PC

  News 
  Reviews
  Previews
  Hardware
  Interviews
  All Features

Areas

  3DS
  Android
  iPad
  iPhone
  Mac
  PC
  PlayStation 3
  PlayStation 4
  Switch
  Vita
  Wii U
  Xbox 360
  Xbox One
  Media
  Archives
  Search
  Contests

 

Daemonica

Score: 82%
ESRB: Mature
Publisher: Meridian4
Developer: RA Images
Media: Download/1
Players: 1
Genre: Adventure

Graphics & Sound:

The reports of the death of point and click adventure games has been greatly exaggerated, and Daemonica is a perfect example. While not the prettiest or most technologically advanced game, Daemonica does a decent job of presenting its grisly and dark murder mystery.

Daemonica is both visually attractive and technically unimpressive. The game’s setting is extremely dark, bordering on gothic horror. It boasts a very nice 2D art in its menu screens, narrative overlays, and user interface. The actual 3D graphics used for the game world are slightly more primitive, but still well polished and presented. The largest drawback is excessive load times that really slow the pace of the game down.

Because much of the gameplay is more puzzle oriented, sound effects are rather minimal. Music plays a far greater role in the game’s audio presentation and ranges from dark melodies that fit the horror theme extremely well, to jaunty tunes from the highlands that frankly didn’t fit the game’s mood. The game’s protagonist also provides a fair bit of voice acted dialogue. Overall, the performance was good and ranged from the good to the groan-worthy.


Gameplay:

If you’re familiar with such classics as King’s Quest or Gabriel Knight, you’ve already got a fairly good idea of how Daemonica plays, a throwback to the classic point and click adventure games. You’ll travel around the town of Cavorn, interrogating townspeople, collecting items, doing favors, and solving mysteries/puzzles.

Daemonica has a few unique twists of its own. You play the role of a Haresh al-Dorem, or beast hunter. Not beasts in the traditional sense, human beasts, the worst sort of psychotic and depraved serial killers. The Haresh al-Dorem have a very interesting leg up on the competition when it comes to investigating murders. They have the ability to craft special poisons that allow them to visit the other world and interrogate people even after they have died.

The potions require ingredients that you must collect yourself. Thankfully this is kept rather easy so you don’t spend lots of pointless time hunting for herbs. You’ll likely find enough just walking around.


Difficulty:

In the sense of scoping out the game’s difficulty level, it’s best to consider Daemonica as a sort of puzzle game. While there is some minimal and extremely simple fighting, you’ll spend most of your time trying to figure out logical problems both simple and complex. Ultimately, the solution to most problems seems obvious after you talk to enough people.

Game Mechanics:

The interface is pretty clean and intuitive. This is typical point and click adventure game fare. You should be able to sit down and play, if not the game’s entire control scheme is summarized in one screen. While you will be walking around a lot during the first stages of the game, you will be utilizing the game map for much of the later sections, traveling instantly to places you need to go.

The map was also the home of the only serious bug I ran into during play. If I attempted to open the map directly from the in-game interface, I would almost always crash. Thankfully I was able to safely open the map from the inventory screen.

Daemonica is best described as an interactive gothic murder mystery. Fans of point and click adventure games or players looking for a more relaxing game with an engaging story would do well to check it out. You can buy the game in stores or download it directly. A free demo is also offered.


-Alucard, GameVortex Communications
AKA Stephen Triche

Minimum System Requirements:



Required:
Operating System: Windows® 98/2000/ME/XP, Processor: 1 GHz Pentium® III or AMD Athlon™, RAM: 256 MB RAM, Video Card: DirectX® 9 compliant 64 MB video card with T&L support, Processor: DirectX® 9 compliant sound card, CD-ROM: 4x CD-ROM, Hard Drive: 900MB hard disk space

Recommended
Operating System: Windows® XP, Processor: 2 GHz Pentium 4 or equivalent, RAM: 512 MB RAM, Video Card: DirectX® 9 compliant 128 MB video card with T&L support

 

Test System:



Windows XP, Pentium IV 2.8 GHz, 1.5 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro with 256 MB memory, Sound Blaster Audigy 2

Nintendo GameBoy Advance Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Masters: World Championship Tournament 2006 Sony PlayStation Portable Capcom Classics Collection Remixed

 
Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated