Jrago The Demon Hunter Reviews

Being a fan of the late NES Castlevania games (with a bit of Metroid as well), this took me back to when I would stare at a small 13" TV screen and play till all hours of the night. I am liking the story and the soundtrack to this game, can't wait to get more free time to finish this.

Brings nostagic feelings of the past, Has rich audio and sound effects, Also, You have voiceovers on every character. Just remember to navigate with space key in menus.

The graphics are consistently inconsistent, the controls have some unique "qualities" to them, and the level design is borderline unfair... and yet the fantastic music compells me to continue playing. Once you learn the game's quirks and assume that every enemy can kill you because of it, it's a decently enjoyable game, though I'm playing it mostly because I want to hear all the terrible voice acting. You could say it's a metroidvania, but I think it's a little too linear for that. There's some out-of-the-way things to collect like optional gear and weapons, but don't expect reverse-boss-order levels of freedom in this game. The best parts of this game would probably be: 1. The music, all original metal-style music, fits the theme and gets you hooked despite the game's flaws. 2. The UI. Weirdly enough the UI works well, you can swap gear very quickly despite having to open a screen-wide menu. 3. It hasn't crashed yet. 4. Somehow everything has voice-acting. Most of it is terrible, but that only adds to the game's chaotic atmosphere. 5. There's so many enemies, you often can't take a single step without having to whack something that's in your way. The worst parts: 1. The level design is atrocious. Assume the worst outcome at all times and you'll be fine, mostly. You will still die numerous times to unfair enemy placement and death pits. 2. Enemies have little to no telegraphs so you have to guess how much time an enemy takes to attack again. 3. It's very hard to tell if you will get hit by an attack or not because the hitboxes oftentimes don't match the sprites of anything, especially bosses that use melee attacks. 4. There's some funny glitches with the physics you can abuse to get some items earlier than intended. On the flipside you will occasionally get stuck on the terrain or in walls, which might get you killed. This happens to enemies too. 5. It's hard to overlook the mismatched graphics, but for me that's more of a positive.

That’s the kind of stuff I like. I killed my first demon… many more to go as I rock out to some metal and swing some at evil.

After a fellow user on the /r/Metroidvania subreddit indicated he enjoyed this one, I decided to check it out, given it was on sale for under a dollar. After 20 minutes of playing, I regretted that decision. The first thing that jumps out at you on playing is the horrendously mis-matched art styles. Some assets appear to be 8-bit styled, low resolution pixel art. Others appear to be 16-bit styled pixel art with a higher resolution. Yet others appear to be crudely drawn, like something you'd see in an early 2000's flash game. Any one of these styles could be worked on their own and have its quirky charm, but the combination of all three is jarring and baffling. If you can get past that, the next obstacle is the controls. Apparently there's a run button, though the game never tells you. Attacking consists of a linear sweep of the sword either straight forward or straight up. There's also projectiles that can be used but they chew up your mana extremely quickly and appear to not always work (possibly some enemies block them with their shields? It's never quite clear what's going on). Communicating with townsfolk consists of messages popping up if you just run by them, sometimes with multiple messages if you double back, and some of them will drop basic gear, which all needs to be equipped. If you wander out of the town at all, you'll run into swarms of enemies that just sort of mill around, and you can walk up to them and start wailing on the attack button to make little white damage numbers start appearing. It's unclear why the damage ranges are so high, but eventually they drop dead and you probably took some damage back. Continue in the one direction you can go and you'll come upon some pits that look like, on your map, that they should be an opening to another layer of map, but in reality they'll just jarringly flash you back a screen and chunk your HP. Sometimes the other side of the pit lays off camera to the right and you have to make a leap of faith. I could probably go on, but this game honestly feels like it'd be a mixed review flash game on 2005 Newgrounds. It's not worth your time or your money.

