Welcome to Review The PS2, my eternal quest to review every PS2 game.
I don't have any history with today's game.
I saw it in my favorite video game store earlier this year, thought that it looked cool,
and took a chance on it.
It's called Demon Stone.
Before we get into it, you need to know two things.
Number one: This game is based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting,
Forgotten Realms, the same setting that's used in Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights.
Number 2: This game is made by Stormfront Studios,
who made the video game adaptation of the Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers.
Put these two together and you got Demon Stone.
It does some good things and some not-so-good things, so let's start on a high note with the good stuff.
Demon Stone is about a Slaad lord and a Githyanki general who are stuck in eternal warfare.
If either of them is allowed to roam freely they'll end up conquering the world, so a
wizard comes along and traps them inside the titular Demon Stone.
Many years later, three strangers, a warrior named Rennek, a rogue named Zhai,
and a sorcerer, Illius, come across the stone and accidentally release its deadly prisoners.
Now it's up to them to find a new stone and capture these warlords
before their battle ravages the land.
One thing I love about this story is that it doesn't waste your time.
It introduces the protagonists and sets up the conflict almost immediately
and every level features significant plot developments, so there's no filler.
However, the concise nature of the story forces the game to be short, clocking in at about four hours.
But the tale that's told in those four hours is paced well, it's fun, its given a cinematic
flair at times, and the attention to detail is impeccable.
No stone is left unturned as everything impacts how the story unfolds.
When a party member talks about their past,
their exposition isn't there to make the character seem fleshed out.
Their backstories are relevant pieces of information, since they play a role in both setting up
and resolving the conflict.
The party members show genuine interest in each other's histories and they offer each
other meaningful words of wisdom.
For how short this game is, they were able to develop these three well.
The setting is more than a location, as the lore of the Forgotten Realms is used to bring
the story to life and give it depth.
Here's an example.
One of the villains is a Githyanki, a race of humans who were enslaved and were subjected
to experimentation and controlled breeding until they rebelled and formed a militaristic society.
Powerful githyanki are gifted rare silver swords that have magical properties,
and the general you face in this game has one of these swords, and it plays a key role in her war.
This kind of reference, and the way that it's made the focal point of part of the game's story,
reflects in the writer a deep respect for and understanding of the lore.
Who wrote this?
Oh...
For those of you who don't know, R.A. Salvatore is a best-selling author
who wrote dozens of Forgotten Realms novels.
He knows how to write high fantasy, he's creative and he knows a lot about the Forgotten Realms
and D&D, and it shows in the final product, and it's convinced me to start reading his books.
Good on Stormfront Studios for going above and beyond to hire him
when hiring any other writer would have sufficed.
But of course, games are more than just stories, so we must move on to the not-so-good stuff
that this game does.
Demon Stone seems to lift most of its gameplay from the Two Towers, but it makes some changes,
so, let's begin with that game.
The Two Towers is a fun, competent hack and slash game.
You slice and dice orcs while running around mostly linear levels based on memorable scenes
from the movie.
There are also some larger setpiece battles where you have to defend Helm's Deep
or survive the ambush at Balin's Tomb.
Combat is fast, responsive, and rewarding.
Each character has a speed attack, a fierce attack, a knockback, a parry, and a ranged weapon.
Fierce attacks are slower than speed attacks, but they do more damage and can break shields.
You also have devastating attacks which have a slow wind up, but they do major damage to nearby enemies.
If an enemy falls to the ground, you can perform a killing move that results in a big boost to your skill meter,
which gives you more experience per kill depending on how high the meter is.
After each level you can use experience to buy new combos, stronger attacks, or more health.
The variety in the enemies is good, ranging from weak orcs that die in two hits,
to mighty Uruk-Hai and Cave Trolls that can mess you up pretty badly.
That's the Two Towers in a nutshell, so let's move on to Demon Stone.
The level design is about the same.
It's more linear than the Two Towers, but it only has one big setpiece level,
with smaller setpieces sprinkled around the rest of the game.
The combat is definitely worse, though.
For starters, there are no speed or fierce attacks, just regular attacks and unarmed attacks.
I haven't seen a single use for the unarmed attack.
It's slower and weaker than the regular attack.
There are no knockbacks, but there are still killing moves, which is odd.
If an enemy falls onto the ground, he's almost always dead.
In one level you get to team up with Drizzt Do'Urden to protect Mithral Hall from invading trolls.
and you have to kill the trolls by stabbing them with a weapon you've set on fire.
That's the only time in the game that the killing move is used, which makes me think
it was just a leftover mechanic from the Two Towers that they felt the need to shoehorn in somehow.
