Daemonica: Medieval Mystery
Company: Meridian4
Daemonica is an adventure game placed in medieval Europe and with an RPG-like feel. Your task in Daemonica is to find a killer who has recently taken the life of a young girl. You play as a member of a secret society, the Beast Hunters. You and your brothers have a rare gift that enables you to talk to and interact with the dead. It is your brotherhood's mission to go from town to town looking for and bringing to justice mass murderers. Your character, Nicholas Farepoynt, is confronted with what seems to be a routine case -- but this murderer is something more, and there is something very different about the killings which he performs.
I said earlier that Daemonica has an RPG feel to it. It definitely does not fit the standard look of most adventure titles. Instead, this game presents the fixed, three-quarter view found in many older RPGs, and quite frankly, the game feels like it was developed in a program akin to Agetec's RPG Maker series. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The graphics are good, and everything from the rain to the towns and characters give enough life to the game to make it believable. Adding to the game's RPG feel, you will be able to gather and mix herbs that will help your increase your health (because you will go into battle occasionally) as well as allow you to talk to the dead. You will also learn new recipes as you progress through the game. These new potions should become valuable tools in your hunt for the mass-murderer you are trying to bring to justice. Nicholas will also have a dagger and a journal to accompany him on his journey. The journal is where you will be able to read any notes, conversations, recipes and rituals you have gathered throughout your adventure, while the dagger is for those occasional fights.
Daemonica seems like it will be a very large game, and as the events unfold, you will not only try to solve the mystery of the dead girl, but you will also have to figure out why the townspeople are starting to go crazy and how this new phenomenon fits into your current case. The world seemed immense and the character models seem to have enough detail in them so I could tell one person from another. While roaming around, it was also easy to discern which types of plants I could collect for my various potions. It was almost as if these interactive plants put off a faint light of their own to grab my attention. It was a nice detail -- especially when walking through a forest or other plant-heavy landscape.
The Daemonica demo supported several subtitles (English, Spanish and French), and this was good because the optional voiceover came only in Czech. Hopefully the development team is working on an English version of the voicework, but even if it isn't -- it was an interesting experience to have the foreign language speaking while I was reading the subtitles. It almost gave a foreign-film quality to the game. Daemonica has a few rough edges, its lack of English voiceovers to name one, but hopefully most of these wrinkles will be ironed out by the time the game hits the shelves in mid-March. Daemonica has a lot of promise as an adventure and RPG blend.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
Related Links: Official Daemonica Home Page
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