Demonschool's Hemsk Island is a lively college town filled with things to do: fishing, cooking, reading tea leaves, tossing coins in fountains, fixing up arcade cabinets, and dispensing of demons with tactical precision, all set amid a Y2K-fueled analog community. Demonschool feels like a lockbox of clever ideas. Though the breadth of side activities sometimes belies depth, it's the core tactical combat, audio-visual flair, and found-family story that helps Demonschool clear the course with great marks.
I throw a doll at a zombie's head, dispatch it with a roundhouse kick to the jowls as I watch my friends sweep demons off the floor in vortices of blood, and celebrate by returning to town and petting a dog. All in the name of passing a college assignment that I'm juggling alongside deciphering a millennia-old apocalyptic prophecy and making new friends.
Horror games usually delight in making their players feel terrified and powerless, but that's not the only feeling the genre can conjure up. Campy horror might be more associated with late-night B movies, but it has its place in games, too, as with the new tactical RPG . And while it became one of my most anticipated RPGs leading up to its much-delayed release, Demonschool 's lighthearted take on horror leaves it feeling a bit weightless now that it's finally here.
The recent release of Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles gives players an updated way to try one of the best tactical RPGs of all time. But for as great and as influential as Final Fantasy Tactics is, it also owes a huge debt to another great RPG from a Square competitor, which was remade itself, without which it may not even exist.
