Demon's Souls Game Review

Demon's Souls is one of the Playstation 3's biggest exclusive titles so naturally there has been allot of interest in this game. The game is an RPG modelled on western style fantasy and the main thing you will realise as soon as you start playing this game is that Demon's Souls is a punishing and brutal game when it comes to difficulty, much like the games from my childhood which did not hold your hand, allow you to save, and when you died you lost everything.

The main thing you would have heard about Demon's Souls if you have been doing any research on it, is that it's extremely difficult, how difficult you ask ?, you can't even begin to understand until you play it for yourself. One of the most challenging thing's about the game is that you can't pause, ever. This no-nonsense approach is exactly what games used to be like, just get straight into the action and survive, it's absolutely fantastic to see this type of game in the modern era because we have not had anything like this since the day's of the NES. You have the option to map weapons and items to you're D-Pad and i suggest you use this while you have the chance, you don't want to be in a battle with one or two of the many devastatingly brutal one-hit-kill enemies without being fully prepared. But just be warned, even when you are fully prepared the chances are you will still die.

When you press start to bring up the menu which contains information about yourself, equipment, and the world's light/dark tendencies, you're character can only run around, all other actions are used to guide the menu navigation so if there is an enemy near you won't be able to defend yourself. The light/dark tendencies represent how tough enemies are in the game. The focus can shift towards the dark side (harder) the more you die. The game is very intelligent, if you die too often the game will get harder so that even once you figure out how to get past a certain area, if it has taken you too long (dying too many times) then enemies will get tougher making the game stay extremely difficult. The game is just simply brutal and if you are easily frustrated with games then you might want to stay clear of Demon's Souls. If you like to milk the save points in a game or turn off the console when something goes wrong or you loose something unique then you will not like Demon's Souls. The game auto-saves almost constantly, a recent death, loosing items, or even killing one of the games vendors will all be permanent. You can't sell old equipment to gain cash (which is also experience) and levelling up you're character, buying new equipment, or new weapons is a tough task because if you die at any point in a mission, you loose EVERYTHING!. You will have the chance to make it back to the spot you died and regain all you're lost goodies but if you die before you make it back then it will be lost forever, enemies you killed are all back as well and blood-thirsty. This almost seems like torture but the game is just as rewarding as it is brutally punishing.

You won't avoid death in this game, in fact you will die often and it's usually because of a mistake rather than the game taking a cheap-shot at you. When you die you will appear in a soulless form with a chunk of you're life metre gone. You will loose all of you're cash but it won't stop you coming back for more, because Demon's Souls is possibly the PS3's most addicting game.

You might wonder where the enjoyment comes from in this game, how can repetitively dying, facing enemies that you know will kill you if you slip up once, and loosing everything for making the slightest mistake feel rewarding. The enjoyment comes after you reach an end level boss and manage to take him down, this will bring on a pure euphoric feeling which you just don't get in games today, after you have completed a world you will feel as if you have really achieved something and every death, lost soul, punishingly hard enemy will feel worth you're hard and persistent work.

After defeating one of the bosses and raking in tons of cash you will be transported back to the Nexus Hub world, the only real safe place in the game. There is a sense of relief and triumph after you have cleared a world, before the overwhelming sense of fear at beginning the next area in the game. You can explore any of the four worlds in any order you choose which is fantastic and adds to the feeling of freedom.

Every enemy in this game has the ability to defeat you, knowing this can often fill you with a sense of dread and tension which is unmatched by any other RPG i have played on the PS3. When even the weakest enemy feels like another games boss fight you know you can't make one wrong move. The game challenges you to improve yourself and become better at the game unlike most games on the market these days, this is what i love about Demon's Souls. No game in recent memory has managed to create the type of highs and lows of completing a world, or falling in battle and loosing everything the way that Demon's Souls has managed to. When you die in the game rather than giving up you get the feeling that each death is training you for something bigger and bigger as you go on with you're journey.

Chances are though you won't ever know the breadth of what the game offers, character classes, variety of weapons, rare drops, different equipment trade-off's or particular spells, the game has so much variety and content which you just won't be able to appreciate without playing the game a number of times.

Much of this comes down to the games flexibility with both long and short-range battles being important, how you go about them is up to you. Perhaps you would like to be a magic user who can roast enemies from long-range ? or perhaps a bulky armour-clad brute who can smash his foes into the ground with weapons a normal person couldn't even lift ? or maybe a poker with magicks as well as a slicer with blades ? maybe even an old fashion bow and arrow would be you're taste ? what about enchanted weapons ? well each of these unique choices has a role to play and once you have decided upon one you can jump straight into the unique online mode.

The massive amount of variation is carried through to the melee combat system. When attacking each weapon has it's own animations for normal and heavy attacks, this changes yet again when wielding with either one or two hands. You're able to block incoming attacks or even bat them away with a parry, this opening the opponent up for critical strikes. There is so much depth to the combat and it makes the game feel realistic, every fight feels like a fight to the death and it's never certain who is going to be walking away from battle or who will be left a bloody battered corpse.

