This review contains spoilers
Demon’s Roots is frustrating. It’s a game I love, though.
This is a game I got recommended through a pinned post on social media describing it as "10/10 kinoge'' and "yuripilled." I don't know what kinoge means and I'd say more 9/10 but it's pretty damn yuripilled, even if it takes a while to get there it's really intense and nice when you get to it, was not entirely disappointed by this recommendation. The short description made by this post did not have the space to tell me everything else I had to deal with, so I guess I'll try to expand it.
Demon’s Roots tasks you with freeing people from slavery, denounces it, calls it out as a cause of human suffering and an atrocity and so forth, and a product of evil, but then dedicates half of its art and an entire side mode to erotic depictions of sexual slavery. This undermines both its attempts at being erotic AND its attempts at denouncing it and building a narrative against it, as presenting each scene of sexual abuse as tragic and sad undercuts the ability of the people who would enjoy such scenes erotically to, well, enjoy it. (I assume, at least.)
I have mixed feelings on noncon fantasy as a kink, but I don’t believe that anyone who participates in such a thing is innately morally bad or any more likely to commit immoral acts. I have respect for it at a distance, it’s not for me and it’s not something I can personally dissect all the way, but I have nothing against noncon fantasy in a context-less setting.
The issue I have with it is just the fact that it’s handled so poorly within the context of the rest of the game. To say “I am against these things in reality and am making this erotic piece as a form of fantasy” as a note before an erotic piece is normal. Bringing up the fetish in the context of a discussion on sexual abuse to expand the discussion can be reasonable. Talking about how horrific sexual abuse is while stapling a video of your favorite noncon hentai in the middle, talking about said hentai in excessive detail and half-trying to pass it off as an example, is insanely confusing.
The most annoying part is that when it’s not doing this insanely confusing dance, it’s genuinely captivating as a narrative. The characters and how they interact are memorable and emotional. People react realistically to their situations. It lands in a loveable spot between love-conquers-all and grimdark, a beautiful kind of bittersweet characterized by sacrifice and loss and things not going how they were supposed to but it all having been worth it. While its oppression narrative is handled a bit rough at times (mainly relative to the previous complaints,) most of its themes and messages are handled in compelling ways. Solidarity between the oppressed, community, hope beyond hope, forgiveness, the things loneliness can do to people, I could go on and on. The complex (positive) emotions this game made me experience are exceptional, it ranks highly on that spectrum for me. It practically makes up for all of the flaws in my opinion. I wish it didn't have to make up for it, but I'm still happy this game felt satisfying to finish in spite of its flaws and the times where I felt so frustrated with it that I wanted to quit. It was worth it.
It’s kind of difficult to talk about the good parts, unfortunately, because properly selling the emotional narrative requires so much context and framing that it just can’t really be elevator pitched. It also doesn’t help that when I try to verbalize my feelings on my favorite parts of the story I tend to start sobbing. Sorry I can’t quite get it down here, but it’s really, really good, or else I wouldn’t be talking about all my problems with it in such detail.
The gameplay is pretty average RPGmaker stuff, nothing special but I’m a sucker for that kinda thing. Points added for having fun skills and a good amount of those satisfying "doing everything right and getting a huge damage number" moments. Points off for the fact that most of the game is cheesed through stacking evasion on a character that can take any hits intended for other teammates, giving you endless (slightly RNG-based but pretty consistent) invincibility. Points added again for lots of neat optional content.
It’s also highly worth noting that the version sold on steam is an unfinished version of the game. I’m not talking about the sex stuff being removed I mean like, day 1 modern Bethesda release here. (For reference: this version removes pretty much all of the games’ sexual content in a often strange manner, assumedly to follow Steam’s now-removed rules banning the hosting of sexual content focused games.) This version is missing multiple gameplay features. Notably the difficulty selection is replaced with being given 80 of every healing and stat item upon starting, which feels very alpha-build-y, various character sprites and art pieces are missing, and by chapter 2 I gave up on trying to complete the game patchless after having a temporary, one-area, intense debuff become irremovable due to a missing NPC. It’s downright broken.
I wanted to try beating the default version because the artstyle wasn’t the kind I usually find sexy, but it was just objectively a worse version of the game. I gave up and installed the official restoration patch, and sped through the portion of the game I’d already cleared (since I’d screwed up my original save in hackneyed attempts to fix my issues.)
The “R-18 skip” feature available in the patched version is somewhat effective at dodging its awkward sex scenes, there’s times where you can tell they had a tough time trying to gloss over it but it’s not horrific. This does, frustratingly at times, lock you out of certain areas of the game, though. One is just a sex scene centric area that would be mostly fine to ignore if not for the fact it has some solid exclusive weapons and accessories you might be sad to miss. Another is an optional dungeon-ish area with a unique boss fight and strong rewards from it, and the last major thing is an entire side-mode called “Bad End mode” with a unique gameplay loop that (to my understanding based on guides, I didn’t play it cause the noncon scene orientedness turned me off to it) makes the typical JRPG combat loop a lot more tactical. This mode only gives one okay main game accessory and no other unlocks besides more scenes in the cutscene viewer, so it’s not the most lamented thing, but still a little sad.
So I guess my point is just install the damn patch and turn on R18 skip if you think you won't wanna see that. Ultimately I hope you can find the beauty in it that I did.
I really love this game, genuinely, deeply, which makes me hate all of the confusing decisions in it even more. If it were simply a bad game with a mediocre plot and whatnot I could just stop giving a crap but I love it and that comes with baggage. Grr.
