Demon's Souls Review (PS3)

  I love Dark Souls. That may be a strange way to start a review for Demon's Souls, sure, but I played the newer spiritual successor first so I can't help but draw comparisons. I recently just bought a used PS3 from eBay for the sole purpose of seeing where the series got it's start (well... it's modern start, anyway. Several King's Field games came before this, but more on that in the future...). I'd heard dismissive scuttlebutt that Dark Souls fans could skip this game completely and not miss much because the newer title was better in every way that mattered. Upon trying it for myself, not quite. Demon's Souls is it's own game with it's own identity. While I don't quite think it's the masterpiece that the first Dark Souls game is, it's definitely a worthy curiosity for fans of the series to see where some of the heavy call backs originated. It's a good game. Is it worth buying a console for? Eh... if you can find one cheap like I did and if you're pretty hardcore I guess.

  Demon's Souls is a dark game, both thematically and visually. The story is surrealist mumbo jumbo: after a cool cinematic intro with dragons and knights and demons, you start the game in a ruined castle murdering zombified knights and trying to get a hold on the odd control scheme. Messages on the ground serve as a tutorial, and you should probably pay them heed; attacks are on the shoulder buttons, healing is square, evading is circle... I know I've played this series for hundreds of hours at this point, but if this is your starting game it's fucking weird shit. Eventually you encounter a giant, kind of goofy looking demon who wants to kill you. And he will, or he's supposed to. Upon death you're transported to The Nexus, your main hub for the game where you can level up, buy, sell, and store items, and talk to NPCs who have muddy, insane storylines. You can also warp to different levels from here. There are five stages in total, and they can be accessed in any order (maybe the first one is mandatory?), lending to a semi-open world even if the stages themselves are very linear.

  At it's heart, Demon's Souls is a boss rush game. More specifically: the entire game is a lead up to gain enough power to defeat the last boss, who is a total asshole. It's an action RPG with unique and perplexing character stats and an odd but compelling system for leveling up. When you kill enemies you absorb their souls, which act as both XP and currency. If you die, you lose all the souls you're currently carrying. However, you will leave behind a blood stain at the point of death, and if you can reach and retrieve that blood stain you'll regain all you lost. The Souls genre is born... A couple things that bugged me here, though: the game is so dark it can be hard to see your blood stain, and when you pick it up the “You have retrieved your Souls” message is huge and it stays on the screen for way too long, obscuring your vision. I know, baby steps...

  To spend your souls you interact with a character called The Maiden in Black. She has wax on her eyes because. You have several attributes to choose from, and where you spend your points depends on the class you chose from several options during character creation. You get the usual: an armored knight/warrior, a dexterous rouge, a mage or cleric... I just picked a knight because I want to hit shit with swords. I'm not going to snipe enemies or cast magic like a faggot, so I don't know how those other classes play out but I'd imagine it changes your play style significantly. As a knight I started with a full set of heavy plate armor, which was the best armor I came across for the vast majority of the game. The kicker comes from weight limits: you can only wear and carry so much, and as stated the armor is fucking heavy. At half your weight limit (determined by your Endurance stat) your character won't roll effectively, which is a death sentence. This meant most of the game I was running around shirtless/pantless, pumping every spare point I could into Endurance until slowly, throughout the game I became more clothed. It's a novel balancing act, though it can be a bit micromanagement leaning. Also rather tedious is a limit to item weight, which is a separate stat altogether. The scourge of pack rats like myself, everything you pick up adds to the number until you're shit out of luck and have to go back to The Nexus to shove everything in Stockpile Thomas' asshole. This includes upgrade material, which you need and is incredibly heavy. You'll spend a lot of time in The Nexus...

  The five stages themselves are nice and varied. The first one is very straightforward medieval, where you plow through enemy knights and dragons like a one man siege engine. Next is a mine, home to many needed crafting materials, and it's fucking dark and full of normal enemies that take way too many hits to kill. At the end of the mine stage is a massive dragon that you need to kill in order to proceed further in any other stages (or that's how I did it, anyway). Stage three is a creepy dungeon, filled with tortured prisoners and Lovecraftian squid monsters. This is almost survival horror: iron maidens drip with blood, spiders and tentacles grasp at you on the bottom, and there's a massive Caligula death trap blocking your progress. The forth stage is full of plague and poison, flies and shit cast a nasty film over everything to the point even the framerate shits itself. Lastly is a strange sky castle, where flying stingrays harass you almost constantly and grim reapers conjure up phantoms. Each stage has it's own flavor, and they're all very entertaining to explore. It's worth noting that they do feel very much like proper, video game “stages”: they're split into mostly narrow, linear sections with a boss at the end. Once defeated you'll gain an access point back to The Nexus, and you can continue from that point in the future. And most of the bosses are awesome, be they skill based monstrosities or gimmicky, puzzle bosses. They're incredible to witness and a joy to battle.

  The open nature of progression can lead to some strange difficulty spikes. Going into the game more or less fresh, I figured it would make sense to start at the first stage (or headstone) and conquer it completely before moving on to the next. Of course it got more difficult at the higher levels, but why wouldn't it. I soldiered on to the third stage and was met with a magic wall that informed me I couldn't proceed until a killed a Great Demon or something. Okay. So I moved on the second stage, which was tough but gave me plenty of crafting materials to upgrade my weapon and souls to level up. I cleared the second stage, which ended with a Great Demon, a gimmick fight that you could probably complete at any level. My way forward on the first stage cleared, I fought my way to the end of that. Again, not easy, but it's a Souls game so why would it be? The final boss is at the end of the first stage... I had no clue. I beat my head against the last stage for longer than I probably should have, but it became progressively easier each time as I gained more XP and levels from the high level enemies there, and they also drop a crazy amount of healing items. This run up became almost automatic after a time, and it was very lucrative for my character. Then the aforementioned asshole last boss... he beat my ass. Time and time again. Eventually I had enough and tried the other stages... and they were complete tit because I was almost geared up to face the last boss of the game, which I had no way of knowing was the last boss of the game... That's the downside of the openish world: it's easy to break, even if you're not trying. The rest of the game was just slaughtering enemies, scraping together an advantage to beat that cunt. And I did eventually. And it was sweet revenge.

  Demon's Souls is a cool game.