Roguelikes: PAN-DAE-MON-IUM

As I've mentioned previously I am constantly on the hunt for new JRPG roguelikes to sink my teeth into, which is when I came across PAN-DAE-MON-IUM, a free roguelike with a great art style and theme. Something it seemed like I'd be guaranteed to enjoy!

And unfortunately I did not. It's only fitting that a game where you play as demons would be filled with sins, but it's unfortunate that the sins seem to be on the gameplay side of things.

Death by a thousand cuts

The core gameplay is fairly typical RPG fair with a few mechanics to spice things up: Your character will sneer upon landing a critical hit (a nod to Smirk from SMTIV), which lets their next attack trigger a Canto (giving you an extra turn). In exchange you can't crit while sneering, which makes sense so no chaining extra turns.

(looking cool joker)

On the left side of the screen is a tension bar which can be spent on your character's ultimate move. For the character you start off with (Zepar), he slices them, potentially charming them and automatically triggering a canto.

(they didn't survive)

Additionally, as your character levels up you'll unlock new moves which can use MP, plus can find move scrolls from defeating certain elite enemies. You also have an assortment of items and such to use mid-battle.

Together this sounds like it would be a reasonable amount of things to do in combat, but in reality most of my time was simply spent hitting the fight button and occasionally using a tension move. For most of the early game you have no other moves to use and there's little reason to use defend. So without choice, each run starts off just on auto pilot.

Death by a thousand bugs

I'm no stranger to basic combat systems though; I can look past those issues to see what else the game has to offer. However in my time spent playing this game (about an hour or so, give or take) I have encountered so many bugs that resulted in my game straight up ending. There were a number of times when the screen would freeze upon using a certain move against an enemy, a couple of times where the game threw me in an unwinnable encounter (namely, a certain boss that would heal themselves to full every three turns) and when I finally got past the issues to a new point in the game, it refused to recognize any button presses.

Death by a Rogue...like?

One of the strange experiences I've had attempting to play this game is that I cannot tell how much of a roguelike it is. It uses a typical RPG Maker save system (with a save at the start of your descend into Limbo along with other saves elsewhere, supposedly) but what makes this game a 'roguelike'? Is a game with only one savepoint a roguelike technically? The floors are vaguely randomized along with loot and enemy encounters, but the same could be said of many traditional JRPGs too. There does not seem to be external progression, so that excludes it from being a roguelite as well.

(I've been to here like five times now due to bugs)

Listen, I am trying my hardest to extend a hand to this game and see where it wants to take me because I can see a clear spark of something beneath it all. I've dealt with some supremely buggy games, but please extensively playtest and clean up the earliest part of the experience. I don't know if I can go through another 15-20m of auto battle to have a 20% chance of actually proceeding. Maybe you will though; it's free on Steam so if the art style speaks to you give it a shot.