Localisation Prospect: Demon Gaze

What to do today? Well I've decided to do some localisation & retrospective stuff for a while seen as I've got a bunch of games to play through until I can review them. The only problem with reviewing Jrpg's is you've gotta put time into them otherwise you'll unfairly review them. I could do with keeping an eye out for some quirky niche titles that aren't Jrpg's seen as they don't need as much playtime as an Rpg to review. Today I'm going to look at Demon's Gaze. Its been out in Japan now since January but was announced for localisation several days ago & is due in early 2014 on our shores.

The game takes place thousands of years after the events in the prequel Students of the Round, which appeared on PsP. You play the role of Oz, a mysterious young man with the power of a magic eye that allows him to seal demons. The game allows you to create secondary characters that can join him on his quest, with seven character classes and five different character races to mix things up from altogether. There are 45 character illustrations, which may be changed by "taking a bath". The demons in the game are part machine and have the ability to go on a rampage and maybe transform too. After you have defeated a demon you are then able to summon them to use yourself. 
Oz journeys into the dungeons of Mislid to kill the demons and gather treasure before returning to town with his loot. Loot can then be used to pay for the rental fee at the inn you are staying or to buy weapons & equipment for your party. Battles take part in dungeons, but the game's central hub is set in a town. While at the inn or in the town, You can rest or have conversations with other characters at the inn, inn, Certain characters you have a chat with can trigger event cutscenes too, so it may be worth talking to almost everyone that you can.

Gameplaywise I'm gonna use an excerpt from a preview on Kotaku - Demon Gaze is very much a dungeon crawler RPG in the vein of games like Wizardry. The basic flow of the game is that you take a party of characters into a 3D dungeon, a la the old Windows 95 3D Maze Screensaver, where you explore, battle monsters in basic turn-based combat, collect treasures, level your characters, return to a base of operations to recuperate and sell off excess items to buy better items, and head back into the dungeon to explore further. It's all very straightforward. My own experience with these types of dungeon RPGs is somewhat limited. I played but never cleared the original Wizardry on my father's Mac back in the 80's (P.S. Trevor sucks), and I played the Game Boy game Wizardry Gaiden 2 -Curse of the Ancient Emperor- so much so that I ended up with a party of characters with over 3,000 hit points apiece. Those are my only real points of comparative reference, so I don't know how Demon Gaze stands up to or compares with more recent dungeon RPGs. Sounds like It could be similar to Eterian Odyssey IV, which personally didn't go down to well with me. Lets hope that's not the case and theres more to it than meets the eye.

It all sounds like a decent dungeon crawler with some nice artwork (Judging from the screenshots) With my previous experience with dungeon crawlers not being too hot I'm not as hyped for this as Id usually be at the prospect of a localised Jrpg for Vita. Still, come 2014 I'm sure ill be grabbing a copy and reviewing it for you guys. Looking forward to it yourself?