The black eye: Demonicon

The black eye: Demonicon
Studio	Noumena Studios
Publisher	Kalypso Media
Senior Developer	Eric Jannot
Erstveröffent- lichung	October 25, 2013
platform	Windows
Game engine	Vision Engine 8
genre	Action RPG
Game mode	Single player
control	Keyboard & mouse , game controller
system advantages preconditions	OS : Windows XP CPU : 2 GHz dual core RAM : 2 GB Graphics card : 512 MB Storage requirement (HDD) : 10 GB Sound: DirectX 9.0 compatible sound card
medium	1 DVD-ROM , download
language	including German
Current version	1.1
copy protection	Online activation
Age rating	USK PEGI

The Dark Eye: Demonicon is an action role-playing game developed by Noumena Studios and released for Windows by Kalypso Media in October 2013 . The player slips into the role of Cairons, who has to defuse dangerous situations again and again and pay attention to the well-being of his family.

prehistory

Two decades before the actual plot began, Borbarad, a powerful mage, covered eastern Aventuria with undead and corruption. Borbarad fell during a battle and his demon crown, the symbol of his rule, shattered. The so-called shadow lands emerged from his territory. Various warlords fought for the shadowlands until warriors of the goddess Rondra freed the city of Warunk from necromancers and the like.

"Father", his real name is not mentioned in the game, Fergolosch and Parel together formed a team, the shamrock. However, father left because of Azaril, the high prophet of the Borbarad Church. Azaril wanted to create a powerful being and bring it under their control. To do this, she needed the help of a demon, Zhulgaroth. However, the demon asked for something in return. Azaril was supposed to offer the demon seven newborn babies, the so-called awakened ones, to whom Zhulgaroth would give strong powers, the so-called gifts. After the awakening of the gifts of the awakened, they will be compelled to kill one another; all gifts will be focused on one person who will be the first paladin. This should be able to be controlled by Azaril. Zhulgaroth should get the remaining six souls in return.

Azaril selected seven virgins and two men to father these children. Father was one of these men, he fathered three of them, the other named Seghal fathered the remaining four. At the ceremony, all seven were born at the same time, and Zhulgaroth bestowed the gifts on them. However, father stole two babies at the ceremony, one of whom was his own son, Cairon, and the second was a daughter of Seghal, Calandra. He also took Cairon's mother with him. Azaril was too weakened by the demon's summoning to stop her. Azaril had to create seven seals to protect himself from Zhulgaroth in order to protect himself from the demon's arbitrariness.

Father raised the two children and did everything in his power to hide them from Azaril. He also tried to prevent the gifts from awakening. This happens either when the blood of two awakened adults mixes or they have sexual intercourse with each other. Both children grew up with no knowledge of their origins or their gifts. Father and Cairon and Calandra, who are now adults, arrive in the city of Warunk as refugees. What happened to Cairon's mother is not explained. An epidemic rages in the refugee camp that kills many people. The Warunkers seal off the city so that the plague does not spread. The three are stuck in the refugee camp when Falk, a powerful Rondrian, wants to marry Calandra and thus they would have access to the city or would have citizenship.

action

At night Calandra notices that people are always being dragged off to the Molchenberg by someone. Calandra decides to follow them and rescue the abductees. However, she does not tell this to her father or Cairon. When the two of them notice that she has disappeared and they are told that she has descended into the Molchenberg, they fear that she will avoid the wedding with Falk. Father, who recently lost a leg, cannot follow her, so Cairon descends alone into the Molchenberg. He finds Calandra, but both are injured in a fight. They bandage their wounds on each other, which Father has always strictly forbidden, and their blood mixes. The gifts awaken and both can do magic from now on. They finally fight their way to the kidnapper. This turns out to be cannibals out and is about to eat a abductees. Cairon defeats the ogre. The player has the choice of killing him or letting him go. If you kill him, the rest of the prisoners die, because the prison cannot be opened anymore because of a magical seal of the ogre. If you let him go, he releases the prisoners and disappears.