Jrago: The Demon Hunter is a truly unique and compelling game. The product of a single developer, and his first game, Jrago is a fantastic example of what you can do with premade resources and limited time to create something wonderful that features many of the best aspects of the genre, and achieves its own identity, without compromising on design quality. Rather than an open-ended experience, Jrago focuses on action platforming spread across stages set up as chapters. You begin in Eden, your hometown, and your journey starts with traveling to Lighthaven to assist with repelling a demon invasion. Along the way you acquire spells, equipment, and subweapons to help you traverse the maps and slay demons before reaching a signature boss for each chapter area. Despite the focus on linear progression, it gets its metroidvania elements right, with backtracking to complete maps, uncover new bosses, and finish acquiring gear and spells later on after you arrive at Lighthaven. Jrago has its own cautious and intense style of gameplay that doesn't quite fit into the mold of a typical action RPG. It may seem unusually punishing at first with virtually relentless enemy waves, but once you give it time, and adapt to the challenge it presents you, it comes together splendidly. Enemies are absolutely vast, and their attacks can stack without interruption, meaning if you act careless and get cornered, they can pile up and absolutely destroy you. It's both hilarious and intimidating seeing how many enemies can appear on your screen at once, but they are in fact limited in quantity, and only reappear after reaching a sanctuary (save room). Your best efforts are served by discreetly pushing forward, utilizing quick movement, deliberate positioning, and rapid spell and subweapon casting to trim enemy numbers, leveling up until you're sufficiently strong to defeat them with few hits and minimal damage, and then overtaking the stage boss. There's a cathartic pleasure in mowing down vast hordes of demons with a relentless assault of spears, tomahawks, tornadoes, and melee strikes using tactical movement and positioning. Likewise, the bosses fall this way, with a platforming arena you navigate to unleash a healthbar-incinerating bombardment on them. As you gain power, the violence you dispense is just absolutely relentless. Toward the end of the game, this involves a bit of menu management to quickly switch spells, but it doesn't take time to navigate the menus or load them, so the gameplay is hardly affected. The enemies themselves are delightful in death, often screaming, splattering, or falling apart as you strike them down, and the major demons and bosses curse you with a guttural "DEMON SLAYER...!" once they're destroyed. It really drives home the feeling of being a righteous demon slayer as you get more powerful and accustomed to the game mechanics. Speaking of feeling like a DEMON SLAYER, the game is driven by a strong and brooding instrumental Doom/Thrash Metal soundtrack composed by the game dev himself. This is easily a highlight of the game, especially when you can find individual tracks from the OST throughout the world along with their art covers. Complimenting this are eloquently written verses that build a Christian theme for the demon occupation and tragedy that befell the world. As I mentioned before, the game utilizes a lot of premade assets, and they coalesce into a vivid and unique appearance that is quite unlike anything I've seen. The author took time to carefully arrange the visuals with aesthetic consideration, layering graphics and backgrounds to creature an impressive, almost psychedelic, gothic landscape. it doesn't come across as being cheap or effortless whatsoever. Honestly, if you can handle the gruesome charm of something like Cruelty Squad, you can easily see the somber beauty in Jrago's form. You can clearly tell the developer played through his game and put careful consideration into progression. There's no wasted features, or errant design. Everything is paced properly, and all equipment and spells are given the proper time and usefulness to be utilized. There's a satisfying power curve that ramps and stays coherent all the way to the end, and the stage design builds to satisfying difficulty, with a few timeless nods to Castlevania. Jrago The Demon Hunter is an incredible effort from a first time developer. To put it simply, Jrago is metal. It embraces the full sincerity of the aesthetic, and none of the ironic trappings of the modern era of pop culture. The game is fully recommended to Action RPG fans, metal heads, or just fans of obscure indie games that deserve more attention. Something to note: The game is fully compatible with the Steam Deck, and offers a in-game visual guide to controls. The developer also provided a comprehensive list of guides on the Community Hub, along with a complete video longplay.

It's a fun game but really challenging. I recommend EASY mode. Really enjoy the soundtrack! Works great on Steam Deck!

