Demon’s Souls Game Review
It starts off with a drum beating and some lady singing as a dragon carries a decaying corpse across the land. Then the whole focus changes to a Knight fighting countless enemies at once in a very shiny armor that contrast the background.
The tension grows as a big skeleton with a sword longer then the Knight attacks the character.
It all culminates with a huge dragon head with hundreds of fangs that vibrate as the he growls to the left, and just before it smashes on the battlefield towards the Knight… the generic title is displayed:
Demon’s Souls.
You know a game is hard when you die during the initial cinematic, further more you know a game is hard when you are depicted as dead by arrows on the front cover of the prestige edition, but have no fear! Death is only the beginning.
You proceed in creating a new character and navigating the customization screen, and I must admit that I felt like I was slapped for my ignorance even here. Lacking any sort of bling, the graphics in the menu inspire a dark and decaying existence, perhaps as a preview of what it is to come.
You get to choose between a big enough number of classes that differ in equipment and stats, and offer a large opportunity of customization, but in spite of this variety, do not expect any marvelous beauties to come out of it.
Some may say the game is plain ugly, and well… it is, it’s dark, everything is dirty, and death waits around every corner.
So you start the game and you storm through the tutorial, telling yourself that this game isn’t really so hard, and that it reminds you of Human Head’s Rune as far as controls are involved, allowing you even more control then you had there, now in addition to having the ability to block real-time and use weapons that act each differently, you can very well wield every weapon in the game with two hands, shield bash, stab, roll, dodge, back-stab and more, giving the user full mobility, limited only by the weight of the armor that he is wearing.
In addition to these, interesting combos can be triggered if the user manages to synchronize his moves with the enemy. And every foe has his set of movements and patterns for the user to exploit and abuse, and you are going to abuse them, considering that if you don’t they will abuse you and you will die.
After a while you will die and end up in the Nexus, a central hub where all the souls converge and return. You are briefly informed of fate of the world and your duty.
The scenario is simple, a brave and noble king played with the souls of the dead and in consequence disturbed a powerful demon, generically named “The Old One” bringing this way a Lovecraft feel to the game, that will reflect in everything you do.
Now the demons have reached the borders of the kingdom of Boletaria in the form of a gray fog. Many ventured fort, many died, and many went insane, only one returned, the one called Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs.
And now enter the Character, a soul that find his way back to the nexus, and has become in a very RPG-ish tradition the “only hope”.
And from here on very little story is involved. You will travel trough 5 worlds that vary from medieval castles to medieval prisons, to mines, underground tunnels, dark towers and many more each containing bosses at some point.
The enemy is ruthless but not impossible, and should you die it will be due to your own ignorance.
The game play itself seems reminiscent of Diablo. You die and your stuff falls on the floor and you can pick it up next time you pass trough there, except that every time you re-spawn so does the enemy and you’ll have to back track to that location and kill everything again, except bosses. No worries though, you do not drop items, just souls. Should you die again on your way to your blood stain, the souls are lost forever and a new blood stain is dropped.
In feel it remind me sort of World of Warcraft instancing. Image in WOW you are running an instance, and you move easily through the level aided by your party mates, killing bosses and collecting loot, now imagine that you are doing those things alone and the enemies have become harder to kill. Now darken the dungeon so that you will see nothing in front of you and make the character radiate light 5 meters in front of him. Now the enemies kill you in one hit and fear is everywhere.
Welcome to Demon’s Souls.
Overall the game will prove an interesting addition to every PS3 RPG fan, providing more game time than any other game presently on the market. High replay ability, and deep immersion in a dark and gloomy ruthless world will keep many stuck to their PS3s for a very long time.
So if you are looking for a good game, that is becoming a cult phenomenon, that offers challenges that would make other games on the market weep, and offer more than the average 8 hours of game play, that the games our days seem to stick to, try Demon’s Souls.