This is a game I got recommended through a pinned post on social media describing it as "10/10 kinoge'' and "yuripilled." I don't know what kinoge means and I'd say more 9/10 but it's pretty damn yuripilled, even if it takes a while to get there it's really intense and nice when you get to it, was not entirely disappointed by this recommendation. The short description made by this post did not have the space to tell me everything else I had to deal with, so I guess I'll try to expand it.
Demon’s Roots tasks you with freeing people from slavery, denounces it, calls it out as a cause of human suffering and an atrocity and so forth, and a product of evil, but then dedicates half of its art and an entire side mode to erotic depictions of sexual slavery. This undermines both its attempts at being erotic AND its attempts at denouncing it and building a narrative against it, as presenting each scene of sexual abuse as tragic and sad undercuts the ability of the people who would enjoy such scenes erotically to, well, enjoy it. (I assume, at least.)
I have mixed feelings on noncon fantasy as a kink, but I don’t believe that anyone who participates in such a thing is innately morally bad or any more likely to commit immoral acts. I have respect for it at a distance, it’s not for me and it’s not something I can personally dissect all the way, but I have nothing against noncon fantasy in a context-less setting.
The issue I have with it is just the fact that it’s handled so poorly within the context of the rest of the game. To say “I am against these things in reality and am making this erotic piece as a form of fantasy” as a note before an erotic piece is normal. Bringing up the fetish in the context of a discussion on sexual abuse to expand the discussion can be reasonable. Talking about how horrific sexual abuse is while stapling a video of your favorite noncon hentai in the middle, talking about said hentai in excessive detail and half-trying to pass it off as an example, is insanely confusing.
The most annoying part is that when it’s not doing this insanely confusing dance, it’s genuinely captivating as a narrative. The characters and how they interact are memorable and emotional. People react realistically to their situations. It lands in a loveable spot between love-conquers-all and grimdark, a beautiful kind of bittersweet characterized by sacrifice and loss and things not going how they were supposed to but it all having been worth it. While its oppression narrative is handled a bit rough at times (mainly relative to the previous complaints,) most of its themes and messages are handled in compelling ways. Solidarity between the oppressed, community, hope beyond hope, forgiveness, the things loneliness can do to people, I could go on and on. The complex (positive) emotions this game made me experience are exceptional, it ranks highly on that spectrum for me. It practically makes up for all of the flaws in my opinion. I wish it didn't have to make up for it, but I'm still happy this game felt satisfying to finish in spite of its flaws and the times where I felt so frustrated with it that I wanted to quit. It was worth it.
It’s kind of difficult to talk about the good parts, unfortunately, because properly selling the emotional narrative requires so much context and framing that it just can’t really be elevator pitched. It also doesn’t help that when I try to verbalize my feelings on my favorite parts of the story I tend to start sobbing. Sorry I can’t quite get it down here, but it’s really, really good, or else I wouldn’t be talking about all my problems with it in such detail.
The gameplay is pretty average RPGmaker stuff, nothing special but I’m a sucker for that kinda thing. Points added for having fun skills and a good amount of those satisfying "doing everything right and getting a huge damage number" moments. Points off for the fact that most of the game is cheesed through stacking evasion on a character that can take any hits intended for other teammates, giving you endless (slightly RNG-based but pretty consistent) invincibility. Points added again for lots of neat optional content.
It’s also highly worth noting that the version sold on steam is an unfinished version of the game. I’m not talking about the sex stuff being removed I mean like, day 1 modern Bethesda release here. (For reference: this version removes pretty much all of the games’ sexual content in a often strange manner, assumedly to follow Steam’s now-removed rules banning the hosting of sexual content focused games.) This version is missing multiple gameplay features. Notably the difficulty selection is replaced with being given 80 of every healing and stat item upon starting, which feels very alpha-build-y, various character sprites and art pieces are missing, and by chapter 2 I gave up on trying to complete the game patchless after having a temporary, one-area, intense debuff become irremovable due to a missing NPC. It’s downright broken.
I wanted to try beating the default version because the artstyle wasn’t the kind I usually find sexy, but it was just objectively a worse version of the game. I gave up and installed the official restoration patch, and sped through the portion of the game I’d already cleared (since I’d screwed up my original save in hackneyed attempts to fix my issues.)
The “R-18 skip” feature available in the patched version is somewhat effective at dodging its awkward sex scenes, there’s times where you can tell they had a tough time trying to gloss over it but it’s not horrific. This does, frustratingly at times, lock you out of certain areas of the game, though. One is just a sex scene centric area that would be mostly fine to ignore if not for the fact it has some solid exclusive weapons and accessories you might be sad to miss. Another is an optional dungeon-ish area with a unique boss fight and strong rewards from it, and the last major thing is an entire side-mode called “Bad End mode” with a unique gameplay loop that (to my understanding based on guides, I didn’t play it cause the noncon scene orientedness turned me off to it) makes the typical JRPG combat loop a lot more tactical. This mode only gives one okay main game accessory and no other unlocks besides more scenes in the cutscene viewer, so it’s not the most lamented thing, but still a little sad.
So I guess my point is just install the damn patch and turn on R18 skip if you think you won't wanna see that. Ultimately I hope you can find the beauty in it that I did.
I really love this game, genuinely, deeply, which makes me hate all of the confusing decisions in it even more. If it were simply a bad game with a mediocre plot and whatnot I could just stop giving a crap but I love it and that comes with baggage. Grr.