Demon's Souls is a game that can make even the most die-hard Xbox fanboys question their brand loyalty. It's a third-person RPG that takes place in a medieval kingdom where all the subjects have been possessed and the land overrun by demons. You play as one of many soldiers who has come to save the kingdom in hopes of gaining riches and celebrity status.
After the tutorial, the game places you in an over-world called the Nexus, which acts as a sort of home base and connects you to the other stages of the game. There are five worlds with 3-4 stages in each, and each world is unique with their own environments. My favorite world is this giant tower with various torture devices scattered about. It’s really eerie walking around in a dank dungeon with body shaped coffins full of nails that hide enemies within.
There are two forms your character can play, soul and body. Body is you as a regular person. If you die, you enter soul form. In soul form, you have a faint blue glow and are stronger; however, your health bar is half what it is in body form. At first that seems like a major drawback, but you can find items that boost your health as high as 75%. One thing you'll quickly learn is that you’re going to be playing in soul form for the majority of the game. This is because its very easy to die. Like, frustratingly easy. And the only way to get your body back is to defeat the boss of the stage you’re in.
A popular criticism of the game is that it’s light on story. Now the story does exist, but it’s subversive. A lot of the subtleties of the story can only be discovered through the games NPCs, and some of those NPCs can only be met in certain worlds and character tendencies. In Black World tendency, the enemies become much stronger and you can get better drops. White World tendency is the exact opposite; however, there are powerful weapons you can only obtain in this tendency. Basically, the decisions you make change how difficult the game gets and what kinds of weapons and items you can attain.
Combat in this game is what you would expect out of a medieval dungeon crawler. You have a number of stats that can be customized to skew towards magic or melee attacks. You use the souls of your slain enemies as a type of currency to level up said stats. Melee and magic use the same basic scheme of a lock-on and the shoulder buttons cast or swing your weapon.
Equipment weight plays a major role in how you go about combat as well. Depending on your stats, you have a maximum amount of equipment you can wear. The heavier the equipment, the slower you will move. Once you reach half of your equip weight you lose the ability to dodge effectively, which is a very important skill to have.
Another major hindrance is that you can’t sell any extra items or equipment you happen to find. So if you reach your maximum storage capacity you won’t be able to pick up any new items without dropping old ones. This adds a little strategy as to what items and weapons you want to carry on your person at all times. Although there is a specific character in the Nexus whose job it is to store your stuff for you for people that can't bring themselves to throw anything away.
If you’ve heard anything about Demon's Souls, it’s that it’s balls hard. This is absolutely true for a couple of different reasons. If you’re killed, any souls you’ve gained are left in a blood stain on the ground where you died. If you make it back to your blood stain and touch it you’ll gain all your souls back. But if you happen to die on the way you lose those souls permanently. It’s easy to imagine the anger and resentment of losing thousands of souls after a long grind session.
The other thing that makes this game so hard is that every enemy is the game is capable of killing you quite easily. All it takes from even the very first enemies is a couple hits to dispatch you. Yes, it’s difficult, but that’s what makes this game so great. It keeps you on your toes at all times because one little mistake and you’ll have to start all over again. When you die, you know it’s not because the game cheated you. You feel as though you legitimately made a mistake and you now know for the next time to expect that pitfall or ambush. It gives you a sense of accomplishment when you get past a particularly tricky part of the game or after you beat a boss.
There’s also the online portion of the game that lets you summon other people in soul form to help you beat a stage. And later on you get a stone that lets you invade other online player’s games in order to kill them for souls and your body form back. They even implement this neat ability to be able to leave hints for other players about traps or treasure ahead.
Demon's Souls is an absolute must buy for anyone that currently owns or plans to own a PS3. You would be hard pressed to find a game that is as challenging and as engaging on any system.
Demon's Souls can be purchases here
