[REVIEW] DemiKids Dark

 

The Shin Megami Tensei series is best known for its mature intellectual themes and its twisting of mythologies. Whether you’ve played SMT: Nocturne, SMT: Devil Survivor, or the popular Persona spinoff series, you know that what you’re in for is a game that will make you rethink your perception of morality and force you to confront some difficult decisions about life, the universe, and everything.

And probably bring you face-to-face with genital monsters.

 But few people know that before such games made it to North American shores, we got one of our earliest tastes of the franchise in a little 2-pack of a game called DemiKids.

LIKE POKEMON, BUT WITH LUCIFER

 
True to trend in the early 2000s, DemiKids was released as 2 versions: Light and Dark. Known as Devil Children in Japan, the series already contained a couple of games prior to the Light and Dark versions, but we didn’t get those. We jumped into the middle of a series, and right around the time that Pokemon was really hitting its stride, unfortunately making DemiKids seem like little but an attempt to cash in on Pokemon’s popularity.

Was it, though?

Like the Pokemon games, the Devil Children games, even the Japanese releases, were published as pairs, immediately forcing the comparisons to the “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” franchise. And also like Pokemon, the franchise centres around recruiting and battling strange monsters to advance.

Unlike the Pokemon games, though, DemiKids doesn’t feature blank-slate protagonists to be player avatars; the main characters of each game are established characters with personality traits and dialogue that you see emerge as the story moves forward. The games also aren’t identical barring a few different monsters to catch; both Light and Dark have their own protagonist with branching questlines. There are many similar story elements between the 2 versions, but they are different, and to get a complete picture of the events you have to play both games.

The Shin Megami Tensei series incorporates demon recruitment into just about all of its games, in one form or another, so to say that aspect is a Pokemon ripoff is to ignore the entire rest of the series.

But enough about how DemiKids compares to Pokemon. How does it stand as a game in its own right?

A VERY COLOURFUL ARMAGEDDON

For this review I will focus on the Dark version of DemiKids, as it’s the first game that I played. It’s also considered the harder of the two.

The first thing you need to know about DemiKids, regardless of version, is that it was made to be SMT for kids. Much of the familiar Megaten elements that fans have come to know and love over the years are absent, though it isn’t too difficult to see the similarities even if the tone is different.

DemiKids Dark starts with the protagonist Akira, as well as his friends Lena and Jin, meeting a new student at their school, Amy. The group head to the library to find a book Lena claims will allow them to summon demons, something this group of friends has a minor obsession with for some reason. The incantation works, demons are summoned, and one decides to partner with Akira because he is, according to that demon, a DemiKid: someone who is half human and half demon.

For various reasons, multiple worlds now hang in the balance, as time rifts appear and destabilize reality. It’s up to our DemiKids to close the rifts and put a stop to Imperius, the tyrant overlord of Valhalla. With the aid of Lucifer and a host of demons and deities at your disposal, you must venture forth and save multiple worlds from imbalance and destruction.

BETTER THAN IT SOUNDS(?)

 If you’re already of a fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series, you can probably recognize many familiar elements of the story, however dressed up they are in child-friendly clothing. Imperius is the analogue for the Judeo-Christan God, engaging in his favourite SMT-related activity: trying to enslave everything. Lucifer is the rebel trying to keep the world (or worlds) free for the taking, so that those with strength can overcome Imperius’s demands. Many familiar demons and deities are available for recruitment, albeit with cosmetic changes to make them look less demonic or related to non-Western mythologies.

But even with so many familiar elements being present, that doesn’t necessarily make DemiKids Dark a good game. The story itself is somewhat interesting, trying to shut down the time rifts before they get out of hand, discovering the history of Darklord and Lord Light, fighting against Imperius’s tyranny. It had the seeds of a good story, even if some aspects were only vaguely defined and seemed to come a bit out of left field. As far as “SMT for kids” goes, it had potential.

But it was still a very tedious game, in no small part due to the way battles worked.

THE KILLING BLOW

 
The battles killed most of the enjoyment this game could have had for me. Nothing goes up levels by fighting and gaining experience. Experience points you gain in battle serve to raise your main character’s level, which in turn affects what kinds of demons he can fuse and create. Anything else stays at the same level, no matter how much you use it in battle.

How do things get stronger, then? You fuse demons to create other demons, likely stronger than what you were using before. But only by a couple of levels. Which means a never-ending cycle of wandering around and frequently running back to town to heal, recruiting demons, fusing demons, letting them carry you through the overworld to the next town, and then doing that all over again.

Nothing has any value beyond the moment. Everything must be sacrificed in order to keep going. Things become worthless very quickly.

Unlike the Light version, though, the Dark version has a gimmick that makes things a bit easier. Rank-up demons. This typically involves fusing multiple copies of the same type of demon to each other, and after a while (usually 7-9 fusions), you’ll get something considerably stronger than what you had before, something able to carry you through a few areas before becoming obsolete. It’s something. But it’s also tedious to do, because you have to wander around the same places even longer, recruiting so many versions of the same demon. You end up with a lot of money doing this, but aside from that, what it makes easier is counterbalanced by what it draws out annoyingly.

Gale, your main demon, is the only demon that can increase in levels, which occurs when you fuse other demons to him. He will keep his form (aside from a few plot-mandated “evolution” sequences), but his stats will go up; a nice boost, to be sure, but keeping him fighting fit means throwing a lot of random demons at him, which means a lot of wandering around and recruiting those random demons, once again inflating the game’s play time.

Progress comes in leaps and bounds, not steadily, and it makes the overworld fighting sections a chore to get through, taking away enjoyment from what could otherwise have been a pretty decent game. The whole game feels choppy.

TO ENDGAME AND BEYOND

 To its credit, DemiKids Dark does have some endgame/postgame content which adds to its replayability, if you really got into the game and want more. When you beat the final boss, Lucifer will approach you and give you some options for how you want to go about your life. The two options worth choosing from are either rebirth, which sends you to a New Game + scenario in which you can run the whole game over again, only with all your current money and demons; or more adventure, which gives you access to a post-game dungeon in which even stronger demons await.

So if you liked the game, there are ways to keep enjoying it, even after the main story has been beaten. Which, honestly, is more than a lot of games bother to do, especially games marketed with children in mind. The implication is that children can have enough of an attention span to not only handle a full RPG (something many of us have known for years anyway), but also to get enough into it that they’ll want to keep going even after the game ends. I have to give Atlus credit in that regard.

Honestly, it’s the level system, or rather the lack thereof, that kills this game. The story itself is nothing special, especially if you’re used to more mature SMT titles, but as an introduction to the series intended for younger audiences, it works just fine. The character designs are cute and occasionally just baffling, but not offensive. The music is tolerable, even if the battle music will get on your nerves after about an hour of grinding for recruitable demons. For all its lack of hype, you’d think it was a bland forgettable game.

But what it really is is something that’s decent but with a huge drawback that can easily turn away all but the most hardcore SMT fans, and one that made me really think hard about whether I wanted to put up with it again in order to play the companion game, DemiKids Light, and see the other side of the story. If the game were rereleased with steadier experience progression, it would absolutely be worth playing, as its worst flaw would be done away with.

But until that day comes, you’re not missing anything by not playing the DemiKids games.