Demon King Domination: Deluxe Edition

The Good
I played this game because Princess Dianne makes a guest appearance in Spiral Clicker and I wanted to see where she came from. I liked the basic idea of playing as the bad guy. The dialogue was very entertaining and the text was easy to read and fun. I liked the humour.

I played the game with the sound turned off - it's a pain when someone decides to have a nap in the room where you're gaming isn't it. The music was available to listen to in a sort of gallery and I tried it after completing the game. It was OK but not to my taste, a bit heavy handed I thought. Likewise I missed out on the voice acting but what I caught was OK.

In games of this type that is really the main attraction and this does not disappoint, I thought the artwork was excellent.

The Bad
Setting aside the pretty pictures and looking at this as a game there's really only one puzzle here. Gameplay felt like five variations of rock/paper/scissors, this was block/attack/heal/charge but the principle is just the same. It Is very well done but it's just not enough.

Basically the game boils down to five rounds of combat. In each round Princess Dianne makes a different fixed set of moves - well to be precise in round one she has one set of moves which she repeats a fixed number of times, and she does the same in the other rounds but the set of moves she repeats differs in each. The player has to counter her moves and either win or lose at specific points in the game to trigger the three endings.
One ending will unlock 'Hard Mode' in which the player has to battle Dianne once again but starts with much less health points. If they successfully reach the end point (that's awkwardly put bit it could be a win or a loss and I'm not giving away any spoilers) then they get the same ending plus a sort of bonus epilogue.

It takes a while, and a pen & paper, to spot the patterns in Dianne's attacks and develop appropriate counter patterns but ultimately it's all variations of the same puzzle.

The Bottom Line
So I enjoyed the game but I want both game-play AND pretty pictures. This title is very well done and it has very pretty pictures but I felt let down on gaming content.