I got to the first story battle, and attacked the enemy for 5 damage. He attacked back, and I was inflicted with insta-death. Game Over.

The good news is, I was only inflicted with it once. The bad news is, I still had trouble causing sufficient enough damage to beat them, and I couldn't heal enough HP. So it took a few tries before I got past it. Luckily, the rest of the battles in the game weren't as hard. Instead, they just took a while. The demo's boss got inflicted with Stop, so I couldn't tell you what it was like. As the game's description says, there are no random battles. Instead, as you travel through dungeons, you have to fight battle events that are in the way. Best I can tell, they don't repeat, though I didn't see if they repeat if I left the floor or dungeon. RPGM3's battles are time-consuming by default, so it's a definate plus that they're not random in this game.

Surprisingly, everything else was pretty decent. Certainly not great, but good enough that I wanted to keep going. The story involves Will, former prince of Brivek. Former, because he was framed as the murderer of his father, the king, and quickly banished. He returns to kill the one who framed him, only to find out that there's something bigger going on: a powerful corruption of people and monsters. But this all comes after the short intro involving a lizard man in the middle of his village-destroying. Yes, I'm quite interested in learning what just happened there. Actually, I'm quite interested in the story in general. The storytellers aren't perfect, what with some poor execution timings, message box goofs, and the occasional typo. But the story is interestingly told, and definately seems like some thought was put into the dialogue.

The environments were decent enough. The world map is very large, and kinda empty in a few spots, partly because most of the locations line the edge of the map. Again, it's a good thing battles aren't random. Towns have neatly arranged buildings, mostly sitting at the walls to prevent slowdown, and have random townsfolk standing around. The castle is mostly empty, aside from one room with a couple tables and a statue. The one dungeon I visited is rather bland and straightforward, with only one dead-end, but the paths weren't one-tile narrow, so you didn't get a clostraphobic feeling.

Overall, the demo wasn't that bad an experience. If only the battles were better balanced, it would've been pretty decent. That's not to say that nothing else could undergo some improvement, but at least there wasn't anything distracting to deal with, and it's a game I'm hoping gets finished. Oh, and as far as the mature rating goes, the worst I found were a couple swears and the use of a red flash when someone was being hurt or killed during a storyteller.