At least in the Two Towers it gave you a boost to your skill meter, giving you more experience
than if you had just slashed the enemy to death.
Devastating attacks are no more.
Instead each character builds up a hero meter that when full, lets them execute an attack
that is similar to the devastating attack.
This is a fine change to make.
The new attack is useful for getting out of a tight spot, and if all three heroes have full meters,
they can execute a team attack that's even stronger and affects a larger area.
The ranged attack is untouched.
Its upgrades, its targeting system, and even the way you can charge it up are all the same.
Now, since there are no fierce attacks, there are no shielded enemies, which makes the enemy design bland.
You get a melee guy and also a ranged guy and then they just get reskinned for different
areas or depending on the army they belong to.
The enemies flood battle areas and gang up on you constantly.
Most of them die after a couple basic three-hit combos.
I played through the game on the easiest setting, and after seeing how even the strongest enemies
died so quickly, I went and played on hard mode, and they were still dropping like flies.
And since the enemies are so weak and plain, the tiny number of combos you can buy have no use.
In The Two Towers, your combos existed to help you perform some kind of feat in combat.
Some combos knocked lots of enemies down, others let you parry into deadly counters,
and some let you break an enemy's shield and then follow up into a knockdown so you can
finish him quickly, or let you kill an enemy then quickly transition into another attack
on your next target.
In Demon Stone, the combos have the appearance of usefulness, but really they just do nothing,
since the enemies can't be knocked down and they have no shields that you're supposed to break.
The only moves worth purchasing are the wakeup attack, which gets enemies to back off after
you've been knocked down, and the riposte, which lets you block then counter enemies.
The riposte is more reliable than the parry-counters seen in the Two Towers, but its also a lot weaker.
The parry-counter required precise timing, but it would kill an enemy outright and you
would have to buy stronger counters to be able to deal with stronger enemies.
The progression system is another thing that was copied almost exactly.
Killing enemies gives you experience, but it also gives you gold which you can use to
buy new weapons, armor, and even more buffs.
Pretty much by the end of the game you'll have enough money to buy all the best equipment,
so there's not much of a buying strategy to employ here, like you'd see in an RPG.
Seeing the characters change their appearances and grow stronger is fun
and this a good way to keep you interested in the otherwise repetitive gameplay.
Demon Stone might seem like an inferior copy of a better game,
but it actually does something that the Two Towers doesn't do:
it draws distinctions between the characters.
I really can't tell you the difference between Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli.
They seem to have similar stats, they have the same combos and upgrades,
and my decision on which one to use boils down to personal preference.
However, in Demon Stone, everyone plays differently and over the course of ten levels,
they'll all get their time to shine, whether it be in a boss fight,
or in a level segment designed around their unique talents.
Rennek, Zhai, and Illius are different in their stats and traits and you can switch between any of them
whenever you want, and you'll want to switch characters often because they all play useful roles in battle.
Rennek is obviously going to have the strongest attacks of the three heroes,
so he's your go-to guy for plowing through baddies.
Zhai isn't as strong, but she can slip into the shadows to perform stealth kills on the
dumb, dumb enemies, who forget about her the second she disappears.
Illius compensates for his lack of strength by channeling the elements into his melee attacks,
he has the best ranged attacks in the game, and he has unlimited ammunition.
The only thing missing from this party is a dedicated support class, like a cleric,
because boy, there were some close calls and frustrating do-overs I wish I could have avoided.
And that's about all there is to Demon Stone.
So where do I stand with this game?
The gameplay is average.
More negative than positive changes were made to the baseline that the Two Towers set.
As a result, the combat is easy and repetitive, in a game where combat is everything.
Now, you can argue that my opinion is tainted because of my experience with these Lord of
the Rings games, which I enjoyed thouroughly in my childhood.
That's a fair criticism, but I also think it's fair to judge a game using standards
set by a similar game that was developed by the same studio.
If you disagree, leave a comment and tell me why.
I don't think the gameplay is bad.
I just think it's watered down from what I came to expect from this developer.
However, everything else surrounding the game is really good.
Since the game is so short, I'd say Demon Stone is worth playing so you can appreciate
the excellent story, the neat presentation and fun setpieces, and the impressive orchestral score.
It's worth just one playthrough, and I don't think it has any lasting appeal.
Demon Stone reminds me of XIII, another game where I thought the gameplay was okay,
but the rest of the game was quite good, but I said that that game was not worth playing.
If you want to know why this game is worth a playthrough and XIII isn't,
hop on over to my blog on RFGeneration and you can read why and also see some extra thoughts about
Demon Stone and all of my reviews.
Thanks for watching.
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