Demon's Souls

Never heard of the game? I wouldn't be surprised. This game slipped under the radar, after a terrible showing at TGS 2008, which was nothing like the final game, putting many people off. However, after a few good reviews in Japan, this game has become reasonably well known, even as a small third party exclusive only released in Asia.

The game is a typical Action-Rpg. The game's story isn't anything special, just a simple “Save the world of Demons” affair. You chose one of about 10 different classes, and start the game. These classes are better thought of as starter kits: they give you a basic layout of stats and equipment, but apart from that they are no different. Meaning you could start as a weak Magician, and if you leveled up your strength and got some good armour, you could fight like a Knight. The game is different to Baldurs Gate or Diablo in this respect.

Then you play through the Tutorial level, facing some weak enemies, learning the controls. The combat is simple and brilliant. You can do a strong or weak attack with your weapon, and there are a small amount of combos you can do with these buttons. Obviously, a strong attack is slower but more powerful, while the weak attack is faster and less powerful. You can also equip your weapons in two hands, or dual wield. If you want you can equip a shield in your left hand and a sword in your right. Shields block with L1 and if you press L2 they parry, allowing you to counter, but if the timing is wrong, you are left in the open. For Ranged combat with Bows or Crossbows, you equip them in the same way as a sword. You must have arrows to use a bow. From here you can either lock-on and shoot from Third-Person, or aim in first person for a more precise shot. Good for long distance where you are too far away to lock-on. For Magic, you first have to equip your magic spell, have the required level. You also need a “Catalyst” to cast spells, which you can equip like a sword. Magic attacks can range from “Magic weapon” which adds damage to your weapon, to “Soul Arrow”, which shoots an attack at your foe. The opposite to Magic spells, are Miracles. Miracles can be thought of as a Prayer, and heal your health or aid you, usually, although a couple hurt the enemy, like Rage of God. Miracles work in the same way as Magic, but are Governed by your “Faith” stat, and use Talismins rather than Catalysts. However, as you're probably wondering, you can aquire “The Talismin of Beasts” which lets you cast both Magic and Miracles.

Combat isn't your usual hack and slash affair, which is why many ramble on about the “hardcore” difficulty of the game. The best way to describe it though, would be “This game punishes stupidity”. For example, if you are one on one with a skeleton, don't run in swinging, walk forward with your shield up, block, then attack, step back, repeat. However, if you are a light armoured class, like the thief, you will instead be trying to dodge the enemy's attack and get behind them, for a “backstab”, which is an automatic critical hit, which will do considerable damage. To dodge, you simply press circle + direction and you will roll.

After the tutorial, you wake up in the Nexus, after dying. You will be in “Soul Form”. In Soul form you have 50% of your max health in “Human Form”. To get back to human form you have to kill a Boss or a player as a Black Phantom, or a boss as a Blue Phantom. Thus, you now enter the first level of the game Boletaria Palace, known as 1–1, to beat the boss Phalanx and get your body back. At this point, you cannot upgrade your levels, but you will be able to after the level. You then face the level, and will end up playing through 3 levels for each of the 5 worlds. All 15 of them, not counting 1–4. The bosses are reasonable throughout the game, although compared to the touted “hardcore” difficulty, they aren't that bad in comparison. The levels are designed well, and every now and again you open up a short cut, so that if you die, which you will, your passage through the level will be faster.

Dying. You will be dying often in this game, but this game doesn't simply give you a Game Over screen, and take you back to the save point. In this game, when you die, you will be taken back to the Nexus, and will be in the aforementioned Soul Form. Where you died, there will be a Blood Stain. If you can make it back here alive, you will recover all the souls you had before you died. Souls are the game's currency, and are used to pay for weapons, health or mana restorative items, or to level up. If you don't make it back, those souls are lost forever, and you have to get back to the new blood stain to salvage what you lost, and so on. This leaves us fearing death. Later in the game, after grinding, you may have thousands and thousands of souls, so dying here could potentially mean losing your hard work.

And finally, the online. In demons souls, online is very different to most games. If you are in soul form, you can become a Black Phantom, once you get past a certain point in the game. Then you can “Invade” a player in “Human” forms game, and try to kill them, by stalking them through the level, and laying traps. Killing them will mean you gain back your body. The same thing can happen to you if you are in human form and are playing online. Also, there is another component, Blue Phantoms. If you are a Human player, you can summon Blue Phantoms, who are players in soul form, to join you to beat the boss of the level. Also, summoning Blue Phantoms can be a way to help beat a Black Phantom, as when they enter you are told, but have no idea where they are. Strength in numbers. The attraction of playing as a Blue Phantom, is to beat the boss of another players level. Doing this gets your body back, but you still have to beat the level in your game.

