I first heard of Demonschool about three and a half years ago, during the PC Gaming Show in June 2022. At that time, it was meant to launch in 2023. I’ve followed news about the school-life tactics RPG ever since, through multiple delays (2023 to 2024 to September 2025 to November 2025), and my anticipation just kept rising. Maybe that was my problem. Maybe I expected too much from the game. But if you’re going to compare a game to Persona and Shin Megami Tensei, you’d better deliver. And I don’t think that Necrosoft Games accomplishes that with Demonschool.
Demonschool is set at a university on an isolated island. You play as Faye, the last demon hunter in one of the last families of demon hunters. Faye takes part in supernatural investigations, blood battles, and even a dreaded exam week. Faye and her friends’ (okay, maybe “allies” is a better term) schedules can be arranged to make room for hangout time and tactical combat training. By the end of the semester, you’ll have 14 allies plus Faye to make for 15 playable characters.
Because Faye is a demon hunter by blood, she’s the only one seeing creatures from ancient tomes haunting the school. Aside from her obsession with the demonic, she’s also preoccupied with being Namaki’s friend. She first tries to make friends on the boat to the island in the game’s first scene. Namako tries to distance themselves from Faye, who is quite pushy and impulsive. However, Namako’s family are also demon hunters, and Faye needs Namako to keep the island safe.
Character development, particularly with Faye, is one area where the game fell short of my expectations. Faye didn’t have much growth: she began the game being pushy and stubborn, and she seems to stay that way. Within the first five minutes, I grew tired of her stating her wants as though they were facts. She’s over-the-top, and not in a good way. Looking back, when I think of Faye as a character, I just get uncomfortable because she’s not at all relatable to me.
The monsters Faye fights are pretty standard to horror games, with demonic beasts and other hellspawn appearing for battle. She first fights against the cops and thugs, but those supernatural battles aren’t too far off. The enemies only really matter in terms of what their stats, including strengths and weaknesses.
The battle area is in a realm between ours and the demons’, where 2D and 3D exist in tandem. Battles take place on a 2D grid where players are limited to straight lines with their movements. This is where the first hint of strategy appears: moving your characters to an impactful place on the board. Every playable character has a specialty, beginning with Faye’s kicks and Namako’s debuffs. When Faye collides with an enemy, she deals damage and knocks them back one square. When Namako collides with an enemy, she runs through and pushes them one square forward. So your strategy is now movement + character specialties.
Battles play out in two phases. In the first, you are on the board with the enemies nearby. You are free to experiment at this point. You can rewind or fast forward your actions until things are lined up perfectly. In the action phase, watch the battle play out as you take your turns and the enemies take theirs. You must kill a specified number of enemies within a certain number of rounds, or you won’t get an A.
When it comes to the battles, I have been ranting to my fiancé for days. I cannot make it make sense. I rarely, if ever. ended up with an A. My main issue was running out of action points. Each move takes up one, then two, then three action points as characters take turns. Once the specific number of enemies is killed, all characters you’re controlling on the board must get into the glowing spirit end spaces before the round is over. And I can never get everyone onto those freaking points. I can’t even get an A in the tutorial.
What the game lacks the most is a learning curve. Games can be hard. Cool. But to begin it at an extremely difficult level and just keep it there doesn’t work. The tutorial level should be a walk in the park; I shouldn’t have to find walkthroughs and playthroughs to help me ace it. It doesn’t help the grid and the people/enemies on it often blend right together. I feel that if something were tweaked, it would be more accessible.
In this case, when I talk about accessible, I mean to players with every skill level in the game’s genre/category. The lack of a learning curve means that Demonschool isn’t accessible to everyone, because there’s a chance for players to fail the battle tutorial, the one place in a game that is supposed to hold your hand from start to finish. Demonschool’s tutorial holds your hand for two-thirds of the time then drops it for the last third, even letting you progress when you haven’t gotten an A. There’s something about this that I really don’t like. Maybe it’s just because I’m stupid. I don’t know. But the game is making me question my sanity and intelligence, that’s for sure.
Sometimes, when I review a game, I expect to be an outlier. And my gut tells me that will be the case when this review is published, and I feel free to check out other review scores. But I cannot in good faith give a game that I want to like a good score; I have to rate what’s in front of me. And what I see is a lack of character growth, a lack of accessibility, and a lack of clear graphics. An interesting narrative only carries so much weight. It quickly makes one exhausted.
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“Once the specific number of enemies is killed, all characters you’re controlling on the board must get into the glowing spirit end spaces before the round is over.”
I thought only one needed to? I’m pretty sure I’ve successfully completed battles that way anyway. In any case, I didn’t get an A on the tutorial either, and often didn’t in subsequent battles, but I also didn’t spend long retrying moves to attempt to.
I sort of feel since as you say the tutorial does let you move on without getting an A that it’s probably not that important – more something to aspire to than expect to consistently achieve. Though since you can undo your moves there’s plenty of room to experiment and try to.
The battles still didn’t click with me though because they are more puzzles than anything, and that’s not really what I want. So I didn’t get far with it.
“Once the specific number of enemies is killed, all characters you’re controlling on the board must get into the glowing spirit end spaces before the round is over. And I can never get everyone onto those freaking points. I can’t even get an A in the tutorial.”
This is incorrect, you only need to get one person onto the glowing boards. I’m sure that’s the main reason you are unable to get an A grade on most battles (thinking you have to get your entire team to the finish line), as I’ve gotten an A on every single battle except one and I’m 10 hours into the game. And I’m *not* good at puzzle games.
Mostly everything else you said seems like fair criticism though! I personally really enjoy the game, but to each their own!
Even if that was the issue they were having with the battle, it’s still a fair criticism of accessibility. That it’s possible to misunderstand and not be corrected is an issue of accessibility.
It’s always funny to realize what’s easy for you can be too hard for others and always for reasons you wouldn’t imagine.
I think when it’s something hard for you it can be memorable, and it’s easy to imagine someone else is smarter than you and can do what you can’t. But the opposite, your easy things, are more invisible, more of a blind spot.
I guess in a society that’s so concerned with competition, we’re used to being put in comparison with people who are better than us.sometimes followed by some punishment for not being ‘first’.
Anyway, because of said blind spots, we need better accessibility. Games needs take the effort to reach more people, even those that are usually hidden by our own blind spots