Demon Gaze II review for PS Vita, PS4

It?s been years since I last played– or even thought about — Demon Gaze, but judging from what I wrote a few years ago, I?m struck by how much of what I wrote then could also apply to Demon Gaze II. It?s not amazing, but it?s also not terrible: it exists in the vast middle ground between those two extremes, somewhere right around the middle.

That said, I?d say that Demon Gaze II is a teensy bit closely to the ?good? end of the spectrum than its predecessor. For starters, the fanservice isn?t quite as bad here. Even if I don?t remember the first Demon Gaze that well, I do remember that it featured some scantily-clad prepubescent girls for no reason almost right off the bat. By contrast, while few of the female characters here are dressed in a way that could be described as ?practical,? their outfits aren?t as cringeworthy as last time, either.

The story is also a little better this time. Demon Gaze II may also feature an amnesiac hero, but this game does a better job of advancing the story without obsessing over that fact. It’s not the most riveting story I’ve ever heard, but it’s at least serviceable.

In fact, the more I think about Demon Gaze II, the more I realize that, in nearly every respect, it feels like this game is a redone version of the first game, only with incremental improvements. The combat flows a little more smoothly. The graphics are a tiny bit nicer. The dungeons through which you’re crawling feature more interesting enemies, and seem to be a little bigger. Name an area where the first game was a little lacking, and you can rest assured that Demon Gaze II improves on it in some way.

Which, really, is what you should ask for a sequel. Demon Gaze wasn’t the kind of game that was so bad that it needed to be reinvented from the ground up, it was so average enough that a sequel could make slight improvements and still feel like progress. Luckily, Demon Gaze II does that: like the first game, it’s solid enough that you can play it without being too disappointed, but with the added bonus that things are a little bit better this time around.

NIS America provided us with a Demon Gaze II PS Vita code for review purposes.