This game is a labor of love by the SINGLE developer that made it. The fact that this is his first game says a lot. There are personal touches in there that give you a peek into his life and I'm here for it. When you first start the game, you are met with the tone set by the music (which was also done by the developer). With that being said the gameplay is brutal. This is not a game for beginners and the developer recommends playing on easy as that is actually "normal". Normal mode is hard. And hard is ungodly. Lol There are a lot of cool Easter eggs that most won't recognize, but I do. So that was fun for me. The only pain that I found was the last of checkpoints or saves. But... that just adds to the challenge of this game. I'm not one for souls games or Metroidvanias, but I had a good time with this. Keep an open mind and pull your patience out your pocket. This is going to be quite the adventure!

[b]Hold RT to run[/b] (I missed this for the first few hours). So I just did a playthrough of Jrago that took me about 33 hours to 100% the steam achievements. Quite a few hours were spent grinding XP in the postgame, I probably finished it closer to the 25-28 hour mark. I played on the hardest difficulty, which apparently mostly only affects your character stats at the start. The early game was a bit of a slog for me, so I would probably advise the easier difficulty. I initially left a negative review because the game has plenty of issues that I thought had ultimately dissuaded me from it. I have to say though, despite all the jank and the grindy nature of things, Jrago is still somehow able to be addictive to me in its own way. Kudos to the dev for making something as fun as this despite the problems. In Jrago, you will be slaughtering your way through a constant swarm of enemies. There's a lot of them compared to your typical metroidvania, and that makes the game feel quite different. It's feels fairly linear for a metroidvania, if it can even be called one. While you do gain abilities in the form of spells, only 1 of these impacts what you can access by backtracking. You do find plenty of spells and better equipment for your character, but they are to aid with combat rather than traversal. Whenever you find a new weapon or piece of armour, the upgrade feels impactful. They are good in that you will notice that you are taking less & dealing more damage. The game feels kind of janky, monsters look like they're struggling in this engine. The geometry is sticky, you get kinda stuck jumping against walls. Sometimes my character would slow down a bit when there was a lot going on. At first, combat can be a bit of a crap-shoot. You can't really avoid some enemy attacks and often I would just have to spam my weapon and out-damage them, and the best I could hope for was to back away a bit as I attacked to try and mitigate it. Grinding XP does make a big impact on your characters ability to push through the monsters, which I liked, but combat relies heavily on this. Get more XP > be able to push through further. Skill and finesse can only get you so far because of the often unfair simplistic nature of the combat. However, finding out that I had a run button and finding the +1 speed belt made combat and the game play A LOT better. Now I was weaving in and out of enemy range and fighting things properly, I had far more control. The belt made such a dramatic impact that I seriously question the decision to not start your character with +1 speed. Even the enemies looked like they were struggling in the engine less upon equipping that item. Often you will run out of mana healing yourself. When you're out of mana to do so, you sometimes need to wait 10 minutes to recover, because the alternative is to go forward and take unavoidable damage and almost certainly perish. I found myself toggling between my Heal and Elevate spells a lot, which cannot be done on the fly. I had to open the menu and equip the spell each time. It doesn't take long to do, but certainly would've gone smoother if there had been a button to fast-toggle. Screen transitions are bad. When you move from one screen to the next, often you will have to jump. There might be an enemy on top of you immediately dealing damage, or a pitfall that you could over/under shoot and fall into. I managed to get stuck in the games geometry from time to time when jumping, another clear sign that the game is struggling in the engine (I was however able to get myself out with some fidgeting). I had to turn off my speaker whenever I was in the town at the start of the game, because the NPCs talk to you whenever you walk by them with rather bad microphones and voice acting. Normally a game would have you enter an input to initiate dialogue, and this would have alleviated that problem. Being able to adjust the volume levels is a missing QoL feature I would have liked as well. I will say that the graphics looked really ugly to me in the screenshots/trailer, but I gave it a chance in spite of this. Once inside the game, i actually found the mix of art styles quite appealing afterall, I love the mish-mash of art styles. Pitfalls are very difficult to spot unless you pay constant devoted attention to the mini-map, rather than just whats in front of you, because the visual representations of these pitfalls is rather poor (You will learn to discern these as you go, though different areas have different colour palettes, so its an issue doomed to repeat itself). As well as that, you will occasionally need to make leaps of faith that put you in pretty nasty pits filled with monsters that will kill you. The music is mostly comprised of heavy metal. It's stock standard stuff, but quite fitting. Fighting an onslaught of enemies with thrashy metal playing in the background just feels righteous. There are also some softer pieces too, such as the acoustic music for the towns. Jrago is the sort of game that would make for a great AVGN episode. I don't know how or why, but against the odds: I really liked this game. The combat-heavy nature of it and almost 90's feel just led to it being a good time.

