Demon's Souls

Demon's Souls has been one of the most talked about games in recent memory. It was not really talked about as being a fantastic game, or even that much of a "game changer" but nevertheless, there has been buzz around the Souls environment. This is mainly due to the way the game just screws you over when you make a mistake. This coupled with the little touches to ratchet up the frustration a bit, and you start to see just what it is about this game that has everyone talking.

My personal experience with this game has been made public so I shall keep my personal opinions on the subject a bit refrained. But by far the biggest draw to this title is this strange fascination with difficulty. That isn't even to say the game is hard. It really isn't. It is a standard dungeon crawler-esque RPG. If you are in a hard spot, then you probably need to do some level grinding. But there is always a way through an area. You will never be up against impossible odds. But then just what is it about the game that makes it so hard?

Well that question has multiple answers. Probably the biggest thing that I had trouble with were the PvP fights. Your character has two forms, the full-health body form, and the half-health soul form. The biggest advantage to being in body form is that you have your maximum health. The biggest draw to being in soul form is that you don't have to worry about PvP Black Phantoms.

Black Phantoms are basically people who want to come into your game and screw you over. It happened to me several times before I just gave up on playing in body form. People just sit there waiting to be picked up by the servers and dropped into a game. They then search out the host and kill them. I guess some people get off on that, I for one do not.

The second thing that makes the game so frustrating is the currency system. Everything in Demon's Souls revolves around you collecting souls. You use these to repair your equipment, buy new items, learn new spells, and most importantly level up. That's right, you have to decide how to best spend the one asset you have. Should you upgrade your weapons, or level up your stats? That is a question you will come across a lot as you play.

What makes this so frustrating is that you are always carrying your souls with you. When you play a level, you progress through killing enemies and collecting souls. If you die, you drop all of the souls you have collected, and get transported back to the beginning of the level with all of the enemies respawning. Now if you manage to make it all of the way back to where you died, you have a chance to recollect all of those souls you had before, plus any you accumulate along the way. However if you die before you reach that spot, you create a new spot and all of the souls at the old spot are lost. So with this system, you can literally lose hours of work just like that.

Another thing that makes the difficulty a sticking point is the tendency. Every area of the game has its own world tendency. The more white the tendency, the easier the enemies are but the less likely they are to drop the good stuff. The blacker the tendency, the harder the enemies but you get better loot. There are things you can to to sway the tendency back and forth and the game even encourages it, blocking off sections of the world that are only accessible during a specific tendency. On top of that you have an overall character tendency. This effects your health among other things. Basically the more evil you play, the blacker your character tendency becomes and the harder the game becomes. You can see how a black character tendency with a black world tendency can become a headache. It is of course easier to turn things black then it is to turn them to white.

Trophy hunters will also find a little something special for their efforts. The only real way to get all of the trophies in the game is to play it twice. The new game plus is straight throw you back at the beginning with all of your stuff and you go through it all again. The kicker is that the enemies all are about twice as hard as they were originally. And that doesn't take into account your world tendencies. So you will have your hands full even on new game plus.

This game is far from perfect from a technical stand point. It has sound issues, low quality visuals, gaping holes in the story. The whole narrative is pretty weak. Especially the lousy ending they give you. And there is a whole sixth world that they don't even address the fact that you can't go there. Ill planned DLC I suppose. The level design is actually pretty good except for where it is broken. There are areas in the boss battles where you can stand and be completely invulnerable to enemy attacks. I don't know if those are there on purpose, but the players have noticed them and inform you it is safe there. Apparently in a game that is jacked on difficulty, you take a win any way you can.

But is it all worth it? Well that is debatable. As with most RPG type games, there is a certain addictive quality that is hard to put your finger on. There is a drive to just grind out a few more souls to get to the next level and see if that helps you in that one spot you are having trouble with. If you find that satisfying, then you will have hours of satisfaction on your hands. I for one enjoyed my time with the game. Sure I screwed up a lot but more often then not it was not because the game was too hard, it was because I did something wrong. Therefore I knew I could get through it if I just tried it one more time. So I would say that if you like this type of game, this is a great experience and I hear the sequel is pretty good too.