This is, hands down, my favorite jrpg of all time. It is genuinely something that has to be played for yourself to understand. The positive reviews on this game are 100% serious, and 100% deserved.

I'm actually going to put some effort into this review, due to how much this game means to me. I'll start off with a synopsis of the early game, then an explanation of the flaws I think this game has, then move on to what makes it such an incredible experience.



The story of Demons Roots sounds like a fairly cliche plot on the surface, if flipped to the opposite perspective from what you'd normally see, but it goes beyond the cliches as the story goes forward. It WILL defy your expectations.

A thousand years ago, demons were driven into an underground dark realm by humans who rose against them. The Demon Lord fell, and his generals, the Remnants, took command of demonkind and lead them to safety below ground. Over the centuries, they've dealt with starvation, the loss of the members of their race that could create new demons, and, in a final twist to the knife, the dark realm began to break down around them, threatening to finally drive them extinct.

In a last ditch effort to survive, the Remnants organized all the demons who could fight into an army with the goal of conquering a country on the surface to call their own. The protagonist, Deathpolca, a demon with the appearance of a young woman, is the lynchpin in their plan, with her role not only being that of a conqueror, but a diplomat, in the hopes that they can broker peace with humanity after getting a country of their own.

As Polca infiltrates the surrounding countries to gather information and subjugate hostile rulers, she learns more about the continent-spanning Empire that will be their main enemy: Abject poverty. Rampant slavery. Slaves sent to a dark prison, and thrown into a labyrinth filled with monsters just to entertain the free people of the Empire. And more than half of the Empire's population is comprised of these slaves. The demons are their only hope of ever being free, and they become something of a secondary priority to Polca.

Demons Roots is a tale of forgiveness, compassion, sacrifice, and the consequences of cycles of revenge.



The only real issues I had with this game during my time with it were very minor. The most glaring one is the combat system. It's not bad, but it's pretty standard fare for an RPGMaker title. If you've ever played one, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The other issue was with some of the music tracks momentarily cutting out or not looping properly, and instead coming to a full stop and restarting. Thankfully, this is a fairly rare issue, with the original music the game has generally not suffering from this, though it is something you will notice in your playthrough. And that's really it for the negatives. Not much to speak of at all.

Also, if you buy this game because it's an H game, you WILL be disappointed. The H content is only a side focus of the game, with only a handful of scenes being part of the main plot, and most of them (with a couple notable exceptions) being used less to titillate, and more to show the bleak cruelty of the game's setting.



There is so much to go over in this section, that I'll be splitting it up into multiple categories. These will be Writing, Characters, and Music. I will not be going too deep into spoilers for Story or Characters, though I may go through things that happen within the first few chapters of the game, just to emphasize the excellent work that Akaimato / Quick Nail Aristocrat put into making this.



The writing is fantastic, with no loose ends I can think of. Every scene has a purpose, and even small lines that seem like jokes or throwaway fluff end up coming back HOURS later. Early on in the game, Deathpolca plays a piano for a character who is a guest in her home, in what seems to be just a whim of hers, only for the significance of the moment to come back more than 2/3rds of the way through the game. The writing is filled with little touches like these, and it rewards players who pay attention.

The characters have clear and consistent motivations, without any sudden character changes for the sake of shoehorning a clumsy plot in. EVERYTHING is planned out meticulously, and comes together perfectly.


I cannot think of a character in this game that I did not love. The main cast are all incredible, and are written in a way that, just by seeing a line, you can tell the character by the way they speak, and they do it without falling back onto unrealistic verbal tics like so many games do. Every character has a role in the group, not only in terms of the combat, but the role they play in the team during the story. They all work off of each other well, with Deathpolca and the serial killer Lily Killer working off of each other's personalities especially well. They all have satisfying character arcs, many of them, bar one, taking many chapters of the game before they truly resolve.

Even the side characters too minor to have artwork of them are endearing, from the maid of the manor that Deathpolca commandeers begrudgingly and snarkily listening to her new mistress, to the slave Deathpolca saved from being assaulted, who turns into a wandering merchant, obsessed with her savior, somehow always arriving at new locations before us, no matter how impenetrable they are. No character is wasted, and they all contribute something special to the experience.

The main villain, the Emperor, is a terrifying, enigmatic presence throughout most of the game, and is an absolute bastard of a villain in the best and worst ways possible.


While most of the music in the game is stock music you've likely heard in other rpgmaker games before, it's all used incredibly well, with none of it feeling out of place or distracting. That's not why the music is in the Good section, though. That's all thanks to Shade, a composer known for making music for the Rance series. Shade made 7 original songs for this game, including both main battle themes, three boss themes, and my favorite of all, Blossom, the theme of one of the best moments in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTdDVLvfRrw

I found myself listening to the soundtrack regularly for months after playing, just to relive the moments that got ingrained in my mind with it.



This game caught me at a pretty bad point in my life that nothing was really helping me out with mentally. I had been isolated for two months, and was just caught in a spiral. This game, with the love and care put into it, the characters, the themes and messages of the game all just got to me and dragged me up out of it. Demons Roots is a game that takes place in an oppressively hopeless setting. Everything is bad, and is set to get worse. But the ultimate messages of the game are ones of freedom and hope. Of forgiving others, and working together. Of being faced with heart-wrenching loss, despair, and powerlessness, and finding the strength to stand back up and keep moving in the face of it.

It's a game that found me in a dark place, and helped me climb my way out of it.

And it's a game that I really hope you'll give a chance, too.