Sumioni: Demon Arts Review: Boring Levels, Interesting Bosses

Sumioni: Demon Arts Review

Sumioni: Demon Arts
PlayStation Vita
Xseed
Action

Sumioni: Demon Arts is a side scrolling action title available on the PlayStation Vita through the PlayStation Network.

Sumioni: Demon Arts has a nice art style going for it which you will notice right from the beginning as it introduces you to the story of the game. Throughout the game some of you may enjoy the style of art that it takes on. It tells you the story by scrolling text with images in the background, but it’s a story that really doesn’t pull you in all that much. You almost would rather get straight to the gameplay instead.

There are only a short number of levels for you to play depending on how well you score. If you end with a great score at the end of a level, there are areas where you will be able to progress to a more difficult path which you can see on the stage tree. So that helps the re-playability in the game for those who want to try and perfect it and make their way through the toughest stages. The beginning stages should be simple enough for you to perfect so that you can make your way to the hard levels. If you mess up and you don’t make it past the first layer of stages, the final boss will still give you one heck of a challenge. No matter what path you take you are going to beat this game in under an hour. But as I said, the challenge and the depth will come from wanting to get to the harder levels and defeat the other bosses.

The level design isn’t all that impressive and to be completely honest it comes off as rather boring and simplistic design. They also end up being fairly short as well for you to make your way through and the difficulty isn’t that hard at all until you make it to the tougher stages. That is actually one of my biggest disappointments – the lack of great opening levels. The boss stages though are much more enjoyable and a lot more difficult. They are what make this game somewhat good, if the boss stages sucked, this game would have been very disappointing.

The gameplay can be somewhat fun and enjoyable. You can use a number of different control set-ups. The default setting has you using the method of tapping the touch screen to attack, something that I didn’t particularly like at all. I needed to switch up the setting and turn that off immediately. The moment I turned off those controls the game became less difficult and much more enjoyable to play. Your character is the master of ink and this becomes an important factor in the gameplay as you will draw platforms for you to jump on and make your way across dangerous areas. I like the idea of that and it is fun to use at times, I just don’t think it worked as good as it could have. No matter what button settings you choose, you still need to draw the ink lines by using the touch screen.

With the near full button control settings I did end up liking this game a lot more – Leaving just a number of options for you to use the touch screen for. This includes summoning inkgods. You only have so much ink available for you to use, so if you use it all up by drawing lines to get past obstacles or using the lines to create fire attacks against enemies, then you won’t be able to summon these inkgods. The inkgods are large creatures that will help you greatly in battle, but they end up using a lot of your ink in order to summon them. So you will need to be sure you use your ink wisely. They are a lot of fun to summon though and they are very powerful. They help greatly in those difficult boss fights.

I did enjoy some of the action that this game presents you with, the hack and slash didn’t handle the best as I felt rather weak when fighting certain bosses. Thankfully you have the other attack options with the ink and summoning the inkgods that make up for that. I do like that part of the game a lot and this game could have been a lot more interesting if it had better level design and even additional levels. If you are someone who can’t master the game well, you will struggle reaching those higher difficulty levels and that will leave you with an incredibly short game to the point of where it just wouldn’t be worth it.

If you like these styles of games and you enjoy mastering them to the point of where you will play it over and over again to make sure you defeat every boss then you are the only person I would recommend this title for. The way you attack using the ink is interesting and the boss fights are enjoyable, but the rest of the game is just so plain in design that there is nothing to enjoy until you get to the boss.

Score: 6/10