In conclusion, Demons Souls is a very deep Action-Rpg experience, that is hard, but never unfair. The game allows you to build your character how you see fit. There is a very cool online component, and much more to do than can be described in a review, such as World Tendancy events and Weapon upgrades.

I'd strongly reccomend this to everybody. 96% overall.

This game can be somewhat confusing to start, as you are very much dumped in the deep end. Since the manual is in chinese apart from a tiny leaflet, this wiki can help where the manual doesn't. Similar to Jason and the Argonauts in feel, but with more options and flexibility.

http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/intro

You play most of the game in a Soul state which is weaker than being alive. You can become alive again by beating bosses, invading/aiding another online player's game, or finding a rare item.

Figuring out how to beat bosses/get through areas is a bit trial and error. Being killed instantly is often being your reward for getting it wrong. This can make the game frustrating, especially in the beginning. You “drop” all your demon souls (used to buy weapons/level up) when you die. This happens frequently early on.

However, if you can get past the frustrating times this game is very rewarding. It has good use of weapons and shields – you can block with a shield, and stab with a spear at the same time. Dual-wield/sword-shield/two-handed combinations are available for every weapon. I think this will be a lasting action/rpg in my collection.

Demon's Souls is not for the casual gamer; and the faint of heart need not apply.

It is a very unforgiving game where dying can potentially cause you to lose all the souls you have gathered (think of souls as currency for items and item upgrades, or experience points to spend on character upgrades) if you are unable to retrace your steps back to where you originally died. Even if you successfully make it back to the spot where you last died it could very well of cost you 10 to 15 minutes, or more in some areas to make it back.

The game does not allow you to save where you see fit, or even at checkpoints. It is constantly saving in the background, and you cannot explictly load / save anywhere like you can with regular games. You die, there is no reload, its already saved that you have died and put you at a respawn point.

There is no pause, pressing start, rummaging through your inventory, or even pressing the PS button will not stop the games action from unfolding. The only way to ‘pause’ is to quit the game.

You will die, die again, and then keep on dying. The levels are well designed and there are countless ways of dying. You will probably spend the majority of the game in soul form, which is a weakened state after dying that you can only return to ‘life’ by killing a demon boss. (Don't worry you'll probably die again soon after)

The combat system while simple is beautifully executed. You also have a variety of foes to deal with, and certain foes require different strategies in order to deal with efficently.

This is a game where the players individual skill counts for alot more than the stat points they have pumped in their character, or the +20 ring of Ogre Slaying that have equiped. There are areas where you need your character to be strong enough in order to cope with, but no amount of stat pumping is going to get you past certain areas unless you know what you are doing.

All the above may come across as negatives, but to me this is what makes the game so beautiful. This is a game you learn to respect. You aren't just challenged in the big boss fights, you are challenged in the lead up to the big fights, which is very rare in this day in age of hand holding games, particularly in the RPG genre which this game falls in.

If this game seems to be up your alley I would highly recommend the review by Eurogamer for more detail on what could be in store for you.

Demon's Souls is an awesome and hardcore RPG, has great online play, an excellent combat system and leveling system, can be a little annoying at the start of the game, but as you get stronger it gets a bit more easy.

I recommend this game for any fans of Fallout, Oblivion, or the Final Fantasy series.. well pretty much any rpg fan ;)

Finally managed to get this through MightyApe since even play-asia seems to be constantly out of stock.

One of the best RPG I've played in a long time. Challenging and enormously fun. I've been playing this pretty much constantly since I've got it delivered.
In many ways, you are on equal grounds to the enemy. Similar amount of health, enemy uses health items, they block and they also get fried by their own trap as you will.

There are some reviews floating around stating this game has harsh death penalty. You lose all your currency / experience points. I actually think this is far preferable to “Game Over” screen, which breaks the rhythm of the game, as you simply respawn at the level entrance with chance of getting all your currency / experience back.

Graphic has some low res sections. However, the atmosphere of the game, compelling game play and clever (and deadly) level design more than makes up for it. Moreover, the armour and weapons actually looks like armour and weapons; not metal bikini of invulnerabili­ty +10.

Best of all, there are some elements of multiplay where players leave messages to each other to warn / lie about dangers that lies ahead. There is also little blood patches which allows you to view how other players died, which also gives you a good indication of traps and monsters ahead. Lastly another player may invade or assist other player's game.

Overall one of the best games I've played in a while.