After spending over 13 hours to finish it I can say one thing for sure - this game LOVES to waste your time.
Initially there is no way for the player to realise this. You get a very decent moveset, an original combat system and 4 worlds with seven levels + boss. The overall presentation is nice too, though this artstyle with 2d characters placed in 3d space isn't really my thing. So you play through the first world - it's alright, nothing extraordinary. You beat the boss which is kind of annoying but whatever, 3 worlds left to go. You then notice that after finishing each world all the non-boss levels turn into something like b-sides in Celeste - essentially the same level but with some minor changes. You play one to check it out and it's not very interesting - the collectables are different and enemies are a bit more powerful but aside from that it's almost the exact same as the original level. Oh well, at least there is some postgame content.
As you go on the enemies get more powerful (additional armor, machine guns), and the levels get bigger. Obviously that's pretty standard for a video game, but it never causes Demon Turf to be more challanging - just more frustrating. Combat starts to get tedious because while the enemies are stronger, you aren't - you just need to use grapling hook on them and it fucks with camera in a such a way that it will easily get you killed at least a couple times. Camerawise you also get the choice between manual and automatic but they are equally terrible. The level design gets more and more confusing so you keeping repeating huge chunks of levels because you have no idea when a good time to put up a checkpoint is (on each level you can place up to 3 checkpoints, if you don't place any you go back to the start of the level when you die). Dying takes a longer time, beacuse the levels are placed higher above the sea level or whatever, and the character takes more time to get lethal fall damage (which also applies to enemies, making arenas overly time consuming as well). And the levels themselves are only memorable if they have some annoying fucking gimmick, like jumping from a moving train or onto a mountain lift. The long jump, potentially the most interesting move in the game is almost never utilized in a satisfying way. Every boss is somehow more annoying than the last as well.
But whatever, you got through all the worlds so you can finally beat the final boss. Except you can't, because the creators of the game decided you also need too beat 3 of the b side worlds, essentially making you play through the game twice. This is such a shitty choice that I'm pretty sure the devs don't even know what the fuck they did it for. They even give you the option to skip a level in exchange for some collectibes, which you can only spend on some shitty cosmetics aside from that anyway. But then they try to discourage taking advantage of it by making the character teleport to the gate of the level, and making them go all the way back to the store which sells the level skips. The achievements for beating each world also don't trigger if you just skip the last level until you restart the game, which is a cherry on top of the many bugs connected with the fact that the characters are 2d in a 3d space (glitching on pieces of environment, falling trough small holes, sipping all the fucking time).
The game as a whole isn't even THAT bad. It would be an above-average patformer if it wasn't for all the stupid design choices the devs made. I'd still recommend it if you're looking for something to play in the background while binging a 26-season TV show (which is what I did). But there are many better options if you're looking for a competent 3d platformer.
Initially there is no way for the player to realise this. You get a very decent moveset, an original combat system and 4 worlds with seven levels + boss. The overall presentation is nice too, though this artstyle with 2d characters placed in 3d space isn't really my thing. So you play through the first world - it's alright, nothing extraordinary. You beat the boss which is kind of annoying but whatever, 3 worlds left to go. You then notice that after finishing each world all the non-boss levels turn into something like b-sides in Celeste - essentially the same level but with some minor changes. You play one to check it out and it's not very interesting - the collectables are different and enemies are a bit more powerful but aside from that it's almost the exact same as the original level. Oh well, at least there is some postgame content.
As you go on the enemies get more powerful (additional armor, machine guns), and the levels get bigger. Obviously that's pretty standard for a video game, but it never causes Demon Turf to be more challanging - just more frustrating. Combat starts to get tedious because while the enemies are stronger, you aren't - you just need to use grapling hook on them and it fucks with camera in a such a way that it will easily get you killed at least a couple times. Camerawise you also get the choice between manual and automatic but they are equally terrible. The level design gets more and more confusing so you keeping repeating huge chunks of levels because you have no idea when a good time to put up a checkpoint is (on each level you can place up to 3 checkpoints, if you don't place any you go back to the start of the level when you die). Dying takes a longer time, beacuse the levels are placed higher above the sea level or whatever, and the character takes more time to get lethal fall damage (which also applies to enemies, making arenas overly time consuming as well). And the levels themselves are only memorable if they have some annoying fucking gimmick, like jumping from a moving train or onto a mountain lift. The long jump, potentially the most interesting move in the game is almost never utilized in a satisfying way. Every boss is somehow more annoying than the last as well.
But whatever, you got through all the worlds so you can finally beat the final boss. Except you can't, because the creators of the game decided you also need too beat 3 of the b side worlds, essentially making you play through the game twice. This is such a shitty choice that I'm pretty sure the devs don't even know what the fuck they did it for. They even give you the option to skip a level in exchange for some collectibes, which you can only spend on some shitty cosmetics aside from that anyway. But then they try to discourage taking advantage of it by making the character teleport to the gate of the level, and making them go all the way back to the store which sells the level skips. The achievements for beating each world also don't trigger if you just skip the last level until you restart the game, which is a cherry on top of the many bugs connected with the fact that the characters are 2d in a 3d space (glitching on pieces of environment, falling trough small holes, sipping all the fucking time).
The game as a whole isn't even THAT bad. It would be an above-average patformer if it wasn't for all the stupid design choices the devs made. I'd still recommend it if you're looking for something to play in the background while binging a 26-season TV show (which is what I did). But there are many better options if you're looking for a competent 3d platformer.