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Demon’s Souls – Review (PS3)

As a player first enters the world of Boletaria, they push through a viscous, opaque fog filled with demons and impious humans alike. Some are willing to offer their help whilst furthering their own cause, while others will surely seek to scam you and loot your dead body afterwards. Challengers and heroes are able to navigate through the darkness of with greed, wrath, and the other sins of man in Boletaria with the assistance of a dim light of reason attached to your hip.

Demon’s Souls offers an untraditional, difficult experience to new age gamers that requires immense skill and patience from the player. This type of experience is not common among the current generation of games, but is a demanding trial worth the exertion of the competitor. The player is required to complete a gauntlet of grinding tasks with precision and great patience by any means possible. If the player ever deviates from their steadfast nature, death is surely never far away.

Demon’s Souls is not a game that can be rushed through, and if anyone attempts to complete the game in this manner they will frequently meet an untimely demise. This may come by the teeth of a pack of feral wolves, engulfed in a swarm of plague infested faction, or smashed by a shield the size of an office building. Despite the number of times you die throughout the game, you will never find yourself slamming a controller and proclaiming the game to be “unfair.” Instead, you will be displeased at yourself for the absurd decisions made that ultimately led to your death.  

The difficulty of the game requires the player to constantly be strategizing and developing techniques to isolate the obstacles provided by the world. This game does not have a mapped or cookie cutter approach to fighting and strategy like The Legend of Zelda games. You will not get a new weapon or sub-weapon that will be used to kill a boss in Demon’s Souls. Frequently, you will find you are not equipped to deal with a boss or enemy in an efficient manner. Many have disregarded the warnings and fallen victim to their own hubris, resulting in an exasperated experience when coupled with the self loathing of not completing a level on the first try. Players will find themselves outmatched a number of times, and will need to revisit the world once they are better suited to deal with the trials of Boletaria. Sometimes this requires a trial and error approach, or simply the procurement of certain spells and miracles. No matter how the player approaches this inimitable masterpiece, every world and boss is a unique puzzle that requires quick thinking, unparalleled skill, and ice water in your veins.

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Gameplay is similar to most of the 3^rd person or first person RPG’s on the market. Controls consist of a normal attack, strong attack, block, parry, item use, and dodge/run button. The directional pad is used to switch between spells and miracles, weapons, and consumable items. Swapping weapons can be clunky and burdened with lag, resulting in too many trades or a delay in defending/attacking abilities. This is only ever an issue in high tension situations, and usually impacts the game only during intense boss fights.

 Integrated into the control scheme is a stamina meter that is used to block attacks, sprint, and attack enemies. This element of the game ensures you cannot just mash buttons or continuously block enemy attacks without consequences. This attribute (that can be boosted through soul level points) requires micro-management of the character’s actions or the stamina meter will fully deplete, rendering your blocking and attacking abilities futile. Full stamina depletion also penalizes the player with heavier damage taken from enemies than usual, making stamina management one of the most important aspects of the game.

A character can gain additional attribute points through the consumption of souls in the Maiden in Black’s (NPC) menu. This approach to leveling is similar to many games like Diablo or other games in the genre. The main difference between the leveling systems in Demon’s Souls is the tactical nature to obtain additional soul level requirements. Once you arrive at the desired amount to purchase a new level, you must then make it to the Nexus to “buy” the next attribute point. If you die after obtaining the amount, you must trek back into the world and touch your bloodstain or all the hard work and souls will be lost. There are items and spells to assist in the level grinding, but also requires purchase via the soul system.

The multiplayer aspect of the game is the most interesting part of the game. A message system allows all online users to leave clues, hints, basic strategies, and even try to trick the other players online. From the weaknesses of the enemy to casual conversation and humor, the system allows users to interact with each other without actually interacting. A rating system allows users to rate the messages as “recommended” – awarding a portion of HP and MP every time your message is recommended.

After completing level 1-1, the player gains access to the summoning and invasion functions of the game. This allows the player to invade the world of a player in body form to try to kill them and take their body while in soul form. A player in body form can also summon phantoms to assist them in destroying demons and clearing levels. If a phantom successfully assists in killing the boss demon they will be revived to body form, creating a real sense of motivation and reward to the co-op system.

 Another nice addition to the multiplayer interface is the bloodstain interface, showing the last five seconds of another player’s actions before they die. The bloodstain feature can be used to identify traps or hidden demons, waiting to ambush you at the next turn. This also allows players to identify places where soul grinding and potential exploits exist. One of the most identifiable areas for this is the 4-2 reaper. At any point on the server, you can assume there is one player grinding souls using the world 4-2 reaper exploit. This is evidenced by the numerous bloodstains that surround the tunnel and cliff at the beginning of the level.

