Compared to other games in its genre, I can't really recommend Demonologist. The puzzle aspect of figuring out the ghost is fine, but it doesn't bring anything new to the table on that front, and their selection of ghosts is largely just taken from Phasmophobia, but with their abilities reshuffled. On the surface it looks different, but it's still basically identical, with the same behaviours of the ghosts, just with different names.
The gameplay loop is not different enough from Phasmophobia, or other games like it with an identify mode, to justify getting this game over any other game in the genre at this time. I would argue that this game is actually a little worse in its gameplay loop, because you can't complete the side objectives until you identify the ghost, which just winds up extending the level needlessly, instead of letting you split your focus a bit and choose what's important to you in the moment. The exorcism portion of the game, arguably the one thing that actually sets it apart from some other games in this genre, is not developed enough to be locked behind both identifying the ghost, completing the side objectives, and then working on that. It mostly boils down to "go search around the house for a third time."
Having to search the house multiple times to identify the ghost, then put rats in a cauldron for some reason, and then to finally exorcise the ghost with a couple different minigames wouldn't be so bad, necessarily, if they unlocked all of the maps you could play on from the start, but the maps are level-locked, and you have to do a bit of grinding to actually unlock more maps, which means you wind up playing the same map or two multiple times in a row to level up enough to unlock the next selection of maps. Which, again, wouldn't be too much of a problem, if not for what I think might be the most disappointing part of the game overall.
One of the big selling points of the game is that as you're exploring the maps, you'll experience random ghost events throughout the map that give the game more life. That's both true and not true at the same time. The ghost events are random, but they're always tied to the same piece of scenery, trigger, or room, with the difference being exactly what jump scare you might get. For example, in the first map, there's a dress in one room at the end of the hallway. The first time you enter that room every time you load up the map, that dress will have a jump scare attached to it, and the randomness is just finding out which one it is. Once you know where the jump IS, even if it's different, it's not exactly thrilling, and I wouldn't call it random. The ghost events that are scripted also have absolutely nothing to do with the ghost you're trying to identify at all, and instead feel like an entirely different thing. Like the ghost you're hunting has a noisy neighbour that won't stop running down the hall.
All of these problems combine to have you playing the same map 3 to 4 times in a row, more if you die, with the same jump scares, following the same exorcism patterns, to then unlock the next set of maps and start the cycle over again.
I think if the developer of the game decided to, instead of making a game in an already saturated market even when this game released in 2023, instead put their efforts into a single player horror game, they might have had something cool. As it is right now, it just feels like more of the same, but with somehow even less replayability for most people than other games in the same genre.
That's not even touching on the prevalent use of AI art throughout the game, which I unfortunately didn't know about when I purchased the game some time ago. It's in the tarot cards, it's in the art on the wall, it's even in the steam achievements, for some reason.
Lastly, and this is just because I find it hilarious, deciding to make the ectoplasm that gets smeared on the walls white was a wild choice.
