Demon Tides review

Have you ever played a game so good, that you try to find some arbitrary flaws in it because there's no way it can be this good? Not out of some weird bias or even wanting to find something to dislike about the game, just because the sheer quality on display, the pure joy you feel, means you might be overlooking something else? I've been agonizing over this review of Demon Tides for that reason. I have my nitpicks, sure, and my tiny issues, and because I take whatever small authority I have with this Senior Editor title and platform seriously, I need to be honest—with myself, the developers if they happen to read this, and you, the reader. So my question to myself was this: do those issues, that you'll learn more about in a bit, matter enough to diminish the fun I had playing Demon Tides?

Demon Tides is a direct sequel to Demon Turf, a tough as nails precision platformer with tons of freedom for player expression. You don't need to have played Turf to understand what's going on in Tides, even though the latter is surprisingly focused on its story; you'll get a rundown of past events in the tutorial. The gist is that Beebz, current queen of the Demon Turf, heads to the oceanic kingdom of Ragnar's Rock after receiving a letter of invitation from Ragnar himself. Oh, and that he's apparently Beebz's dad. So the queen and her best buds sail on over, find a kingdom in chaos with citizens rebelling against their cruel monarch, and start busting heads to take out Ragnar's underlings and finally reach the man himself.

Beebz returns to the platforming scene with the core of her moveset from Demon Turf intact and feeling better than ever. If you've played Mario Odyssey, you'll feel right at home with your new queen as she jumps, triple jumps, side flips, and wall jumps all over the place. Beebz still has more tricks up her lack of sleeves, however, with a dash attack move and three transformations: a bat, a snake, and a weird spinning top thing that's just called Spin Form. Bat is your double jump, simply jump again in the air to transform and gain some height. Spin Form is something of a glide, allowing you to get just a bit more distance with a press of the left trigger. Snake is a bit more situational and more about ground/water speed: toggle it on with L1, dash with R2, and control your now Sonic-speed movement by moving the camera.

That's all well and good in a vacuum, but where things get interesting is when you start combining moves. You can only use each once before returning to the ground (or hitting special crystals with your dash move), and performing them in a different order will result in different moves. For example, let's say you see a treasure chest at the end of a platforming gauntlet that you really don't feel like tackling at the moment. Finding a platform that's relatively nearby where you want to go, you dash off the edge into a twirl jump, Donkey Kong Country style, gaining some distance and a not insignificant amount of height. It's not nearly enough, though, so you use spin form before you fall too far, then jump again to bounce out of spin form into Bat Form for a quick bounce forward. Just before you miss the lip of the platform, you press boost for one last hurtle up and forward, open up the chest, and tackle the gauntlet you were supposed to do backwards because there's some collectibles there and you're having a good time.

You can't do that sort of thing everywhere in Demon Tides, but it's an option more often than you would think. It might take you a few tries and returning to your place-able checkpoint flag more often than you'd like to admit, but it's always incredibly satisfying to just fly over terrain you're not "supposed" to. Supposed is in quotes because you're absolutely supposed to be thinking of creative ways to use Beebz's moves and breaking the game wide open—it's what shmoovment is all about.

The levels you'll be shmooving all over are all contained in three big open worlds, each one a section of Ragnar's Rock cordoned off by toxic red reefs that... now that I think about it, the game never reckons with these again after the introduction, so you're probably not supposed to think to hard about them. After landing in one of the oceans, you're free to go wherever you want in your search for golden gears to unlock the next ocean, so pick a direction, turn into a snake, and get swimmin'. Not every island has a golden gear to find, some reward you with costumes or equippable talismans to customize your moveset instead, but I really wasn't exploring for the rewards; I was doing so because it was incredibly fun in its own right. In all three areas, I would get the call that I had enough gears to move on to the next location, then proceed to keep exploring where I already was because I was just having too much fun. Beating the game after about 15 hours of playtime, I had 97% completion in each zone and I plan on going back to clean up after this review is posted. Heck, I'll probably do it again when the game comes to Switch.

