Hemsk Island, where Necrosoft Games’sDemonschool takes place, is haunted by cheekily apocalyptic fiends. The ghouls curse a VHS tape in order to mysteriously kill its viewers, a laThe Ring. They also jam printers, send spooky spam emails, and steal shoes and sandwiches. Their scheme to bring about the end of the world is in no apparent rush. Armageddon, it seems, will come to fruition one irritation and parodic ploy at a time.

Neither doesDemonschool betray any sense of urgency, and to its immense detriment. This almost excellent tactical RPG runs twice as long as it should: It’s stretched thin to the point of translucence, laying bare the contrivance of its structure, and so padded out as to stifle the considerable charm of its characters, world, and combat.

You play as Faye, an eager demon hunter starting her freshman year of college, tasked with rooting out interplanar portals across campus. In the vein of thePersona series, an obvious inspiration, your adventure is broken up into weekly chunks, each Monday bringing a fresh focus and new opportunities to deepen your relationships with your allies, roam around town, and stumble into wacky sidequests. UnlikePersona, however, there’s no time pressure, as the clock ticks solely when you accomplish the day’s main objective.

A waggishly surreal, dreamlike logic reigns on the island. Early on, in order to enter the creature-infested wing of the school, you need to get a pass from a teacher, who instructs you to form a student club, which requires a space, a sponsor, and fellow members. From there, Faye recruits a crew of outcasts whose refreshing earnestness and droll banter radiate the coziness of a comforting sitcom. And though dialogue proves increasingly one-note, it emits flashes of brilliance until the bitter end. (In one highlight, Mercy, an animal lover, corrects a classmate’s use of “Kill two birds with one stone”: “Feed two birds with one scone,” she says.)

When talking won’t cut it, fists fly in snappy, cerebral combat. Battles are turn-based and grid-bound, set in trippy, interdimensional arenas. Most characters either shove enemies back a tile or pass through them; if you push one foe into another, they both get hurt; and if there’s a direct line of baddies in a row, they’ll all take damage. Setting up and knocking down adversaries like bowling pins—while undoing and tweaking moves to get the sequence just right—yields an a-ha moment of satisfaction akin to solving Sokoban puzzles.

Despite the methodical combat, every turn bears the stylistic flair and energy of an anime fight scene: You coordinate your maneuvers for a round in a planning phase, hit go, and watch the team let loose in dazzling coordinated choreography. The action is only further propelled by Kurt Feldman’s eerily dreamy soundtrack, which recalls, in bursts, Goblin’sSuspiria score.

Demonschool’s combat is beyond reproach in design and execution, but the game mistakes violence for drama: Rather than giving its characters thoughtful things to say, it grants them unthinking things to punch. That tendency betrays a mistrust of the player and a lack of confidence in the writing. In an emblematic moment, a nemesis turned ally has their mea culpa interrupted by a gaggle of beasties, as though we can’t be expected to sit through a slightly extended bit of exposition, powerless against the whims of our clobber-hungry lizard brains.

Once you recognize the combat’s function as a narrative suture, you soon realize that there isn’t much to do outside it. This is no inherent sin, particularly for a tactical RPG, butDemonschool stuffs itself with activities that achieve only the suggestion of meaning. The main plot grows tedious as it spins its wheels to occupy the full duration of any given week. Minigames fill relationship meters with your companions but reveal nothing about the characters involved.

Elsewhere, you can dig into a junk pile to find furniture for your home base, and go fishing, and throw coins into a fountain, but these endeavors provide little mechanical or storytelling engagement. They’re chores—and, collectively, they lead the game to feel like a chore.

You might wonder ifDemonschool is winking at us, aware of how it contorts itself to pack Faye’s calendar and conjures the illusion of freedom. Shortly after Faye arrives at Hemsk College, she squares up to deadlift a barbell. A dialogue tree presents you with two choices: lift the weight, or put it back down. “I told you it was nuanced,” Faye tells her recently minted best friend.Demonschool, like the exercise bit, is fun and funny. But nuanced? I’m not so sure.

This game was reviewed with a code provided by Stride PR.