Cairon and Calandra return to the refugee camp. Both have feelings for each other and Calandra asks Cairon to prevent the wedding. Falk appears in the refugee camp and Cairon insists that the wedding be called off. Falk then says that Cairon should let off steam in the city and gives him a pass with which he can at least temporarily enter the city. Cairon seeks a way to gain citizenship for himself and his family without Calandra Falk having to marry. Fergolosch, the captain of the city guard, and Parel, leader of a smugglers' gang called the Kreuzerkartel, can make this possible for him. However, both want Cairon to persuade a brothel, in which a necromancer is up to mischief, to submit to the control of either the city guard or the cruiser cartel. Cairon finds the necromancer in the brothel and kills him. The owner wants Cairon to decide who to join. Both options have advantages and disadvantages for the city.

Cairon and his family were then granted citizenship of Fergolosch or Parel. Both ask Cairon to accept another assignment. A magician should either go into the care of the city guard or the cruiser cartel. Both sides want to prevent the other from taking advantage of the magician's knowledge. After you have decided who to entrust the magician to, either the cruiser cartel attacks the armory of the guard or you should attack it yourself. After completing this task, a summoner attacks the refugee camp and turns almost everyone into the undead. The summoner wants to summon a creature to attack the city. Cairon initially seems to prevent him and the summoner disappears.

Bit by bit, during the tasks that are given to you, you find out that Falk wants to overthrow the head of the Rondrians as a secondary goal and take his place. To do this, the summoner should summon a powerful demon, which Falk would have killed. The demon is summoned, but Falk is late and Cairon kills the demon. So that Falk doesn't look completely inglorious, he arrests the summoner. Falk then wants to have the wedding between him and Calandra take place immediately. Cairon puts Falk in the church and prevents the wedding. Falk's mother turns out to be Azaril, who tries to awaken Falk's gift by marrying Calandra and sleeping with her. Azaril trusts that Falk will soon kill Cairon and makes a pact with Calandra that if she goes with her, nothing will happen to Cairon and father. Calandra agrees despite Cairon's protest. Azaril and Calandra leave town while Cairon and father are imprisoned. Cairon breaks out of prison and kills Falk in a duel. Falk's gift then passes to Cairon, which makes him stronger.

Cairon picks up the trail of Calandra and Azaril and goes to Talon Moor. Shortly before the undead raged in Warunk, an alleged healer led a group of sick people from the refugee camp to Krallenmoor. In the town of Farnfeld in Krallenmoor he gets the information that this healer, whose name is Ghamat, has spoken to Azaril and Calandra. Cairon finds out that the sick are not cured of the plague as promised, but are thrown into a pit and, according to the residents of Farnfeld, die there and find their redemption. However, the bodies fall into a tunnel and come out not far from the city as the undead. Ghamat forces them to search an ancient people's excavation site for an artifact that promises to cure the plague, but not the one that has already become undead. Cairon eventually kills Ghamat and his gift passes over to him. You then have the option of continuing the excavations and not giving up the search for this artifact or you can tell the residents of Ghamat's deeds.

You return to Warunk where Cassio, Cairon's biological sister, who is also an awake, is waiting for you. Together with Cairon, she would like to lift the compulsory killing. To do this, she wants to call Zhulgaroth and cause him to pick it up. To do this, some ingredients have to be obtained and someone who is related by blood to the summoner must voluntarily sacrifice themselves for the summon. After Azaril shows up and takes father prisoner, Cassio begins to fight Cairon. When Cairon is fatally wounded, Cassio leaves with father Warunk. With the last of her strength, she reveals to him that after Azaril's father has been captured, only she remains as a blood relative who could sacrifice herself, and that is why she started the fight. If she had won, she hoped Cairon would have had the same will. Cassio dies, her gift goes to Cairon and he summons Zhulgaroth.

