It’s impressive that PlatinumGames have managed to cram so much depth into a deceptively simple control scheme. Oh yeah, and the character designs are wonderfully grotesque. Finding and leveling your favorite yokai makes for an engaging diversion, while an elemental designation for each yokai (and each weapon) lends World of Demons a deeper level of strategy. Some yokai souls can be combined with a yokai minion for a stronger Merge Arts attack – for example, if you have equipped a kappa minion and collect a kappa soul, their powers can be combined for a more powerful attack. Meanwhile, dispatching regular yokai in combat allows you to collect their “soul”, which can be mixed into your arsenal for a weaker, single-use attack. Each yokai minion can be leveled up by collecting materials littered throughout the stages. Each yokai has its own attack on a cooldown timer – for example, the kappa launches enemies skyward with a blast of water, allowing you to juggle them if you’re quick, while others such as the umbrella-like karakasa have projectile attacks that you can aim manually. These creatures are plucked from Japanese folklore, and you can see that the art team have had a lot of fun rendering eccentric critters such as the mischievous kappa water sprite, the long-tongued aka-name (which translates as “scum licker”), and the nure-onna, an oversized serpent with a woman’s face and a broken heart.īeating certain yokai designated by the story allows you to unlock it as a minion, which you can then assign to one of two slots to take into battle. But what really opens up the combat options is the use of yokai.
Meanwhile, once each weapon reaches a high enough level it unlocks an Ultima attack, which allows you to land super-devastating instant combos each time the Ultima gauge is full. In this way, World of Demons rewards players who observe enemy patterns, while leaving button-mashing as a perfectly viable option if that’s your bag. As you progress, your collection of combo attacks grows you can also unlock heavy blow attacks, unleashed with a long button press, and these can be mixed into combos.Īn additional button allows you to dodge or block, depending on the character, and, in similar fashion to Platinum classics like Bayonetta, dodging at just the right moment when an attack is incoming allows you to automatically parry, inflicting a much heavier attack that can stunlock tougher enemies. The developers have achieved a surprising amount of variation in what seems like it should be a limited attack scheme.
#PLATINUM WORLD OF DEMONS TV#
And while it is fairly easy to pick up and play – and quickly makes you feel like a badass – World of Demons can be punishing on its advanced difficulty.īasic attacks and combos are mapped to a single button on screen or on a controller, depending on whether you choose to play on iOS (which supports both touch and controller input), Apple TV or Mac OS. Onimaru and other playable characters deploy an ever-expanding collection of extravagant combos, while your performance in each skirmish is graded on the usual Platinum scale, encouraging you to improve your skills and chase those S-rank scores. In gameplay terms, this is a PlatinumGames experience through and through.
Along his journey, Onimaru must defeat and then recruit over 100 varieties of yokai and expand his party of samurai, gleaning clues from each major encounter that lead him ever onward through ancient Japan and otherworldly realms in pursuit of Shuten Doji. This fearsome oni (demon) has cast his evil influence over the yokai, a collection of curious creatures based on real-life Japanese legends, and tasked them with impeding Onimaru’s valiant efforts. The story follows the trials of Onimaru, a samurai antihero with a dark past, as he battles to save the world from destruction at the hands of demon king Shuten Doji. It stands out as a must-play title on Apple’s gaming service, and more than justifies the cost of a month’s subscription if you're not a member already.
After beating the first chapter of this title, which had a surprise release today, I’m already intrigued by its setting and art design, which lean heavily on traditional Japanese folklore, as well as its surprisingly complex gameplay mechanics. World of Demons is an Apple Arcade exclusive title from one of the world’s finest developers of action games: PlatinumGames.
0 kommentar(er)