Jrago: The Demon Hunter Review by Synge_X Introduction: Jrago: The Demon Hunter is a retro styled, 2D game in the “Metroidvainia”genre. The objective is simple; make your way through the map, gaining experience, engaging with light RPG elements, exploring for and buying new gear, hunting down collectibles, eventually making your way to the Demon who lords over each stage. Jrago: The Demon Hunter is not an easy game, and provides a consistent challenge that ramps up logically each stage. Gameplay: The gameplay is solid for this type of game. I loved the ability to attack in multiple directions and felt that the enemy attack patterns were designed to be countered using that ability. Unfortunately, movement and jumping when using the “elevate” spell feels inconsistent. This is remedied by most areas being accessible via alternate paths while exploring. Gear and progression: While there aren’t a ton of items in Jrago, there doesn’t need to be. Each item when found or purchased, has a distinct weight to it that feels like a significant upgrade. Whether it’s a spell that is required for reaching new areas, or an offensive spell that specifically targets the weakness of one of the tough enemies you’ll face, getting that new upgrade feels good. There is even some simple but clever choices built into how your stats are effected by your gear, that provides an interesting trade off in gameplay. Exploration and map design: The levels in Jrago are varied and fun to explore. Some levels are flat and play like traditional 2D action games, while others have you navigating what seems to be a maze of dead ends, that lead to a weapon, a piece of gear, spell, or collectible. In fact, exploration is key to success and is expertly crafted. Jrago does a good job of showing you inaccessible items on the main path, to encourage further exploration to gear up your character for future challenges. The challenge of the game also lends itself to the level design, as death leads to exp loss, exploration always has a sense of danger that makes the world feel larger. Carefully placed save points and boss save points(that save progress but don’t allow respawing), feel like a much needed reprieve after a long session of moving through dangerous territory. Graphics: Unfortunately, the graphics are the weak point of the title, featuring a variety of stock assets that feel disjointed, in terms of cohesive art style. The Main character and custom made backgrounds look great and are reminiscent of PS1 era games, but the lack of cohesive art style holds the graphics back. I say this understanding that this was made by a one man development team, so I can’t fault the title too much. Great level design, fun factor, and challenge easily overshadow this short coming. Sound design and music: Easily the best, most compelling aspect of the game! All of the music is custom composed by the developer and never fails at perfectly augmenting the atmosphere and vibe of the stages and combat. I found myself getting pumped when challenging the many Demons across the game. The sound design is equally charming, with all the clanks and hits during combat having a distinct feel. Hearing the “Demon Slayer” line when killing a boss gives you that rush of dopamine that great sound design is supposed to do… and the line that plays when you die, gives you the feeling of defeat that permeates the challenge of this game. Conclusion: When composing this review I thought to myself, “is this a game that I can really recommend” and the answer is YES! In a world of heartless AAA titles, Jrago: the Demon Hunter is obviously crafted with passion and love for the genre and gaming itself. At the end of the day, among the imperfections, is a fun game. A game that when you start to dig in, makes you want to play it more. It’s hard but fair, and never fails to deliver a worthwhile challenge. If you like retro games, especially those from the PS1 era, Jrago: the Demon Hunter is a game worth your time, and you’ll be scratching your head as to how one guy made this!