Galivanting across the Web, regarding games, you will often hear talk of "underrated titles" and "forgotten gems".
Demonicon is neither of them and if it stayed obscure (the low number of reviews is telling), it's for good reasons.
TLDR : buy this when heavily discounted if you want a short, wacky experience, and if you don't mind repetitive and unchallenging gameplay. And undead prostitutes, too.

Being based on a tabletop RPG, mostly known and successful in Germany, doesn't help, of course. But on its own merits, Demonicon ranges from bad to average in all areas.
Let's adress the elephant in the room first : it doesn't look pretty, even for 2013 standards.
There's not a ton of environments (you visit the same boring dungeon thrice, for example), the city where you spend a good chunk of the game is quite lifeless, the animations are atrocious- no one blinks, ever, giving every character with a visible face the uncanny soulless eyeballs.
However, as far as I am concerned, graphics and artistic direction can be overlooked in a RPG if you have a compelling story and fun gameplay.
You won't be surprised, friend, to learn that Demonicon is also lacking in those departments.

Our story begins when Cairon must go after his sister in a sinister dungeon, their father afraid that she would throw away her virginity in order to thwart his marriage plans for her, the whole bid to obtain citizenship in one of the rare cities that has survived a terrible plague and undead onslaught.
You'll soon learn that this is a moot point as Cairon and Calandra aren't really bound by blood, BUT their blood should never mix, their father insisted on that point.
Alas, Cairon being as bright as a bag of bricks, when he treats his wound sister, he doesn't clean himself and thus the vital fluids do mix, awakening each other's demonic gift.
Yes, I'm spoiling things a little but honestly, you shouldn't suffer any serious prejudice with this stunning revelation. The plot then follows a badly-crafted Chosen theme around a nefarious religion using blood magic, advocating that everyone should become a Mage.

It reminded me, very loosely, of the Bhaalspawn saga- with lower stakes and a 12-hours runtime. Howhever, whereas Bhaal was somewhat clever with his plans, the machination in Demonicon is sketchy at best.
Most of it is convoluted and happens too fast, in the span of a few weeks at most, your sister becomes a successful rebellious figure for the aforementioned religion and masters her gift with ease. Other Chosens are thrown at you to be killed.
The setting is rightfully bleak for a city surviving among a wasteland but the moral choices are not subtle, even if the first one was promising- letting a cannibal necromancer go and risk further ravages from him, or kill him on the spot and condemn his prisoners to death.

Then you must side with the City Watch or a band of scoundrels, and decide which "faction"' will own the most prominent whorehouse of the city.
In said whorehouse, you also have to deal with the owner, who thought turning the prostitutes into undeads would be the best business move of the century. No need to eat, breath, drink, sleep, no fatigue, perhaps no pain either and immunity to the plague- why, it's a win-win deal !
Even hoping this is a "clean" turning into undead, with no decay ever, and even if the owner is mad as a hatter, the mere idea it could work is baffling.
On a side note, I must confess that this was so ludicrous and out of nowhere that it genuinely made me curious to see if the game would throw more terrible situations like those. Spoiler : it doesn't. Well, not at the same level, anyways.

The basic premises of the story could work- finding a solution not involving killing the other Chosens, an eroding relationship with your "sister", unraveling a past of lies to trump the manipulators and reform the evil church pulling your strings.
But how do you reform said church ? Why, you break magical seals involving boring puzzles and stale combats, then you choose between two options (baptism or no baptism to protect the neonates' souls ?), you will never see the consequences, and anyways, will it really matter to you with such a poor presentation from the game ?
So, yes, the intrigue is not thrilling, dialogues often try to be serious in absurd events and comical in tragic events, when they are not just plain.

Gameplay is simply uninspired. You will battle scores of ennemies in areas with invisible barriers to prevent you from evading their attacks to easily, you will mash X to attack while ocasionnaly use your Gift (four spells, with 3 stronger versions for each) and chug a potion if needed, and doing a lot of (easy) dodging, maybe some parrying if you feel fancy. And also throwing infinite daggers !
Normal combats are too plentiful, ennemy variety is as great as its IA- that is to say, not great at all. You can't even count on specific builds to spice things up- there won't be a " warrior Cairon " or " mage Cairon ", magic uses different earned points to upgrades, no skill tree. You will end up maxing damage output to shorten the sleep-inducing battles and constitution to soak up damage yourself.
You do possess some profane skills - lockpicking, legends, persuasion etc. - but they are a minor factor at best, seldom used in dialogue or to obtain another outcome for a quest.
In the end you won't be torn between raising your stats or your non-combat skills (adventure points, aka experience in the Dark Eye, are spent for both) as Demonicon is quite shallow regarding the non-combat RPG elements.
If you had any hopes regarding boss fights, you can crush them- many bosses can be stunlock with the Ice spell or use uninteresting patterns, including the final boss : you have to shatter four special crystals and a wave of critters + an avatar of the Big Bad come each time, zero tactical thought required.

