DemiKids: Dark Version

"Looking for a game...any game...never expected this!"

I was looking through the store at the used games and I saw this games cart. It had a really cool looking art. And I heard about this game before but I didn't know ANYTHING at all about it. After a long debate between some other games I bought this for 16.99. Nice Price! Well then I went back to the car to wait on my mom. Mom and shopping. >_< I popped it into my SP and wasn't too impressed by the intro nor anything else. Well anyway I thought this game was mediocre but then the first boss fell and I started getting more into it. More in-depth. I was addicted and still am. This game rocks!

Story: 8/10

A group of "super natural" detectives meets one day after school due to one of them finding a demon book! Oh noes!! DEMONS! EEP. <_< Er...anyway. So then they go to the library and do as the book says and they summon a demon! The demon attacks but suddenly two demons also come and help you. Well one helps the other character Jin. You are Akira in this game. After that the demon dies and Gale (your "guide") explains to you that you and Jin are....Demi Kids. Part Human, part demons with amazing powers. This is just the beginning of the story.

To sum it up you go around the world fixing time rifts and stuff to save your planet. I like it. Simple yet complex.

Graphics: 8/10

They are nicely done and everything. Standard RPG stuff but somethings could have been better colored and more polished. Nice graphics but not polished enough.

Sound 10/10

Yes 10/10 for a gba game. Beautiful sounds come out of the speakers and it's even better because you can buy "cds" so you can listen to the bgms wherever you are in the game any time. I love the music. At some points it even sounded like FF7 quality. Very Nice. I love Center Town's music alot. So far my favorite.
Basically the sounds are awesome!

Control: 9/10

Everything is basic here. Run around with the control pad. You can move diagonally which is a plus and was not expecting once I saw the opening scene but you can. Akira runs pretty quickly. Press A to talk to people. Press B to talk to Gale. (your main demon) Press R when out of towns and danger locations (where demons are found.) to ride Gale. All basic but good stuff. So why is it missing a point? Because the menus are a bit bland and sort of difficult to navigate.

Game Play: 9/10

Very good gameplay. I love the collecting aspect. Fusing is a blast. Never know what you might get. I like all the side quests there are. Casino, a trainer for your demons,a quiz master, etc. It's an RPG and that's whats so good about it. You walk around on the world map and go around doing stuff to advance the plot or train your monsters and while not exploring on the world map you are battling demons. Oh and did I mention you can save anywhere and you actually stay in the exact spot you saved. Veeeery nice indeed. Now for the Battle system review.

It's very simple. First you choose what you want to do. "Battle",where you do everything pretty much. "Auto", automatically play. Just sit back and watch the computer do stuff for you for a while. It ends after a bit. "Combo", not sure exactly what this does. "Run", well...er...run. ^__^ "Status", check your demons status during battle and "Recruit". I'll get into "Recruit" later but first let's talk about "Battle".

"Battle" is where you do everything oriented to killing,casting spells,using skills,etc. You can choose "attack" which is just a basic attack. Nothing special. "Magic", use magic spells. "Skill", use skills. "Defend", use this if you have nothing better to do to defend yourself from attack. You still take damage but not as much. "Item", use items. Some items heal, some attack. Learn your items well. And lastly "Summon", i'm not sure about this one. By the way, did I mention you yourself do not attack. Your demons do! You can have two demons on the "battle field" at a time. But when one of those falls another demon takes its place. You can have only two fighting at a time but you can have 2 extra demons to take the first demons place if it is KOd. Now onto the Capture system.

To capture monsters you use a poke'ball. Lol, just kidding. Actually you don't "capture" them at all. You recruit them. It's really simple actually. You don't even need an item or anything. You just choose "recruit" on the menu then choose a monster to talk to the monster you want to have join your team. Then you get two choices of actions you can take towards the demon. Example:Eye Contact or Friendly. There are alot of choices and each demon reacts differently to each one. Also choosing which demon of yours to talk to the demon also helps. Some demons hate other types of demons so know your demons well. Sometimes the demon will join without problem,sometimes they will get angry and give you a bad status affect or attack. Sometimes they will request an item. Sometimes they just give you an item and an automatic win. Very strange. And sometimes they er...um...run. Yeah. Well it's really fun and a very good system to get new monsters. Speaking of which there are 280+ monsters to collect.

Phew. That was long and I didn't even really scratch the glacier. There is so much good stuff to this game that I can't believe it. The only downside to the gameplay is that sometimes the battles are boring and the encounter rate is pretty high.

So there you have it. A very good game with some flaws of course.

I highly recommend this game if:

-You like RPGs
-You like games similair to Pokemon
-You like Collecting stuff in games.

Now here are the Cons all gathered up neatly and nicely for you:

-Graphics need a bit of polishing
-Bland Menus and are slightly hard to navigate.
-High encounter rate.
-Battles may get boring after a while.

So overall the cons are not too bad and everything else is very nice. This was a very nice surprise. I went in expecting an okay, more or less bad game and came out with a treasure. I highly recommend this game.

Scores:

Story-8
Graphics-8
Sound-10
Control-9
Gameplay-9
Overall-9

Buy, rent, or toss?

Buy!!!

Well thanks for reading my review, now get outta here and buy this hidden gem!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/12/04