I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear studio Tokyo RPG Factory, a subsidiary of Square Enix, has a new JRPG coming out next month: Oninaki. It's being overseen by Chrono Trigger director Takashi Okita as creative producer, and you can try it right now thanks to a new demo available on PS4, Switch, and PC (Steam).
The Oninaki demo is a two-parter. The demo's story mode will give you a taste of the tale of Kagachi, a Watcher "travelling between the world of the living and beyond the veil to the world of the dead, to save the souls of the Lost," as Square Enix put it. "You will experience a tumultuous tale of life and death, bound to the precepts of reincarnation."
The demo's battle mode, meanwhile, will fast forward a bit and let you play with an upgraded character equipped with "four daemons that perform different job roles." Oninaki is more of a hack-and-slash game than Tokyo RPG Factory's previous titles, which were mostly traditional turn-based fair. You can swap between daemons on the fly to change your attacks and abilities, and it looks pretty cool in motion. Give me a big anime axe I can drag along the ground and use to launch enemies into the air, and I'll give you several hours of my time.
Progress from the story mode portion of the Oninaki demo will transfer to the full game, but obviously, you'll have to play the real game to reach the power level of the demo's battle mode character. Besides, the demo is only like 2GB, so why not give it a go?
Oninaki will officially release on August 22. If you find that you absolutely adore the demo, you can pre-order the game to save $5 off its $50 list price (PlayStation Plus required on PS4).
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