Parent's Guide: Demon Gaze - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Demon Gaze is a brightly coloured, animé styled, first person role playing game on the PS Vita, which casts you in the role of a demon hunter, who must scour the land to capture ten demons. With turn based battles, an experience and levelling system, and the ability to upgrade your weapons, it's a fairly standard role playing game, despite the unusual perspective.

With a cast of oddball characters cheering you on from the nearby inn, you'll set out on a quest around the game's various themed areas (a forest, a lava-strewn city, etc), as you go about luring the demons out of their hiding places. You do this by finding, and stepping into summoning circles, which litter the map. Enter the circles, and you'll find yourself in a battle with a collection of enemies - and all you need to do to "win" the circle is to defeat them. Win all the circles, and you'll force the demon to come out and face off with you in a battle, before moving onto the next area, and rinsing and repeating.

Although turn based battles are often a sign of an easily accessible role playing game, Demon Gaze is a game that come packing a rather steep learning curve, with enemies that get very hard, very quickly, and many that can kill you in only a few hits. Even turning the game's difficulty down to the easiest of its four settings doesn't make things any easier, as certain enemies can still kill you in only a few hits. While older players may persevere to find ways around this, those new to games like this may be put off if they can't do it and don't really understand why. Levelling, and defeating weaker enemies until you're a high enough level is the key to success.

The game's tutorial isn't the greatest at setting new players up for their adventures, either, meaning overall, this is one best left for older players, or experienced role players.

A game aimed at an adolescent/adult audience, Demon Gaze contains a fair amount of questionable content parents will want to be aware of. Perhaps the most extreme content in here is actually the sex, where incredibly scantily clad (and impossibly bosomed) characters pose, and take part in awkward situations. Whether it's the large chested inn manager stripping to her underwear and offering you the chance to feel her breasts (to prove that she's a real human being, you see), or the inn's male item shop keeper taking you to the bath house and parading around with nothing more than a loincloth protecting his dignity, this is not for the feint of heart. There's also implied nudity at time (see the screenshot gallery for more)

Despite its overtly sexual content, though, there's little in the way of true violence here, as even during the game's battles there's no blood. Enemies merely flash when you choose attack, before fading away when defeated. Swearing is equally rare, with the odd, and rare utterance of s**t being as strong as it gets.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: PS Vita