Demon's Souls Review

Exclusive titles these days tend to follow a similar pattern; guns, explosions and lots and lots of hype. Every now and then though, exclusive titles such as Demon's Souls get left by the wayside, the publishers not believing in the product and leaving it to its own accord. Currently only available from the Eastern market, Atlas have picked up the rights to bring this dungeon crawler to the US - which is good, because this is one title that is definitely worth the wait.

The game begins with a healthy sized cut-scene; introducing the land of Boletaria which has been plagued by a thick, colourless fog - feeding on peoples souls and turning them into mindless monsters. After creating your character - with an adequate selection of options available for editing - and choosing a starting class, you're thrown into a short dungeon that acts as the tutorial. After this dungeon you find yourself ‘trapped by the Nexus', and it has become your duty to save Boletaria - with the Nexus acting as your hub where you can purchase supplies, upgrades or travel to new areas connected to it. Your task is to destroy each of the demons residing in Boletaria, and then help lull the Old One (the big boss demon) back to sleep, thus saving Boletaria.

Your character will remain silent throughout the game, barring inherent grunts as you swing your axe or drop from a ledge. This is typical of RPGs, of course, but his silence is a poignant one. It is the atmosphere of the game that makes it. Excluding the few short cut-scenes there are, gameplay is played out through combat and interactions with NPCs. The storyline is not a major emphasis of the game, it has to be said. This is largely due to the nature of the game though; once you defeat the first boss all of the worlds are unlocked and you can tackle them in whatever order you see fit. There are five worlds in total, with a number of boss demons within each world. These worlds vary from monolithic castles and expansive underground caverns to eerie prison towers and murky swamps. After you defeat a demon boss you are provided an archstone, which acts as a teleportation method between the Nexus and your current position - which you'll soon find as a godsend.

As previously mentioned, the atmosphere has a massive part in making this game. The graphics are good, not great, but do help to deal with the tone of the environment. The eerie darkness draws you into the world and makes each step you take a wary one. There is little music played, mostly used during the Demon fights, which also emphasises the sense of trepidation. You'll soon begin to pick up the heavy breathing of an enemy, or the footsteps of an incoming monster as well as the plethora of other ways to discover nearby danger. The game world is absorbing and engrossing, which is a surprise considering the somewhat less than epic storyline.

Demon's Souls is, basically, an action RPG, with the combat taking place in real-time. However, this undermines the complexity of the mechanic. There are two types of attacks, a light or a heavy strike with the right hand whilst the left hand handles blocking and parrying. These are controlled with the L and R buttons. Unlike most action RPGs, though, if you rush in sword swinging you are likely to die. Often. There is a methodical approach to the combat and, depending on your class and personal fight style, various ways to defeat your enemies.

Most interesting is the way different weapons work. Most RPGs have a system where equipping the best, most powerful weapon will generally mean success. With Demon's Souls this is not the case. There is a limited choice of weapons, especially at the start of the game, so you'll quickly learn how to fight with your preferred weapon. As an example, a scimitar is a slash based weapon - better for hacking through your enemies and causing bleed damage. A dagger, meanwhile, causes poor base damage and deals more on successful counters (after parrying) or from backstabs. A warrior clad in full armour would struggle with the manoeuvres required of an agile knife-wielder. You'll be required throughout the game to make decisions over whether a new, better piece of equipment is worth changing how you fight. You'll find yourself sticking to a poorer weapon purely because you prefer the way it is used.

As already mentioned, fools rush in hacking away. There will be many instances in the game where a formidable foe or large numbers of attackers require you to fight on the defensive. Some of the harder enemies will require an understanding of how they fight, often resembling a realistic sword fight. An attempt to strike a shielded enemy will result in your demise. As will running out stamina from attacking too much. You'll end up on the defensive with most enemies, circling them trying to figure out their ‘style' before an opportunity to strike opens up. If you don't, you'll die, and that's how you'll spend half of the game.

There are two forms, body form and soul form. In soul form your health is half its maximum, so you'll obviously want to avoid dying - especially since there are only a limited number of ways to regain your body form. Then there's the loss of the games currency. By defeating enemies and Demons you'll receive souls, the more difficult the enemy the greater the souls. These souls are used to purchase items, repair your weapons and armour, upgrade your weapons and even level up. Needless to say, it's important to collect them. Annoyingly, then, when you die you drop a bloodstain which contains all of your souls collected up until that point. Should you fail to make it back to your bloodstain then they are lost forever. Considering this very event will occur a lot, it'll take the patience of a god to survive the game. There is ‘treasure' you can collect which acts as ‘storage' of a certain amount of souls, so there is some solace in dying for the hundredth time, but the sheer anger of losing an hour's or more souls due to a silly accident or misstep never fades. Couple in the fact that, upon death, all the previously slain enemies return you soon learn to be careful. It is an unforgiving game, but the elation of having everything succeed is multiplied tenfold.

The game does have an interesting online feature. Whilst wandering around the game world you'll notice ghostly white phantoms wander around the very same areas as you. These are other players playing at the same time, but they are however unable to interact with you in anyway. It's an interesting idea, like a solo-based MMO, but fun to watch them reacting to same events as you. It's also possible to leave messages formed from stock phrases and words (to allow for translation into a variety of languages) to help, or hinder, your fellow demon hunters. It is possible to read other messages that have been left by players, advising you how to defeat a difficult foe or warning you of something up ahead. The most common message, however, will be ‘This is harsh. Evaluate me' which is a player struggling and requesting for your help. Upon reading a message, you can choose to rate it if it provided some benefit to you. If you do, the player who left the message will receive a health boost - so ‘evaluating' them helps them get past a difficult situation with indirect healing. Most interesting, though, is the many splatters of bloodstains you'll come across. Touch a bloodstain and a red ghost will appear, reliving the final moments of a player - useful for providing information of dangers of the area, or just for laughing at those that accidentally rolled off a cliff.

There is co-op for three people, but as is most everything with this game, it's not quite that simple. Upon killing the first demon you'll receive a bluestone and a whitestone. The bluestone is used during soul form, and is placed on the ground for a player in body form to summon you to help them take on the world. The whitestone is used to leave (or be kicked) from another players world, but if you want to play specifically with a friend it will take a fair bit of communication to manage it. Then there's the black phantoms which, using the blackstone, players force their way into another player's world to take them on at Player versus Player - and quickly become a nuisance.

Demon's Souls is simple game, bundled with lots of complexities. With this it becomes an immensely enjoyable game, even despite its initially frustrating difficulty level. Nothing beats the sense of satisfaction this game can provide, especially at later levels. The only problem is that it leaves you wanting more. It has to be said this isn't a game for loot-aholics. There is a very limited selection of weaponry and particularly armour, and whilst you need to do some grinding to upgrade to the most powerful weapons, there is still that desire to seek out new worlds and explore a little more of the unknown. Nonetheless, Demon's Souls is an addicting and enjoyable game that most should at least consider, just be wary that its extreme difficulty may put people off.

N.B. - This was based upon the Asian (not Japanese) import. It comes with English subtitles and voiceover, however typological errors are noticable, and could vary slightly to the US version when it is released.