Devilian Game Review (PC)

Devil’s in the Details

Good MMOs should take you on a journey, exploring diverse lands and characters as you run through an expansive virtual world filled with fun things to do. In Devilian you’ll definitely find yourself running — a lot — except that it feels like you’re on a treadmill, and there’s only one speed setting.

Devilian is a hybrid MMO that mixes ARPG combat (e.g. the Diablo series) with traditional MMO dressings like quests, dungeons, and a persistent world with other players. It sounds like a golden concept, and it could have been, but sadly most of the game feels bland and more like work. The quests and story couldn’t be more forgettable, and the world map is disappointingly uninspired. The one saving grace though is its combat system, which actually can be pretty fun with some interesting skills and varied ways to blast hordes of mobs. Unfortunately, the combat can only hold your attention for so long before it’s time to move on to a better MMO, or a better ARPG — Devilian just doesn’t do either genre justice.

Gameplay

Devilian gives you a choice from four classes: Evoker, Berserker, Shadow Hunter, and Cannoneer. These classes generally follow the mold of mage, melee fighter, and rogue, except for the Cannoneer which is a unique creation among MMO characters; she’s a tiny anime-inspired girl who brandishes a very large gun, using it to rocket-propel herself around while blasting explosives and laying traps. The other classes play as you’d expect: spells, swords, and rapid attacks.

Devilian finds itself in an awkward middle ground.

To its merit, Devilian‘s ARPG combat system is actually pretty fun. Most skills are entertaining to use, with decent animations and visual effects — they seem to actually pack a punch. It’s quite satisfying to gather hordes of mobs and AOE them down, or dodge/teleport around the map, especially when compared to the slower combat of traditional MMOs. However, Devilian finds itself in an awkward middle ground where it’s not as strategically deep as classic MMO combat, and also not as zippy and visceral as the better ARPGs.

Each class also has access to three separate skill trees for playstyle mix-and-matching. For example, as an Evoker, you can grab the area heal from one tree for party play while also spending points in another tree for the lightning vortex spell for single target damage. I do commend Devilian for making each of these paths feel distinct and tailored for different player preferences, and even most of the skill enhancement nodes have effects that feel immediately useful, like longer stuns, defensive buffs, and more projectiles.

Dungeons are the highlights of Devilian’s fun factor.

Now let’s talk about dungeons, which I’d say are the highlights of Devilian‘s gameplay fun factor. They’re easy to find a party for due to the absence of the MMO holy trinity (tank, healer, DPS), and everyone needs to be able to take care of themselves. This does tend to make dungeons less strategic, but they’re designed to be short and intense to complement the combat system; there are plenty of mini-boss encounters, arena-styled rooms, and traps to avoid to keep things engaging for a typical 10-15 minute runthrough. A simple grading system and roulette wheel rewards at the end also make you want to focus more in dungeons, over the run-kill-repeat blandness of questing (more on that below).

As for this game’s touted unique feature, Devilian form, it just feels gimmicky and doesn’t add any new gameplay mechanics. You just end up spamming skills for a few seconds before your Devilian energy runs out, and most of the time it feels even weaker than using your non-Devilian abilities. The final nail in the coffin is that it’s quite difficult to level up your Devilian form as it uses a separate experience meter, so it’s likely that you’ll end up not using it much at all.

Progression

Let’s get one thing clear: the journey through Devilian is boring — not unfair, or frustrating, or even slow — just boring. The story is nonexistent, without any cutscenes after the tutorial area or voiced dialogue for important moments. In fact, I didn’t even know that I had beaten the main questline until I realized that NPCs started saying that I was a hero who saved the world. I actually still can’t remember who the main villain was, or why I was “saving the world” in the first place. It’s just a linear trek through cookie cutter quests of fetch this or kill that until you’re at max level.

Even though leveling is a huge mindless grind, the progression curve feels pretty good. Gear upgrades and character growth come at a reasonable rate throughout the journey to the level cap. New systems open up with clear tutorials to assist you. You don’t ever really get stuck replaying the same area, even if most “new” areas feel exactly the same as the previous ones. There’s always a new objective to do, even if you don’t care what you’re doing. And thankfully, for an MMO, it’s actually quite generous with XP, so for me at least that meant a grind of only around 20 hours before hitting endgame.

The itemization really falls flat.

Even with a steady stream of ever-more-powerful loot, the itemization itself is very lacking, even at endgame. Gear is mostly just adding bigger numbers, and you don’t really feel any jumps in power the entire time — there’s no wow factor when you find an epic weapon, for example. In traditional MMOs, this might not be a deal breaker, but with a hack and slash ARPG combat system, it is; getting awesome loot and gearing up is the biggest motivator for ARPG combat, and Devilian really falls flat here.

There is the concept of gear sets, but they aren’t unique from any other regular piece of equipment, mostly just being palette swaps. Also, set bonuses are lazily designed, typically only granting more numbers instead of opening up gameplay variety. Some innovation here would have really helped make sets meaningful, like granting double casts of magic or taunting enemies when you slam the ground. Ultimately, almost every player was just looking for and wearing the exact same setup for their class.

There is one somewhat intriguing aspect of Devilian‘s item hunt though, and that’s Talismans. It’s a simple CCG-like system where you can collect different rarities of Talismans, fuse them to boost their power, and combine them to create your own “hand” of cards. It gives you a layer of control beyond your gear, and opening Talisman packs is fun for a good while as you hope to get the most elusive and powerful ones.

Endgame

The meat of any MMO is its endgame, and to Devilian‘s credit, there is certainly a huge amount of varied things to do once you get there. To illustrate this, here’s a list of most of the primary activities that max level characters can participate in:

• Gem farming for Artifact enchanting – add to sockets in gear for big stat bonuses
• Resistance elixir crafting – find rare materials to permanently increase your elemental defenses
• Post-level cap Proficiencies – keep earning XP to add bonus points to main stats
• Dimensional Rifts – small arena with waves of enemies
• Abyssal Tower – multi-story once-a-day zone with progressively harder enemies
• Map Bosses – unique spawns that require many players to take down
• Infinite Hunting Grounds – guilds can control these territories for bonus loot
• Harder dungeon difficulties, Heroic and Hell, with up to +3 modifiers for better gear
• Archdevil Dungeons – 3-man instances with high ilvl requirement
• Raid Dungeons – 9-man instances with high ilvl requirement
• Guild Dungeons – 20-man instances with party locked to guildmates
• PvP – 20 vs 20 and 3 vs 3 arena types

While yes, this seems like more than enough to do, that’s all it is — stuff to do. The endgame content is really not that compelling despite the variety, with the rewards not worth the effort most of the time. The core problem is that endgame itemization is still bad, without any unique gear or rare items that enhance your skills or build. It’s mostly interesting just because any loot drop mechanic can hook you in, simply because of the lottery aspect and the excitement of getting an upgrade. The gameplay remains the same, just with bigger numbers. Without the tightly-tuned, team-based raiding of better MMOs, Devilian‘s kind-of-fun ARPG combat eventually got old without proper longterm incentives.

For some casual fun, Devilian is probably worth a shot.

With all that said, if you’re looking for an MMO or an ARPG to just dive into for some casual fun, Devilian is probably worth a shot. It’s free to play and has some decent entertainment in its combat and some subsystems. Just don’t expect to find your next go-to game for the long haul unless Trion Worlds and Bluehole Ginno really put effort into improving the game’s itemization or endgame raiding design.

What Do You Think?

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.