It helps that there's a ton of variety in the islands. Some are open ended playgrounds for you to explore, others are single challenge obstacle courses, and others still are weird, atmospheric oddballs. Almost all of them are a joy to navigate; there was exactly one island I actively disliked out of the total 77 and it was the one with terrain that turns invisible when you get close to it. That's a level that would work way better in an imaginary 3DS version with better depth perception. 76 out of 77 is still an incredible hit ratio.

If you find most levels a bit too easy for your liking, and once you get to grips with everything you can do it does get pretty easy, there are the Mr. Mint challenges to bring you back down. This strange little man has set up teleporters hidden on select islands which take you into special platforming gauntlets. Here, you (usually) can't place your checkpoint flag and have to do the whole thing in one go, as dying will return you to the start. These can get super difficult, asking total perfection from you as you chain jumps together, waiting for the next safe platform to wipe the sweat off your hands. These are closer to Demon Turf's style than this game's more freeform level design, but they feel better thanks to the cleaner controls and are more navigable than Turf's occasionally confusing stages.

If you do ever find yourself confused about where to go or where to find that last collectible, you do have a few handy tools at your disposal. At any time while grounded, you can press the right face button to bring up a crazy taxi arrow that'll point towards the nearest Eyetem, the game's currency found just about everywhere. It's incredibly helpful for finding that last few you somehow missed on your first pass, and by equipping a certain talisman you can make the arrow a toggle that hovers above Beebz instead of popping up in place for a few seconds. I do wish this worked for gears and chests as well, however, as some of those can be tricky to find or figure out how to unlock.

If you just can't find something, you may want to look to the environment for some player-made graffiti. In between the jokes and color commentary, you might actually find some helpful pointers. Quite literally, with an arrow pointing towards an easy to miss secret. These are a lot of fun both to see and to make, and give the world a bit more life than it would totally offline. You can still play offline if that's your jam, but the connection certainly enhances the experience.

Speaking of enhancements, I've mentioned talismans a few times. These are special items you'll be rewarded with or purchase at Midgi's shop. When equipped in one of five unlockable slots, they offer special effects or alterations to Beebz's moves. One might double your ground speed when running, or give you a second bat form jump, or freeze any water you touch, or just turn Beebz back into 2D. There's a ton of variety here, and with two loadouts you can swap between just by pressing left on the D-pad, it's easy to experiment. My primary loadout was all about on-foot platforming, while my secondary focused on speeding up snake form. Each loadout comes with its own outfit slots too, so you can customize Beebz's hair and clothes as you like. You can swap loadouts at any time, even mid-jump, so you could create two loadouts that work in tandem. For example, one loadout could give you the triple jump, then the other allows you to glide gently down in Bat Form. With careful planning and quick fingers, all it takes is setting things up in the gear menu.

Here's where we get to the first real con of Demon Tides (four pages in on my doc): menuing is slightly annoying. For some reason, you can't use the D-pad to navigate menus, and most menus with multiple selections, like the clothing shop or graffiti creation, will frequently bug out, requiring you to tab over to the next section and back to select something. It's not the biggest deal, but it is a consistent annoyance.

The game as a whole can be fairly janky. I didn't run into too many bugs, but once or twice Beebz would randomly spawn in high in the sky after teleporting or fast traveling, most islands would suddenly pop in once I got close, and one Mr. Mint level wouldn't let me move the camera outside of first person mode. Animations in cutscenes also look really stiff. Thankfully, the hilarious writing carries things, but with so many super closeups on the characters, it's hard to ignore how unnaturally they move along with the occasional instance of poor grammar. The game is able to balance a fairly serious plot with humor to great effect, until the very last second where the ending becomes a weird "where are they now" as the credits play. I was pretty invested in the story and characters, so it's a very unsatisfying way to close things out. Gameplay is queen here and it should be the priority, but I do wish a bit more work had gone into polishing the menus and cutscenes.

That brings us back to my dilemma writing this review: do those issues make Demon Tides a less enjoyable experience given the smooth—as—butter platforming, perfect soundtrack, great level design, and funny, heartfelt writing? Frankly, I'm still not sure, but, as much as some people will tell you otherwise, reviews are not objective measures of quality. I can only tell you how much I liked a thing, and I liked Demon Tides a lot, flaws and all.