The main ground-breaking feature of the game is the tendency system. There is a separate system for each of the five worlds, and one tendency for the character you play. The value can range from Pure White to neutral to Pure Black, with the demons’ strength and item drop rate being directly correlated with the black tendency. For example, in pure black world tendency the demons are approximately 125-150% more powerful but they also are 125-150% more likely to drop rare and consumable items. To further compound this system are events that occur only in pure white or black world/character tendency. Swapping between these tendencies is necessary to obtaining unique items, weapons, and access to un-lockable non-playable characters.

While playing in the online community, there are periods of lag and frame rate loss in the highly populated areas of the maps. This occurs when summoning phantoms in co-op mode, but will also occur on some of the worlds where the developer tried to fit too much detail into the environments (5-2 is a prime example of this). Graphical tearing is experienced in a few situations, but never truly impacts the overall experience of the game.

Graphically, Demon’s Souls boasts superbly detailed models for characters and demons. However, the game will not graphically compete with industry leading games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum or Uncharted 2. This lack of superior graphics does not detract from the game because the overall presentation of Boletaria aligns the story, tone, and universe of the characters as intended by the developers. While there will be no awards given for the technical achievement of the graphics, there will also be no ridicule for the models, worlds, and animations.

A few critics and reviewers have labeled the slain demons as “sticky,” meaning they can sometimes get entangled in your characters legs as you run or walk over them. While this usually does not cause any problems during progression through the level due to their small size, the gargoyles in world 3-2 are sizeable sprites and can cause you to lose your character’s location on the slender walkways between the towers. This can lead to a fall from grace, the loss of all your aggregated souls, and a ticket to start the level over.

In the very detailed worlds you may also notice enemies that appear suddenly, and I have read of many victims of “pop-up deaths” but never experienced it myself. My only experience with pop-up enemies was when I chose to take on Boletaria with a bow as my main weapon and extensively used the sniper view. To the melee and close quarters players, this should never become an issue and will go unnoticed throughout the entire game. To extrapolate why this is experienced, I could only see this becoming a problem of individuals who choose to try to rush through the game in a melee built character.

The environments themselves are often portrayed as a detailed extension of the hopelessness felt in the world of Boletaria, and very well executed across the three levels in each of the five diverse worlds. There are a number of areas across the worlds that feel rushed and forgotten as you play through Boletaria. These areas are not as detailed and the textures seem to be unfinished, smeared like oil paints by a five year old using their fingers on a canvas. While these areas only represent less than 5% of the entire game, it does leave you wishing the developer had taken a little more time to finish the world the way they started it – detailed, full of emotion, and brimming with ethereal life.

Many games released in 2009 use music to help breathe life and realism into the environments and overall experience. However, Demon’s Souls does the exact opposite with sound and effects. From the boss themes to the dreary music and environmental sounds, the ambition of the sound in Demon’s Souls is to suck the life and poise from the hero. This helps set the tone for the world of Boletaria, raise tension, and enforce the bleak fate of your character throughout the game. To put it simply, the music is flawless. The instrumental scores never seem dated, cheesy, or over the top (sans the opening demo cut scene’s music with the knight fighting the horde of demons), and definitely adds to the overall production value of the experience. The sound effects mirror that of an epic medieval movie, and never seem cheap or forced during combat. The voice actors are believable and each has a voice that seems to fit their character’s physical appearance in the game. In a time where the audio aspect of video games seem to be reaching a pinnacle due to the HD experience, Demon’s Souls still boasts one of the greatest audio efforts in the world of gaming.

Despite all that is right with Demon’s Souls, the most memorable part of the game is undoubtedly the boss encounters. Varying in physical size, battle tactics (range vs. melee vs. magic), and appearances, these struggles will raise your pulse from the unveiling cut-scene and leaving you in awe after their defeat. The length of the battle will also vary depending on the tactics used and character strengths/build. You can snipe a boss using a bow from a protected position in as little as five minutes, or engage in a grinding close quarter combat experience that could last up to twenty minutes. Every boss requires a different approach and offers a unique view of the world in which they reside. This uncovers further details of the story of Boletaria, and their fallen king. The most astonishing boss battle in the game is the battle of 5-3. This tense and melancholy affair leaves you questioning your hero’s motives and humanity as you land the final blows, vanquishing the demon and followers. It is truly one of the greatest boss battles in recent memory, and leaves you feeling as disconsolate as the bosses in Shadow of the Colossus do.

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In the end, Demon’s Souls is a fair game and an admirable attempt to create something inventive and unique. The game’s developers create a world that fosters a feeling of seclusion, desperation, and hopelessness. This presentation often sustains the game’s theme and giving the story and world of Boletaria and an additional dimension. As the game speeds past the climax and arrives at the dénouement, the story transforms from an auxiliary component of the game and takes the center stage. This sort of detail when compounded with the other great elements of the game that create a total experience that is unlike anything this generation of consoles has seen. This is a game where the player is rewarded for not only finishing the game, but also with a timeless world that possesses a life and personality all of its own. This is one of the first games (if not the first) that merges all of the great aspects of an RPG and action/adventure game into a single offering with such a unique perspective for any gaming device to date.

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