And there are the quests themselves. Usually, you can put them in 3 broad categories : main, side and tasks. Demonicon only has the main quest and tasks, found on public wooden boards.
From the studio's point of view, it may have seemed like a dream : no need for character models, animations, no dialogues, zero voice recording, minimal time and creative investment required.
For the very same reasons, the tasks are pure junk, with riveting activities like collecting three pots of honey found in the same place. What's vaguely amusing is the fact that requests for illegal activities, such as grave robbing, are also publicly displayed and the City Watch doesn't care.
That being said, what else to expect when a good half of the mandatory quests are fetchquests ? Whereas the story was in dire need of strong narrative-driven content, at some point, you will, for example, be forced to clear three spider dens, collect the silk and repair the machinery in order to reach a Chosen.
To add insult to injury, the machines are nonsensical : they move wood planks to complete bridges, which should have been complete in the first place... Alas, Cairon can't jump !
Game padding at its finest. Only one batch of silk, maybe a creative spider boss, and that would have been more than enough.
Until the very end you'll be fetching stuff- the antepenultimate quest requires you to collect 3 shards, in order to awaken an awesome "army" of some ten stone lizardmen thingies.

In the end, I wouldn't berate the studio that much. The budget was not big and it shows. Probably didn't have a ton of time either. I know the studio was bought by Kalypso and only 17 employees finished the project- but honestly I don't think, with those conditions, that it was worth completing.
It was destined to failed and failed it did.
The repetitive combats and the urban setting can make one think of Dragon's Age II, and while that title has many (and some similar) flaws, I'd play it over Demonicon any day.