Zhulgaroth tells Cairon of the seven seals that must be destroyed in order to end the compulsion to kill. These are in the monastery where he was born. Zhulgaroth brings him into the monastery through a portal. There Cairon meets Calandra, who became Azaril's pupil, who also killed the last two Awakened, learned from her, but secretly worked against them. Calandra wants to start a new church and get Azaril out of the way. Cairon takes place in the Seghal Monastery. He helps him to free father who is in the monastery. From him and his father he finally learns the complete history of his origins, birth and gifts. When all seven gifts are passed on to an awakened one, the “First Paladin” arises. This is said to be a slave to Azaril. However, if the seven seals that Azaril created to protect against Zhulgaroth are destroyed, the compulsion to kill is extinguished and the gifts can be transferred to the awakened person without the awakened having to die for it.

Calandra wants Cairon to determine the Church's new sacraments, such as whether marriage should be allowed. After choosing all the sacraments and destroying six of the seven seals, he meets Azaril. She herself guards the final seal. You defeat them in a duel and have the option of killing them or sparing them. Calandra's gift is the ability to create gates, with which a demon can also move from the sphere of demons into the sphere in which the acting person of DSA is. Calandra opens a gate to Zhulgaroth's sphere in the Molchenberg to destroy him. Cairon realizes, however, that Zhulgaroth had planned this from the beginning in order to travel into the sphere of the acting persons of DSA and to destroy everything there.

Only the First Paladin has the power to prevent him from transgressing the spheres. The player now has the option to sacrifice either Calandra or Cairon. One of them transmits his gifts to the other, who then becomes the first paladin. This throws himself at Zhulgaroth and prevents him from traveling through the spheres. The paladin, and thus the chosen person, die. The other person leaves the Molchenberg unharmed.

Gameplay

General

In Demonicon , the player controls his character directly from a third-person perspective . It is not possible to choose a certain class like magician , warrior or similar. Instead, he has all the skills to choose from, which he can develop in fights and missions according to his own ideas by collecting some kind of experience points , called adventure points and gift points in the game, as is customary in role-playing games . Adventure points increase your attributes, talents and weapon skills. His magic with gift points. There are no steps up, as is usual in other role-playing games, where you could distribute your points. The points can be awarded at any time.

Quests and quest lines can be solved in very different ways by default. If you use Cairon's talents, such as persuading, additional solutions or endings result in quests. The rewards vary depending on the approach.

Skills

Attributes

There are five attributes that can be increased with Adventure Points, or AP for short. These attributes each have two sub-attributes. If you increase the main attribute, you increase the two sub-attributes at the same time. However, if you only increase one sub-attribute, the other sub-attribute does not change.

• Physical strength: Determines the amount of the damage bonus and the attack value
• Agility: Determines parry value and the chance of landing critical hits.
• Constitution: Determines the resistance to wounds, poisoning, burns and the life energy
• Courage: Determines the endurance, the level of regeneration of endurance and essence
• Blade talent: Determines the attack and parry value

In addition, the life energy, endurance and essence can be increased separately.

Talents

There are a total of four talents, each of which has two sub-talents, the increase of which is the same as for the attributes.

• Wisdom: Influences sagas and legends and botany. With sagas and legends, special information about the game world can be obtained or new conversation options can be activated. Herbalism can be used to collect rare plants that are needed for brewing potions.
• Intuition: Influences sensory acuity and medicine. With the acuity of the senses, traps could be discovered and hiding spots tracked down. With healing, the effect of potions and the regeneration of life are strengthened. Likewise, NPCs can be healed who are intended for this.
• Charisma: Influences persuasion and bargaining. With persuasion other conversation options or quests can be activated. With bargaining, traders lower their prices and buy the player's goods at higher prices.
• Dexterity: Affects lockpicking and blacksmithing. Chests can be opened by clicking locks. Blacksmith can defuse traps and operate gates and levers.

Every sub-talent can be increased through equipment.

Weapon skills

The weapon skills can be used to perform special maneuvers that consume stamina. There are four weapon skill trees in total, some of which are branched out with one another: bladed weapons, cutting weapons, parrying and evading. Each maneuver also offers two optimization variants, both of which can be selected, e.g. that a maneuver uses less stamina and also causes more damage.

