So good and so rewarding.
Ah, Demon’s Souls. A PS3 exclusive only just now making its way over to PAL regions after being available in the US and Japan for quite some time now. It seems as though everyone who really wanted to play it over here has already imported it and found out first-hand how great a game it is, but if you’re one of the ones who doesn’t know anything about this game and wants to know if it’s worth adding to your collection then read on.
Demon’s Souls is an Action-RPG set in the medieval kingdom of Boletaria, developed by From Software and SCE Japan Studio for the PS3, which focuses on atmosphere and difficulty rather than an epic story. That doesn’t mean that this game doesn’t have its fair share of epic moments stretched out over its 5 worlds.
The basic premise of Demon’s Souls is that a greedy king, wanting more power, performed a dark ritual channelling the power souls to bring prosperity to Boletaria. That was until a fog covered the land and cut Boletaria off from its neighbouring kingdoms. Turns out that by channelling souls the King had awoken the Old One, a great demon sleeping below the Nexus. That’s where you, the player, come in. You brave the fog but end up getting killed by a greater demon but waking up in the Nexus as a soul and tasked by the maiden in black to travel Boletaria and defeat the Archdemons and collect their souls to save the kingdom from the Old One.
The main aim of Demon’s Souls is to kill all 20 of the Archdemons spread throughout the 5 worlds and harvest their souls. These souls can then be used to upgrade or make weapons, buy new spells or miracles or if you really want, can be converted into souls that are used to level up your attributes. It’s these Archdemons that perhaps bring the biggest challenge to the game, with no two boss fights being the same. They range from a towering knight to an ancient dragon, one of the bosses can even be another Demon’s Souls player if you are connected online.
The worlds that house these Archdemons are just as varied and huge, with the first being an old European style castle town where you make your way from the walls, across the ramparts, through the town and finally to the castle. Each world has its own atmosphere and its own things to be weary of, like the prison and its Mindflayer guards or the giant goblins lurking in the shadows in the swamp. There’s plenty of challenge to be found traversing the worlds too, with lots of traps, ambushes and dark holes to fall into, the world is just as deadly as the demons that inhabit it. The only safe place in the world of Demon’s Souls is the Nexus.
When starting the game you can choose from a selection of 10 starting classes that determine your starting stats, soul level, equipment and abilities. Your class doesn’t matter much as you can level up your abilities however you want using the souls of defeated foes. You gain abilities like magic and miracles from NPCs around the Nexus by trading a number of souls to them and meeting the stat requirement for the ability, like needing a certain amount in the faith stat to get a certain miracle. The stats mostly do what you expect them to as you increase them, such as Vitality increasing max HP and carry weight and Strength increasing physical damage. One thing that maybe isn’t what you expect is that every soul level you gain the more defence you get, so as to prevent characters being soul level 100 and getting one hit killed by a common demon.
The level up system is really great as it offers an immense amount of customisation. You could go a pure mage type and boost your magic and intelligence and dominate your enemies with your spells, or you could go for more of a balance between strength and magic and try for a red mage style of character. It’s completely up to your play style and what you prefer.
The gameplay in Demon’s Souls isn’t the most unique. You run around the level, going from point A to B (point A being the start of the level and point B being the boss). Quite often though there are branching paths and hidden areas with goodies or rare demons that open up depending on certain circumstances. The combat consists of attacking, dodging and counter attacking the demons by learning their attack patterns and exploiting their openings. You don’t need much strategy on the lowly demons but for the red or blue eyed demons you need a lot more strategy as they are a lot more powerful and aggressive. There are light and strong attacks for your right handed weapon mapped to R1 and R2 respectively, a dodge roll and run mapped to circle (tap to roll, hold to run), square uses your consumable item (most likely a healing grass) and L1 to attack with your left handed weapon, cast a spell or miracle or block with a shield or two handed weapon while L2 will parry. If you want a better idea of the combat, think Monster Hunter but faster paced and more flexible.
When you die -and you will die quite a bit- you will respawn at the start of the level having lost all the souls you’ve collected and your body (if you were in body form). It’s quite simple to get all your lost souls back though, just fight your way through the demon hordes again to the place you dies and touch your blood stain to regain all your lost souls. Die on the way to your bloodstain however, and those souls will be lost forever. This can get a bit frustrating and you may end up blaming the game for your loss of thousands of souls but more often than not it’s the player at fault rather than the game. If you examine why you died you’ll usually end up seeing a point where you went wrong, or that pit you fell down could have been avoided if you were walking slower. Each death in this game is a lesson on the unforgiving world of Demon’s Souls. But killed by a demon or falling into a hole aren’t the only ways to die in this game. If you are in body form and connected to the internet you can get invaded by other players in the form of a black phantom. This leads nicely onto the online aspects of the game.
Demon’s Souls isn’t your typical game by any means and this extends to its online functionality. The most basic but interesting aspect of its online is the message leaving and bloodstains. You can read and leave messages that warn other players of hidden danger or traps or point out a secret area with rare treasures. You can also see the bloodstains of other adventures and upon touching them, see their last few seconds of life, hopefully learning from their mistakes and avoiding a similar fate.
The more conventional aspects of online are the co-op and invasion (touched on earlier). If you are in body from and have not yet defeated the level’s boss you can summon a blue phantom if you see a glowing blue soul sign to help you. At the end of the level, when the boss is defeated, you can grade them on how well they performed. You can also be summoned if you use the Blue Eye Stone when in soul form. With the co-op you can be in a party of up to three players, one –the host- in body form and two blue phantom souls.
There’s also the PvP aspect of the game in which you can get invaded when in body form by black phantoms (other players) or you can invade when in soul form by using the Black Eye Stone. When invaded you will see a warning, saying that a player has invaded, giving you some time to prepare. Luckily you can only be invaded by one black phantom at a time, so no worrying about getting ganged up on.
One last online aspect is the leader boards found at the very top of the Nexus showing a variety of stats like highest level and most souls. Only the best Demon’s Souls players wind up there.
Visually Demon’s Souls is a beautiful looking game with great environments and character models. The environments are beautifully rendered and give the feeling of an authentic and diverse kingdom gone to hell. The Nexus is a beautiful hub world, a huge tower with multiple floors and a chilling background score. The lighting is really well done with some areas purposefully poorly lit, forcing you to tread carefully and use the glow around the player o inch through the level, watching out for ambushes and holes. The enemy designs are also great with demon soldiers, skeletons, deadly flying manta rays and huge dragons.
So finally, while not the easiest game to get into, and not for everyone, Demon’s Souls is still a great game. When you get used to the controls and the combat and learn from your mistakes you’ll find a great, challenging experience that makes Demon’s Souls such a memorable and rewarding game.
