Demon’s Souls

—Review Score: 10/10—

Demon’s Souls is the action RPG for the real gamer in you. This game is both a rare gem and a nod to the old-school gaming. You get good in this game, or you get killed, a lot. From Software as always gives us the most difficult of game to tackle upon. However, beneath that steep difficulty lies a superb gameplay mechanism. This game is not your usual hack-and-slash action RPG.

The most noticeable element of Demon’s Souls is its difficulty, in the beginning normal enemy can and will kill you in 2-3 hits. But don’t let that troubles you, once you get the grasp of the control scheme and attack pattern, you will be able to handle the enemy. But no matter how overpowered you are, a group of enemy can easily dispatch you with their simultaneous attack. Unlike most games these days, careful planning is mandatory to survive this game. No more save point before a boss fight, or conveniently placed restore point before a big fight, if you die you will need to restart the whole level again, with the enemies respawned.

The story of the game is almost non-existent, but it is enough to drive you to finish the game. The setting is in the Kingdom of Boletaria, where demons came and swoop the land because of a foolish act by the king. You are the supposed saviour of Boletaria, traveling to defeat the demons infesting the land. There are five different locales to explore, each with its own unique enemies and atmosphere. Connecting these locales is The Nexus, in a way this is the only town in the game. In each of the locales there are several checkpoints that can be unlocked once you defeat the boss of that area.

There are several NPCs to interact with during the game, most of them have important role as your shop, storage, weapon upgrades, skill trainer, or leveling up. Interestingly enough, you can kill any of these NPCs. However, if you kill an NPC their functions (e.g. as a shop) cannot be accessed anymore, not to mention that they will fight back if you attack them. These NPCs appear to be only for gameplay purposes, however if you talk to them they actually have interesting backgrounds and can give you insight on what happened in the world of Boletaria.

On to the best part of the game, the gameplay. It appears in the beginning that this game is plain hard, you can even die in the tutorial stage. However, the difficulty is actually because of the difference of Demon’s Souls gameplay compared to other hack-and-slash action RPG. Each attack swing will drain your stamina, each item use will take time in which you can be hit, each magic has a casting time; so there’s no button-mashing in this game. Add to the mix that different weapon will have different stamina consumption and swing animation then you will have one of the most developed battle system in an action RPG; this game is like playing fighting game where you need to time your attack and keep your distance to score a hit to the enemy. When you die, and you will die a lot, the enemy actually getting stronger and you become a soul form with only half as much health as your body form; and did I mention enemies respawn upon your death and you will need to restart the level from the last checkpoint? And how you get back your body form? Kill the boss, of course. All these differences on gameplay force you to get better at playing this game and you will be extremely satisfied once you complete a level.

Another innovative, yet restrictive, part is how Demon’s Souls handles multiplayer experience. Whenever you are connected to the PSN, the online multiplayer is there. You can leave preset messages (this is the restrictive part) on the floor to give hints on other players on what lies ahead. You can touch a bloodstain to see several seconds of the last moment of another player who died in that area. You can summon up to two other players (which will appear as blue phantoms) to help you tackling a level, consequently the enemies will also be stronger. Last but certainly not least, another player can invade your level (which will appear as a black phantom), with sole purpose of defeating you to obtain their body form back. The invasion mechanism provides a very interesting PvP experience. Later in the game, you can also challenge another player for a duel.

Despite its Japanese origin (From Software is a Japanese game developer), Demon’s Souls atmosphere is pretty much like most western RPGs with its dark colour palette, realistically modeled character (no animé stereotype whatsoever), and player-customized main character. Demon’s Souls by no means is a visually beautiful game, character models are not that detailed and the ragdoll physics is awkward. Background music only appear at boss fights and at The Nexus, with most of the levels filled with ambient noise of demons and the environment. Voice-overs and sound effects are actually pretty good, then again most of the levels depend on these things to give the player a clue of what’s going on around them. In essence, all these graphical and sound bits make Demon’s Souls a highly atmospheric game, which will give you different feeling on each locale.

In conclusion, Demon’s Souls is a really rare game that will appeal old-school gamers more. The difficulty level is not that bad once you learned to play the game how it’s intended to be. This is not a button-mashing hack-and-slash action RPG, but rather a tactical action RPG in which you need to plan your actions carefully. With an interesting multiplayer implementation (also rather restrictive in my opinion) and great battle system, this is the must-have game for PS3 so far.

(Picture Credit: Demon’s Souls Official Site)