Demon's Souls

Title: Demon's Souls 
Platform Played On: PlayStation 3

Release Date: October 6, 2009

Date Played: September - November 2011

Time Played: 56 hours

Completed (Y/N): Yes

Score: 5/5

Opinion:

Demon's Souls is hard to explain.  There is nothing like it out there, and it is a must have experience for any serious gamer.

In Demon's Souls you are dropped into a world that is filled with undead and soul devouring demons, a world with no hope.  You are dismissed by those around as just one of many thousands that have tried to restore the world of Bolataria to its former glory but failed. The game starts with putting you in the Nexus (hub world). You have a vendor, a character that will hold items for you (bank) and a wise one that will level you up throughout the game. From the Nexus you can access 5 worlds, each with three to five levels.

Demons Souls is incredible, it takes such an unconventional approach to things we take for granted in most games. For example, there is a handful of NPCs aside the aforementioned three, they are scattered within the levels and you usually have to go through quite a bit of exploring and battling to rescue them. You can play the whole game and totally miss the key or level or something or other that you would use to rescue them, and these are no generic whatever NPCs, these guys are spell vendors and other important figures. What is incredible is that someone could rescue them 2 hours into the game, another person (like me, or us since I played through the game switching off with my girlfriend Jill), could rescue them 45 hours into the game, others perhaps will not rescue them at all.  Yet you can still finish the game without any problems never have met these characters.  This incredible balance of powers is what makes Demon's Souls such a great experience, it leaves a ton of headroom for each and every player to have their own story, their own experience.  This is reinforced by the fact that it is a completely non linear game, you can do stages in almost any order you want.

The most important thing in Demon's Souls are souls, duh! They are the meaning of life in that grim universe. Vendors take souls instead of cash, you use souls to gain levels, to repair and upgrade weapons and armor. Basically they are very important.  You gain souls by killing things, the bigger and more bad-ass the creature, the higher is your soul reward. There is no way to bank the souls, the only way to get rid of them is to actually spend them. Now the kicker is that when you die, (which happens quite often) you lose whatever souls you had on you. They get left at the spot that you were at 10 seconds before your death. If you die again, those souls will disappear forever. If you had 200,000 souls on you (a very large amount, especially in the early game), and end up dying twice without recovering them... thats it they are gone, and there is no way to game the system either, the game allows for one save, and quicksaves after every action, things like pressing a button or moving 10 feet down a hallway triggers an autosave, so whatever happens really does happen. You can not copy the save or make any sort of clone. What happens in Demon's Souls, stays in Demon's Souls.

So when you die, and you WILL die in Demon's Souls not only do you have to worry about not dying again, but you have that corpse with thousands of souls on your mind for losing which you can only blame yourself.

I havent even talked about the online component of Demon's Souls, which is another fascinating aspect of this unusual game.  At any point another payer can jump into your game and outright murder you. It can happen when you are making your way through a creepy dark hallway with little health and a corpse 10 feet away from you. it can happen while you are struggling in a battle with a sliver of health left.  Granted, you can "invade" other people's games as well, and its a ton of fun, but it could lead to a controller throwing moment if it happens to you. There are also nice aspects to entering other people's games. If you are struggling with a boss you can request help, and a few guys can jump in and help you out. Conversely you can help others out and get rewarded for doing so.

If you choose to play online you can also see ghosts of other players in your area, and possibly the most innovative part of the game their blood stains and messages. The whole game world is littered with thousands of messages from silly and misleading (like, "SUPER SPECIAL TREASURE BELOW!, next to a bottomless pit with spikes at the bottom), some are actually useful, with positioning and strategy hints for fights. Thankfully they can be rated and you can tell which ones you should actually listen to.

Its mechanics like this that make Demon's Souls a unique and although brutal, remarkably fun and unforgettable experience. It pays homage to the old days when games were unforgiving. It is one of very few games these days to do something different, something that isn't stale and predictable. One of the bosses, delevels you if you are not careful for Pete's sake!


Overall everyone that likes dungeon crawlers, loot, and wants a unique, unforgettable experience should check out Demon's Souls. It is very, very good.