Devils & Demons

I pulled up the Steam page expecting a mid-tier Might & Magic clone and got exactly that, plus a handful of problems that a PC port really has no excuse for in 2015. Devils & Demons is a turn-based tactical RPG set in the fantasy world of Desola, where you assemble a party of heroes and push through campaign maps fighting demons, undead, necromancers, and dragons. The core loop is simple: move your characters using a two-action-point system per turn, attack with physical or magical abilities, collect loot, level up. It draws obvious comparisons to the classic Might & Magic tactical games, and if that lineage appeals to you, the bones here are solid enough to hold attention for a few sessions. The combat itself works. Each character operates on a strict action-point budget per turn, and deciding whether to double-move to reposition or double-attack to finish an enemy before it acts is the kind of micro-decision that keeps turn-based fans alert. Skills include proc-based effects that can trigger on hit, with criticals enabling bonus bleeds and burns, which adds a thin but present layer of build consideration when leveling. An Arena mode sits alongside the main campaign, offering wave-based boss fights that function as both a loot grind and a difficulty spike for anyone who wants more friction than the story maps provide. There are class-based heroes with distinct skill trees, and unlocking additional characters through the Arena gives the progression loop a secondary track to chase. None of this is deep by the standards of, say, Divinity: Original Sin, but it is functional and legible. Here is where the spreadsheet gets ugly. This game started life as a mobile freemium title, and HandyGames did not do enough work to hide that on PC. The UI was designed for touch input and was never reworked for mouse-and-keyboard, resulting in oversized buttons and an obstructive layout that a PC player will find immediately irritating. The maps are often large and sparsely populated, meaning that moving individual characters tile by tile across half-empty grids eats real time for very little tactical payoff. The English dialogue has translation issues, with missing words and awkward sentence construction scattered throughout. None of these are game-breaking in isolation, but together they form a consistent friction that wears on you. Steam user sentiment sits around 43 percent positive across a modest review count, which is an honest signal: this is a game that satisfies a narrow slice of players and frustrates most others. For pure genre tourists, this is a hard sell given how many better-optimized tactics RPGs exist on PC at similar or lower price points. The one case I will make for it: if you are brand new to turn-based strategy RPGs and want something with a low mechanical ceiling to learn the genre's rhythms, the two-action-point system and class-based party building here are approachable. There is no timer pressure in combat, no permadeath, and the campaign difficulty scales with story progress, which means mistakes are rarely punishing. As an introduction to tactical party management, it works. As a purchase for anyone with fifty hours in XCOM or the Banner Saga series, it will feel thin within the first hour. Diego, Scout Team

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