and stylish experience reminiscent of the early days of Shin Megami Tensei.
Student revelations
In 1999, one year before an apocalypse that only Faye seems ready for, she is shipped off to the Island of Hemsk to study at its University campus. A welcome departure from your typical silent protagonist, she’s steadfast, brash, and inspires you to make the most of every day of the in-game calendar.
While reserved photographer Namako is her ride-or-die, her transparent and honest personality makes it feel natural to reach out to all the unique students who become part of her black magic club.
Taking notes from the social link system from the Persona series, Faye builds her connection level with other students by studying together, spending time with them, and choosing responses that appeal to each character.
No hiding in dorm rooms or skipping freshers’ week here. From the start, you’ll need to build up these bonds to unlock connection stories. These teach you more about each student and further increase your connection level, making them the core of this university semester.
The benefits higher connection levels give you in battle also make them the only way you can stop the impending apocalypse – it’s a good thing, then, that Faye makes it feel easy to connect with her fellow undergrads.
Each of the students you recruit is packed with their own unique design and charisma that encourages you to learn about them as they are introduced during the semester. While hints of their personal lives underlie your interactions, the lighthearted tone of the story complements the bright retro filter that the horror is placed through.
The hellish yet vibrant nature of the world feels already strongly established, with the only exposition fed to you in small nuggets as you dash to try and keep pace with the story. Without a dialogue log to look back on what’s been said, however, you’ll have to try and commit its humorous, horrific, and heartfelt moments to memory.
Campus liberation
Your everyday campus life is filled with synth music, ’90s pop culture, and regular supernatural occurrences that offer a fully realised world. Demonschool’s calendar system feels packed. You’ll find something new to fill the morning and night of each day. A condensed UI makes it easy to locate a plethora of charming minigames, sidequests, and landmarks that all reward you for discovering them.
Just like a real university student, the time sensitivity of these events means you’ll be cramming during your free time just as much as you will in your studies. From karaoke to fishing and cooking, each small dopamine hit you get from the minigames comes with the added purpose of bringing you closer to your club members and some extra currency to spend.
Sidequests are plentiful and don’t last long, ensuring they don’t delay the main story and providing quick insights into each character’s personality and the world. Procrastinating on your studies often leads to finding these short but sweet secrets.
You’ll want to remember your studies, though. There’s a wide range of useful abilities that students can research, which provide a flexible way to customise characters. It’s up to you to decide which classes you’ll take, meaning it’s easy to make your classmates suited to your playstyle by choosing the best study for them.
It wouldn’t be a student experience if you didn’t have to wait three days to recover from the crunch, so spend your study time wisely and have your classmates specialise in what is most useful to them. This helps to streamline your battles even further and get your fellow club members ready to tackle some demons in their extracurriculars.
Analog demon saga
The fast grid-based combat is strategic and requires careful planning to optimise your moves, but the two phases of each battle mean it never feels too weighty. The planning phase lets you decide how you want your students to go, showing you what the demonic battlefields will look like once they’ve each sprung into action.
It’s easy to get too hasty with your actions, but a rewind function lets you quickly rebound and make the right moves. Being able to take a step back makes battles feel extra fluid and fast. Action points ensure you don’t get too overzealous, limiting your moves so that battles still require just the right amount of tactical prowess.
This may seem complex at first, but you’ll realise it’s as simple as the rest of the game when you watch your students kick some demons in the shins during the action phase. Seeing their attacks play out provides a lesson in how to get even better at combat, letting you naturally study each student’s unique abilities and how they synergize with each other.
These abilities complement each student’s personality and are satisfying to mix and match, allowing for the combat to have a surprising level of depth once you start aiming to pull off powerful combos between students.
Bosses each require a unique strategic approach that you’ll need to catch onto if you want to take them down as quickly as possible. This makes them the only tricky part of the otherwise accessible combat system, which otherwise makes strategic battles accessible and doesn’t punish those who aren’t used to tactical battles.
Seeing your plans come into effect at a breakneck pace continuously gives you that feeling when you win a game of chess, but with the added flair of your pieces being your stylish fellow students.
Imagining the end
Despite the supernatural phenomena, Demonschool is really about the personal connections you make with its memorable cast through Faye. Presenting the world through her opportunistic eyes makes the horror that crafts its world stylish and palatable, making you feel naturally comfortable with encountering hauntingly hypnotic bosses and kicking in some demon heads.
Drama and tension are met with gags and fun friendships in equal measure. Even when knowing that the choices you make and the connections you build with characters will heavily alter what ending you get, you still feel drawn to choose the options that feel right in the moment. So long as you seize every moment, you’ll be able to keep up with Faye and her friends as you follow the stories’ ever-shifting yet always lighthearted tone.
Supernatural and straightforward, Demonschool wears what it is on its sleeve while remaining approachable. Anyone who gels well with turn-based and tactical RPGs will find plenty to enjoy in Faye’s University life. School will be out before you know it, so seize each day and make as many memories as you can before the apocalypse arrives.
Reviewed on PC. Code provided by the publisher.
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