Galivanting across the Web, regarding games, you will often hear talk of "underrated titles" and "forgotten gems". Demonicon is neither of them and if it stayed obscure (the low number of reviews is telling), it's for good reasons. TLDR : buy this when heavily discounted if you want a short, wacky experience, and if you don't mind repetitive and unchallenging gameplay. And undead prostitutes, too. Being based on a tabletop RPG, mostly known and successful in Germany, doesn't help, of course. But on its own merits, Demonicon ranges from bad to average in all areas. Let's adress the elephant in the room first : it doesn't look pretty, even for 2013 standards. There's not a ton of environments (you visit the same boring dungeon thrice, for example), the city where you spend a good chunk of the game is quite lifeless, the animations are atrocious- no one blinks, ever, giving every character with a visible face the uncanny soulless eyeballs. However, as far as I am concerned, graphics and artistic direction can be overlooked in a RPG if you have a compelling story and fun gameplay. You won't be surprised, friend, to learn that Demonicon is also lacking in those departments. Our story begins when Cairon must go after his sister in a sinister dungeon, their father afraid that she would throw away her virginity in order to thwart his marriage plans for her, the whole bid to obtain citizenship in one of the rare cities that has survived a terrible plague and undead onslaught. You'll soon learn that this is a moot point as Cairon and Calandra aren't really bound by blood, BUT their blood should never mix, their father insisted on that point. Alas, Cairon being as bright as a bag of bricks, when he treats his wound sister, he doesn't clean himself and thus the vital fluids do mix, awakening each other's demonic gift. Yes, I'm spoiling things a little but honestly, you shouldn't suffer any serious prejudice with this stunning revelation. The plot then follows a badly-crafted Chosen theme around a nefarious religion using blood magic, advocating that everyone should become a Mage. It reminded me, very loosely, of the Bhaalspawn saga- with lower stakes and a 12-hours runtime. Howhever, whereas Bhaal was somewhat clever with his plans, the machination in Demonicon is sketchy at best. Most of it is convoluted and happens too fast, in the span of a few weeks at most, your sister becomes a successful rebellious figure for the aforementioned religion and masters her gift with ease. Other Chosens are thrown at you to be killed. The setting is rightfully bleak for a city surviving among a wasteland but the moral choices are not subtle, even if the first one was promising- letting a cannibal necromancer go and risk further ravages from him, or kill him on the spot and condemn his prisoners to death. Then you must side with the City Watch or a band of scoundrels, and decide which "faction"' will own the most prominent whorehouse of the city. In said whorehouse, you also have to deal with the owner, who thought turning the prostitutes into undeads would be the best business move of the century. No need to eat, breath, drink, sleep, no fatigue, perhaps no pain either and immunity to the plague- why, it's a win-win deal ! Even hoping this is a "clean" turning into undead, with no decay ever, and even if the owner is mad as a hatter, the mere idea it could work is baffling. On a side note, I must confess that this was so ludicrous and out of nowhere that it genuinely made me curious to see if the game would throw more terrible situations like those. Spoiler : it doesn't. Well, not at the same level, anyways. The basic premises of the story could work- finding a solution not involving killing the other Chosens, an eroding relationship with your "sister", unraveling a past of lies to trump the manipulators and reform the evil church pulling your strings. But how do you reform said church ? Why, you break magical seals involving boring puzzles and stale combats, then you choose between two options (baptism or no baptism to protect the neonates' souls ?), you will never see the consequences, and anyways, will it really matter to you with such a poor presentation from the game ? So, yes, the intrigue is not thrilling, dialogues often try to be serious in absurd events and comical in tragic events, when they are not just plain. Gameplay is simply uninspired. You will battle scores of ennemies in areas with invisible barriers to prevent you from evading their attacks to easily, you will mash X to attack while ocasionnaly use your Gift (four spells, with 3 stronger versions for each) and chug a potion if needed, and doing a lot of (easy) dodging, maybe some parrying if you feel fancy. And also throwing infinite daggers ! Normal combats are too plentiful, ennemy variety is as great as its IA- that is to say, not great at all. You can't even count on specific builds to spice things up- there won't be a " warrior Cairon " or " mage Cairon ", magic uses different earned points to upgrades, no skill tree. You will end up maxing damage output to shorten the sleep-inducing battles and constitution to soak up damage yourself. You do possess some profane skills - lockpicking, legends, persuasion etc. - but they are a minor factor at best, seldom used in dialogue or to obtain another outcome for a quest. In the end you won't be torn between raising your stats or your non-combat skills (adventure points, aka experience in the Dark Eye, are spent for both) as Demonicon is quite shallow regarding the non-combat RPG elements. If you had any hopes regarding boss fights, you can crush them- many bosses can be stunlock with the Ice spell or use uninteresting patterns, including the final boss : you have to shatter four special crystals and a wave of critters + an avatar of the Big Bad come each time, zero tactical thought required. And there are the quests themselves. Usually, you can put them in 3 broad categories : main, side and tasks. Demonicon only has the main quest and tasks, found on public wooden boards. From the studio's point of view, it may have seemed like a dream : no need for character models, animations, no dialogues, zero voice recording, minimal time and creative investment required. For the very same reasons, the tasks are pure junk, with riveting activities like collecting three pots of honey found in the same place. What's vaguely amusing is the fact that requests for illegal activities, such as grave robbing, are also publicly displayed and the City Watch doesn't care. That being said, what else to expect when a good half of the mandatory quests are fetchquests ? Whereas the story was in dire need of strong narrative-driven content, at some point, you will, for example, be forced to clear three spider dens, collect the silk and repair the machinery in order to reach a Chosen. To add insult to injury, the machines are nonsensical : they move wood planks to complete bridges, which should have been complete in the first place... Alas, Cairon can't jump ! Game padding at its finest. Only one batch of silk, maybe a creative spider boss, and that would have been more than enough. Until the very end you'll be fetching stuff- the antepenultimate quest requires you to collect 3 shards, in order to awaken an awesome "army" of some ten stone lizardmen thingies. In the end, I wouldn't berate the studio that much. The budget was not big and it shows. Probably didn't have a ton of time either. I know the studio was bought by Kalypso and only 17 employees finished the project- but honestly I don't think, with those conditions, that it was worth completing. It was destined to failed and failed it did. The repetitive combats and the urban setting can make one think of Dragon's Age II, and while that title has many (and some similar) flaws, I'd play it over Demonicon any day.