It’s been awhile since a game has scared me, frustrated me terribly or just downright destroyed me. Demon’s Souls did all that and more in the first few minutes of starting the tutorial. Yes, Demon’s Souls is hard, unforgiving, merciless and above all, terrifying. It has to be one of the most challenging and difficult games I’ve played in a long, long time. The game is very simple: You’re a warrior who has entered the land of Boletaria, which has been destroyed, leaving behind it a trail of chaos, destruction and the damned waiting to die. Your job is to harvest demon’s souls, destroy the cause and rid Boletaria of it all. Those souls act as currency to upgrade your weapons and armor as well as skills. You’re able to travel these worlds in either human form or soul form. Each has their pros and cons. For example human form means full health and the ability to summon players but you do less damage and dying means major penalties. In soul form, your health is halved but you do more damage and the only penalty to dying is the temporary loss of accumulated souls (assuming you’re skilled enough to get them back). Demon’s Souls is a simple concept wrapped in a complicated system with a large learning curve that requires patience. However once that curve is passed, Demon’s Souls becomes extremely fun and satisfying.
What I Liked:
Atmosphere – From the first moment you set foot into the world of Demon’s Souls you are surrounded by the overwhelming fear of the unknown. Trapped in a world with creatures waiting to kill you behind every corner, the only thing protecting you is a dainty shield in one hand, rusty sword in the other. Slowly trekking forward in the darkness, the only thing visible is you and a tiny crystal that lights your way, hearing footsteps pattering on the cold, hard concrete below you. Suddenly you’re ambushed and stabbed from behind! As a scream of shock leaves your lips, you notice you need new pants. It’s a feeling you never quite shake when traversing the world of Boletaria. The game does an excellent job of placing you in a world where you truly feel alone, and the fear of the unknown keeps you paranoid. Even when covered head-to-toe in armor, the mightiest of knights still shake in their boots.
Simple yet effective combat – Fighting in Demon’s Souls is hardly revolutionary. You have a weapon, and so do your opponents. You swing at each other until one of you dies and move on. However, as simple as it sounds, in order to fight effectively in Demon’s Souls, you have to master the mechanics. Everything from weapons, armor, stats and knowledge of your enemy can affect how you fight. You may be a hulking knight with a sword as big as he, or you may be a swift and crafty mage, weaving and dodging your way out of trouble. While Demon’s Souls starts out with the basics, it quickly forces you read your opponents and learn to adapt.
Punishment is punishing – Let’s put this into perspective: The game purposely kills you in the tutorial. This serves as a warning of things to come: you’ll die. A lot. Not only does Demon’s Souls have no difficulty but the game never, ever gets any easier. If you die in a level, no matter how far you’d gotten, you have to start at the beginning or the last place you killed a boss demon. It doesn’t stop there. Many things you do in the world change the difficulty of the game as well. For example, if you die in human form, the game literally gets harder. Enemies become stronger and you do less damage. If you die in soul form, you better hope you don’t die again or all those souls you’ve been saving are gone, forever. In most games you’d have to be a masochist to continue on, but in Demon’s Souls you never feel like your deaths were unjustified. You feel like you could have done better. It encourages you to keep trying and when you’re finally successful, it feels like a well-earned victory.
Online features – Demon’s Souls brings a lot of new ideas to the multiplayer concept. You can read messages left by other players and see how others died by touching their bloodstains, which can sometimes come in handy, especially when fighting a boss or exploring a new area. There’s co-operative play and player-versus-player duels, both of which come in the form of summoning players into your game. By placing the proper stone down, it’ll allow other players to enter your world to either help you or slay you. One of Demon’s Souls bosses will actually summon another into your game to fight for it, and the only way to proceed is to defeat that player. These features not only make the game more immersive, but a lot more intense by increasing fear of the unknown.
What I Disliked:
Annoying camera – For the most part, the camera does its job. It follows the action well enough that you know what’s going on. Unfortunately, the lock on is almost completely useless. In order to lock on to an enemy you have to click the right stick. At the same time, in order to reset the camera behind your character, you have to click the right stick. This means if you’re not directly focused or in range of your target, the camera will instead reset to behind you. Another issue with the lock on is it tends to focus on enemies furthest away from you. These issues can sometimes cause you to walk off edges accidentally because the camera’s swung around to focus on an enemy in the distance in another direction. As a pure mage, it was impossible for me to actively rely on my spells due to the inability to manually aim. Instead I was forced to use the lock on system, which only worked forty percent of the time in difficult scenarios.
Multiplayer grief – The online aspect is a wonderful concept, and it does in fact bring a lot of new ideas to the multiplayer aspect. However, one personal annoyance with Demon’s Souls online play came at the hands of “Griefers”: the players whose sole purpose is to annoy, irritate or harass other players for the sake of their own amusement. As fun as I’m sure invading people’s games and inviting others to duels are, a lot of people abuse these features and there’s no way to avoid them. If you’re in human form and you’re doing a quest, any one at any time can summon themselves into your game and if they are successful in killing you, all the progress, souls and time you’ve invested are gone. It’s not really a burden but the annoyance of having to redo a quest or retrace your steps because of this mandatory feature can be frustrating.
Not the sharpest tools in the shed – There were a few moments in Demon’s Souls where enemies would get stuck on terrain or allow me to exploit invisible walls. It’s not a game breaker per se but seeing some of the more menacing enemies foiled by debris had me face-palming sometimes.
Personal issues aside, Demon’s Souls simply requires patience. With an old-school style aesthetic, unique level designs and new approach to multiplayer, it’s obvious how Demon’s Souls has become so popular by simple word of mouth. It’s a game that requires discipline and focus, demanding players recognize, understand and learn to improve. It’s one of those games that changes the way you play, and a definite must-buy for gamers looking to try something fresh, yet remains reminiscent of old-school gaming.
Follow me on Twitter
Here you’ll be able to read my thoughts and reviews on games, but my blog also features other commentary on topics of interest. If you’d like to contact me regarding any thing on my blog or my work, please use the contact form. Thanks and I hope you enjoy reading my banter!