The game always makes the player feel like he has a tremendous amount of freedom and if you choose a class like a bruiser, then decide you want to cast some magic then it's possible in Demon's Souls. Players can allocate skill points to either of the eight category's at any time and can change what type of warrior they are, this makes the game feel truly unique from any other game which would normally give you a selection then force you to stick with that choice. There is a catch of course, with every boost to you're stats you're soul level goes up, and thus the requirement for pounding more souls into any category increases. Souls are key to you as they are used for buying, levelling up, repairing, and upgrading equipment as well as buying new spells or miracles. So you can understand now why dying and loosing everything would be very hard to take.

While Demon's Souls is an extraordinary game to play alone, you won't truly understand how unique and great the game is until you connect to the Playstation Network and go online. You can't invite people to you're game and there is no matchmaking system, as well as no lobby, no voice chat, and no text chat. You might then wonder what is unique about Demon's Souls online features, let me explain.

While connected to the Playstation Network you will notice the ghosts of other players in you're game playing their own game, they are technically not in you're game, you just see their ghost as they play their own game in another dimension and this opens up some very creative and innovative gameplay mechanics. When other players die there will be a blood stain left in you're world which you can click to watch how they died, you will see the last few minutes of their life as a ghost plays out their death. This is something i found so impressive because not only was it great to see how other players had fallen in battle, it was also great to see into the future for a short period of time warning me of the dangerous that lay ahead. You get a strange sense of pressure after you have watched another player fall, knowing something tough is around the next corner and not many games manage to create such intense feelings. You can leave cryptic messages for other players to warn them of danger, or perhaps fool them into going somewhere which is not safe. Fooling another player to dive off a ledge in search of a hidden treasure which is not there can feel very sadistically pleasing, however if you help someone and they rate you're message good then some of you're health will be replenished. The voting system can keep players safe unless there are allot of evil people out there.

Demon's Souls never stops impressing you with it's creativity and authentic feel, nowhere is this more apparent than in the ability to invade other people's games as a Black Phantom. When you enter another players realm you can entice enemies to attack the other player as well as attacking yourself. The feeling you get when a message alerts you to the fact that another player has entered you're realm is unbelievable, the careful exploration and patient timing turns into frantic panic and exhilarating fights that test the players nerves. The only way to interact with other players though is to defeat the end boss and collect the necessary stones, and of course the level limit keeps players from being able to enter and just instant-kill you. Towards the end of the game though the difference in a characters armour, weapons, and stats will be much different so you don't want to mess with a Black Phantom. One of the games boss fights is actually a Black Phantom, you will have to defeat another player and this also means you can be a boss for someone else, i have never seen so much creative thought put into a game and it's outstanding to see the presentation level of this masterful game.

The game is packed with imagination and this can be seen by the Demon's Souls world. It's a unique take on the traditional western medieval-style universe which is atmospheric and stunningly beautiful. This game has a huge variety of creatures which all feel extremely well thought out and fit the tone and mood of the realms perfectly, seeing some of these creatures and the amazing bosses for the first time is an experience in it's own right. The sheer sense of scale and use of clever level design to help reveal areas you'll either eventually get to or visual callbacks to places you where a few hours ago are amazing. The game rewards players for exploring certain areas by offering shortcuts to earlier places you explored. The world is full of crumbling castles, huge dragons, incredible lighting, and beautiful scenery which make the world feel just as alive as it does unique.

The framerate is not always perfect and sometimes can drop slightly when large numbers of enemies are on screen but this really doesn't annoy the player when everything else in the game feels like perfection.

Like the framerate the audio can be inconsistent and at times sound amusingly amateurish. For the most part though the voice acting is fairly good and it's more funny than disappointing, but it doesn't take anything away from the serious nature of the game which is great. Thankfully though the music and effects are spectacular, all the clangs, splinters, groans and moans you would expect to hear in this type of adventure are present. The music is absolutely amazing and really captures the games atmospheric mood perfectly, adding emotions to the game such as fear, depression, hope, tension, and overall sense of danger. I can't even compare this to another game because there is just simply no other game on the PS3 which achieves all this to the extent that Demon's Souls does.

Demon's Souls is defiantly not a game for the modern hand-held gamer who has little patience and relies on the internet for advice on how to complete a game. Demon's Souls is brutally punishing and extremely difficult to complete, but when you do reach you're goal the rewards are phenomenal. The sense of scale and atmosphere this world creates is beautifully detailed and brought to life with fantastic visuals. The game is a must buy for any PS3 owner and provides the best and most fulfilling experience that the Playstation 3 can offer.

Demon's Souls is the best game on the Playstation 3 10/10