TL;DR: A gorgeous, character-driven, neon-soaked tactical RPG that’s big on charm and light on strategy. Not the deepest tactics experience, but definitely one of the most stylish and fun.

I always know a game has fully crawled into my skull when I start narrating my commute like it’s turn-based combat. That was me, a week into Demonschool, mentally planning movement squares as I dodged slow walkers and overcaffeinated cyclists, imagining a splash of neon-pink impact frames every time someone bumped my shoulder. It’s the kind of game that does that—seeps. Not because it’s the deepest tactical experience on the market, but because it’s so aggressively stylish and unironically sincere that you end up wanting to live in its weird little world.

From the moment I loaded it up, Demonschool introduced itself like a friend dragging you into a nightclub you’re definitely not cool enough for. It flashes a Persona-inspired aesthetic, but filtered through a B-movie VHS haze and a soundtrack that sounds like a church choir accidentally fell into a synthesizer. The primary keyword here—tactical RPG—does technically apply, but the game feels more like someone spliced a Saturday morning cartoon into a supernatural coming-of-age story and said, here, punch some demons about it.

The setup is simple: college kids, an island with suspiciously occult geography, and a demon invasion that feels like nobody is nearly panicked enough about. I felt at home immediately. I’ve played enough JRPGs to know that teenagers are apparently the most efficient anti-apocalypse resource in the universe. Give them a prophecy, a portal, and a bunch of monsters with too many teeth, and they’ll show up after class like it’s a study group.

Faye, the lead, has that perfect balance of deadpan determination and chaotic problem-solving energy that makes her a magnetic protagonist. Her solution to most things involves kicking, sprinting, or kicking harder. Destin is a himbo in the classical sense—charmingly sincere, aggressively kind, and always one step away from tripping into a monster pit. Namako, the aspiring goth photographer, is exactly the kind of girl I would’ve desperately wanted to be friends with in college. And then there’s Aina, who enters the scene like someone who solved problems with knives long before she learned to solve them with words. I knew she was going to be my favorite from the moment she first smirked on-screen.

The cast is the reason the game works as well as it does. Their banter isn’t just filler; it creates the rhythm of the adventure. Even the smaller moments—sharing awful cooking experiments, hunting for obscure VHS tapes with a film nerd, wandering the island after curfew—feel like the connective tissue that gives the combat meaning. It’s the kind of character writing that reminds you these kids aren’t just a squad; they’re a found family you actually believe in.

But the combat—this is where Demonschool gently nudges you toward fun instead of finesse. As a longtime tactics snob, I approached the grid with a little too much seriousness. This game is not interested in outsmarting you. It wants you to flourish. It wants you to combo moves like an enthusiastic director yelling cut and print after every dramatic pose. You plan everything in one batch—movement, abilities, the whole dance—and then hit action to watch your teens tear across the field in a technicolor blur. It’s intuitive, generous, almost playful. There’s even a rewind feature that lets you experiment freely, like the game wants to pat your head and tell you it’s okay to be chaotic.

But for all its flair, this isn’t the kind of tactical RPG where you stare at the screen in painful silence, calculating risk like you’re filing taxes. Enemy placement often feels random, and the maps rarely force you to rethink your approach. I kept waiting for the twist, the difficulty spike, the moment when the gloves would come off and the demons would stop letting me juggle them across the battlefield like supernatural hacky sacks. But that moment never really arrived. Even the map gimmicks—explosive hydrants, possession effects, environmental hazards—felt less like strategy layers and more like set dressing.

Still, the boss fights. Oh, the boss fights. Those are where the game remembers how to be monstrous. Huge, grotesque, beautifully animated nightmares dripping with personality. One of them, a towering skeletal titan that slams its fingers into the board like it’s playing whack-a-mole with your existence, had me actually pausing to admire how absurdly cool the design was. When its skull cracked open and the brain oozed out like it was trying to escape the party early, I knew Demonschool understood spectacle better than most games twice its size.

And visually? This thing is a feast. If pixel art and 3D environments could have a neon-drenched baby, it would look like Demonschool. Everything glows, pulses, or bleeds color. Even the dingiest barn looks like it’s hosting an underground rave for creatures who communicate exclusively through synthwave. The aesthetic is so confident, so fully realized, that it hides the simplicity of the tactical layer with a smirk and a wink.

Outside of combat, wandering the island gave me the exact kind of cozy downtime I needed. It felt like breathing between battles. The town is quirky, the locals are weird in a comforting way, and the side events create actual emotional texture. I didn’t just like these characters; I rooted for them. I wanted to help them grow, fight, flirt, and occasionally set entire mobs of demons flying like supernatural bowling pins.

But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that Demonschool is a game that prioritizes vibes over depth. A vibe-forward RPG, if you will. A game that knows exactly what it wants to be and doesn’t pretend to be more. And honestly? That’s okay. Not every tactics game needs to fracture your brain like a sudoku tournament. Sometimes it’s enough to spend hours with a cast you adore, in a world that feels fun to exist in, even if most fights blur together like neon ghosts.

Still, the repetition is undeniable. The frequency of encounters, combined with the lack of intricate map design, means you eventually start moving on autopilot, letting muscle memory do the work. I kept thinking how much stronger the game would feel with half the battles and double the precision. It’s the difference between curated puzzles and a constant stream of flashy skirmishes. Both can be fun, but only one lingers.

And yet, despite this, I genuinely had a blast. The music, the lighting, the characters, the supernatural nonsense, the unapologetic weirdness—Demon­school radiates personality. It’s stylish, heartfelt, and sometimes beautifully stupid in the best possible way. It’s the kind of game that wants you to grin while you play, and most of the time, I did.

VERDICT

Demonschool is a riotously stylish tactical RPG that trades strategic sharpness for pure personality. It doesn’t have the deep mechanical crunch that genre purists crave, and the encounter design repeats itself more often than it should, but its world, characters, art direction, writing, and boss fights more than make up for its soft spots. It’s a pink-purple fever dream of friendship, demons, and neon violence—and while it may not challenge your brain, it absolutely delights your senses.