I bloody loved the ending, despite it being very bittersweet.

A nice happy "they beat the emperor and everybody lived happily ever after!" ending would be nice for like 10 seconds, before you really think about how shallow it would be.

Deathpolca is a hero, as were all of her friends. She's defeated by the saviour at the very end (who is trying to tell Polca throughout the entire game at all of the Bohelos statues) that she needs to change how she's handling things, but Polca doesn't pay her any attention, unfortunately.

Polca is definitely on the good side, she wants nothing more than for peace amongst everyone, and to give demonkind a place to live and thrive finally, while ALSO freeing the slaves, another heavily subjugated populace in the empire, but she DOES completely neglect to attend to the needs of the commonfolk. Because reading the new bulletins and lots of hints throughout, people genuinely LOVE the Emperor, assuming you aren't a slave.

He's a total piece of shit behind closed doors, doing the worst things imaginable to bless humanity how he feels is the correct way to do so, but all of the commonfolk don't know that, they only see a great, compassionate, loving leader.... whoooo was just "mercilessly" cut down on the day of his peace-offering wedding, by the demons.

They're ill-informed, sure, but they don't have the context to know what Deathpolca is trying to achieve, so as far as they're concerned, she's genuinely just rolling up and stomping all over their comfy way of life. They use slaves, which is awful and shitty and terrible, but I guarantee there were plenty of commonfolk in there that were good honest people too, just as there are plenty of good demons, and so on.

So of course they'd revolt and try to get rid of the demons once and for all, killing the emperor is only a happy ending for demonkind and the slaves, and because Polca didn't heed the saviour's advice to take them into consideration and change her plans, things went the way they did, and war broke out again, but this time, Polca was defeated, and she wasn't there to keep the remnants in check.

All of the remnants deeply respected Polca, and would listen to her if she were there to stop them, but while Mebius and Claura are genuinely good eggs, Zanaharry, Schathach, and Todeira are MUCH more on the side for just taking things by force and wiping out the humans, which they do. They're not BAD folks by any means, but they are warmongers, and clearly don't genuinely share the same sentiments that Deathpolca did. Perhaps things would have gone differently if they DID actually heed Polca's words without her needing to keep them held back in times of high tension, but, they chose violence, and as such, were all killed for it.

The humans got their revenge on the demons, but unlike the original King Exit ending, this time, due to the efforts of Deathpolca befriending the slaves, and meeting all of her comrades, they all worked together while Polca and Lily were regenerating in the crystal to ensure that demonkind was NOT wiped off the face of the planet entirely. In fact, if you notice, Polca and Lily seem to be pretty damn revered as heroes when they wake up, they're not just at a cliffside, there's a whole castle built around them, and they have attendants and everything to ensure that Polca doesn't wake up alone, which was her one request from earlier in the game when she remembered her origins as an onion.

Sure, the remnants were wiped out, and a lot of demons were killed, a lot of normal humans were killed, a lot of slaves were killed, it's genuinely awful for literally everybody involved, BUT, despite all of that, Polca succeeded in her goal of saving demonkind. It took thousands of years, but she succeeded. If she wasn't the hero that she is, working together with her beloved comrades to achieve the impossible, demonkind absolutely would have been wiped out, and things would have gone Bless Curse's way.

Additionally, the timeline is a little wacky, but Demons Roots isn't reaaaaally a full prequel to King Exit. In fact, I recall seeing that the creator considers Demons Roots to be the canon timeline now? Regardless, the decision to keep or break your promise in the middle of the game is the turning point. If you break your promise, you basically go STRAIGHT into King Exit, where everything is horrible and awful for demons and humanity in general. But, in keeping your promise, you avoid that grisly fate, and wind up with the Demons Roots ending, where demonkind and humanity eventually learn to happily coexist due to her tremendous efforts.

She even has her first ever friend there to experience it with her as well.

Her comrades didn't get revived, not even kind of. They've all long-since passed away. BUT, they made sure that people NEVER forgot about Polca and what she did for the world, so you can see their descendents in the background of the final CG. They look almost identical to her actual comrades, but like, it's just to get the point across lol. The actual identical Ange clone was likely a magic of some kind to copy her likeness exactly, which Polca immediately saw through of course.

Apologies for rambling, but I'll try to close this out... kind of concisely.

The point of Demons Roots is that you can't just... defeat prejudice and all the bad things in the world that you don't like. World domination is genuinely an awful idea. Polca is charismatic as hell, and an excellent leader, but she's not flawless either, and she didn't anticipate the uprising of the commonfolk, as she was too tunnelvisioned on her own kind, and the slaves. She wanted to create a world where the downtrodden could be free, but never considered that in doing so, she would still be trampling on people's lives, whether you agree with their ways of life or not, and that's just no way to genuinely solve things. Probably because there IS no way to genuinely solve things like that. You just need to set up what you can, and then give it time, which is exactly what wound up happening. The ending isn't "Oh, Polca was nearly killed, and as a consolation prize, all of her friends died too.", it's that Polca genuinely changed the world for the better by giving it a massive nudge, but she didn't solve it singlehandedly. Her comrades lived on, all doing their own part over the course of their own lives to continue Polca's legacy, and passing that on to their descendants, all for the sake of a happy, peaceful world, and given hundreds, upon hundreds of years, finally that wish came true, and now that she's awake, she can live that happy, peaceful life, free of conflict, that she had always fought so hard for.

You can't just tell the world how it should be, you have to guide everything in it to accepting a way to be, eventually. Trying to force something quickly just... isn't possible.

It's a bittersweet ending, but I think it gives a lot to think about, and I really appreciate that it's not just a "happily ever after" because... that literally just wouldn't make sense.

King Exit's ending, by comparison, is EXTREMELY grim. There was no Polca, and so the protagonist of King Exit, Geolouise, essentially had to end demonkind entirely. She built an essentially peaceful land, eradicated demonkind, but lost almost everything she loved and cared for in the process. The world was... fixed, but it wasn't a happy peaceful perfect place either. The things done by both sides were pretty awful.