Magic

The player has the opportunity to choose new spells from four magic trees by awarding gift points. However, these are not as branched out as the weapon skills in some cases. However, like the weapon skills, every spell has two optimization variants, both of which can be selected. The magic trees consist of ice spells, fire spells, sickness spells and demonic aura spells.

development

The development of the game was originally started under The Games Company through their subsidiary Silver Style Studios . After TGC went bankrupt, Kalypso took over the project and 17 employees who continued to develop the game under the new name Noumena Studios. Originally, versions for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles were also planned. Work on the Xbox version was officially discontinued in May 2014, and the PS3 version, which is still planned, has never been published since then.

reception

Rating mirror

German-speaking area
publication	Rating
4players	39% (Win)
Computer picture games	Note 2.35
GameStar	73% (Win)
Games world	8/10 (Win)
Gamona	68%
Looki	75% (Win)
PC Games	70% (Win)
Meta-ratings
GameRankings	63% (Win)
Metacritic	61/100 (Win)

The game received mixed ratings ( Metacritic : 61 out of 100 (Win), Gamerankings : 63%) and was compared several times with the Gothic series and Oblivion in German-language magazines .

GameStar magazine praised the strong, story-driven main missions and moral decisions in its test. Already in the prologue, the player with cannibalism, incest and cults of the dead is expected to have strong themed tobacco, which, however, encourages them to continue playing. The game would have a compelling DSA feel to it. However, the engine is hopelessly out of date. There would be muddy textures, sparse special effects, and objects with little detail. Demonicon should remind a little of the first two parts of the Gothic series. However, the game world is not as big and free as in Skyrim .

The PC Games acknowledged that the story at the beginning THAT CONDITION Although confused, DSA player they knew but appreciate. Thanks to the lexicon, which provides background information, you gradually understand the context of the game world. The moral decisions and the good to very good setting were also praised. The fights, which mostly follow the same pattern, and the technically weak presentation were criticized.

The Gamona side thinks that Demonicon is exactly what the side expected: a dark RPG action with rough edges. The amount of information that is provided within the game is comparable to The Elder Scrolls . As a fan of DSA, you should at least take a look, as there is more than just another role-playing game with no depth. The clumsy combat system and the unsightly controls were criticized.

The page 4Players praised the free character development and that you can make decisions with effects. The story, however, is told so crudely that it could be turned into a fantasy series for the German television station RTL II . Other points of criticism are the terrible enemy AI and the incredibly poor combat system.

The games portal Gameswelt praised the very complex and exciting background story as well as the exciting combination of magic, character and story. It took over parts of Mass Effect , The Witcher , Risen and Dragon Age , but still managed to exude its own flair. Overall, however, it is far from AAA titles. The standard fights, which were monotonous in places, were criticized.

The Looki portal praised the strong character development and the varied quests, which, however, could not win an innovation award. The DSA atmosphere is also guaranteed. Criticized were the too easy combat system and the outdated engine.

Of Computer Bild Spiele the gritty, adult-oriented game world, and the original story were praised. The fights, which became somewhat monotonous over time, were criticized.

Web links

• Demonicon at MobyGames (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kalypso takes over DSA: Demonicon
2. ↑ The Dark Eye: Demonicon - PS3 version still in progress, Xbox 360 is left out
3. ↑ ^{a b} 4players.de
4. ↑ ^{a b} computerbild.de
5. ↑ ^{a b} gamestar.de
6. ↑ ^{a b} Test and evaluation of the games world
7. ↑ ^{a b} gamona.de
8. ↑ ^{a b} test looki.de
9. ↑ ^{a b} pcgames.de
10. ↑ ^{a b} Gamerankings : Average Windows rating , based on 6 articles. Retrieved April 3, 2014.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Metacritic : Average rating of the Windows version , based on 12 articles. Retrieved April 3, 2014.