Demon's Souls

Demon's Souls developed in 2009 by From Software and published by Atlus is a challenging and realistic third person RPG that will wear on even the best gamers.

Demon's Souls came out of nowhere in 2009 and was a strong game of the year contender, even winning the award at many media outlets. Any gamer looking for an extreme challenge will love Demon's Souls regardless if they play RPG's or not. Many people will simply give up on the game, but those that continue to play on will find one of the most well made video games ever developed. The game at first glance appears to play like a standard third person hack/slash RPG, but anyone who plays the game that way will die not hundreds but thousands of times. Demon's Souls will require an obscene amount of patience and thought to figure out how to go about the games combat. Every enemy in the game from the helpless hollows to massive dragons will require the player to think about how to fight them. Enemies tend to run in packs, and barging straight into combat will lead to inevitable death. I cannot stress the word patience enough, as this is essentially the core of the combat. Even the patient player will meed death often. The combat is very refreshing in a genre that seams to not take risks with the gameplay. There are a ton of weapons to kill your enemies with including swords of all varieties, axes, hammers, bows, and even magic spells. There are hundreds of different weapons, shields, and spells, and each and every one is very unique and come with different stats. Equipment can even be upgraded through many levels to achieve maximum damage and proficiency. Upgrading is done by collecting different shards of materials off of fallen enemies. Equipment can also be upgraded using specials shards that turn them into magical or healing items.

In Demon's Souls you start out in body form. In body form your HP is at its maximum. When you die you enter what is known as soul form. In soul form HP is halved and the game becomes even harder. Most of the game will be played through in soul form. You can get your body back by killing one of the games many bosses. While you are in body form your world can be invaded by a black phantom. A black phantom is another real life player who is trying to get out of their soul form and gain their body back by killing you. That is the alternate way to get your body back besides killing a boss. The phantom invasions create such tension and suspense, and soon after a PvP battle will ensue with the winner standing proud and mighty and the loser returning to their world with balls in hand. Besides being invaded in a negative way, you can summon other players known as blue phantoms to help you cooperatively. The blue phantom must be in soul form, and the person summoning them must be in body form. It is needlessly fun to get a group of coop partners together and beat up on any lone black phantom that invades your world. I have played through the game multiple times in both single player and this psuedo co-op mode, and i must say the co-op works really well.

Souls are the currency of Demon's Souls. Souls are obtained by killing enemies and bosses or by consuming souls found in the environment. Each boss in the game also has their own soul that you obtain upon defeating them, and those souls can be consumed for massive amounts of currency souls or they can be given to certain NPC's to craft the most powerful equipment. The boss's souls each also have multiple uses for them, and the game would have to be played through in New Game + modes 3 or 4 times to get everything out of the souls. The boss's souls are also exchanged for learning powerful spells. The currency souls can be used in a number of ways as well. The most important use of them is to level up your character in the hub Nexus. Each increasing level will require more and more souls. People usually cap their character level around lvl 120, but I have seen players who have had characters in the 500 lvl range. The highest level in the game is like 800. Souls are also used to purchase equipment and items from NPC characters. When you die in the game your souls turn into a blood pool at the spot of death, and the souls will disappear unless you go back to your blood spot and recover them. I have had times before where i have lost over 100,000 souls. This aspect to the game adds an even extra layer of difficulty to it. Demon's Souls will take at least 50 hours to beat your first time through, and i am at the point now where i can run through the game in about 10 hours or so. I must have beaten it about 8-10 times by now, so new players will definitely be spending a long time on early playthroughs. In my opinion Demon's Souls has an almost unlimited replayability, as their are so many different character builds and ways to play through the game. Even after 10 times through the game still feels fresh and just as rewarding as the first time through.

The last two mechanics of the gameplay are the world tendencies, and the passive multiplayer. Each of the 5 levels in the game, which are broken up into various stages, have a overall world tendency to them. When the world is lighter the character does more damage to enemies, and generally the game is alot easier. When the world becomes black the player will have a much harder time killing enemies and the game will be leaps and bounds harder. By turning the world black however the best loot in the game can be found. Certain events and secrets in the game can only be discovered by having the tendency for that level at one end of the tendency spectrum or the other end. The game features a ton of hidden secrets too from rescuing NPC's to fighting powerful NPC phantoms that only appear in black tendencies. The game starts out in neutral tendency. Dieing while in body form will shift the world one shade darker, while killing one of the bosses in the level will shift the game one shade whiter. Special online events will also affect the tendency colors of the world. Besides the world tendency your character also has the same tendency spectrum. Kill a harmless NPC or someone you are not suppose to and you will get one shade darker, kill bosses and invading human black phantoms and you will grow a shade whiter. Certain items have to be obtain by ether being a completely white character or a completely black character. The last unique game mechanic to Demon's Souls is that while you are playing you can see what other human players are doing in the same level as you are in. You can also select players blood pools who have died and you can learn some enemies and patterns by watching how they died. You can also leave messages on the ground for other players warning of danger or trolling them to roll off of a cliff. You can also read other messages and many of them are pretty helpful, well except for the ones that tell you rolling off of a cliff will result in treasure. Pro tip there is no treasure.

Demon's Souls features tremendous level design with each corner of every level being extremely detailed. The world feels very realistic and most of the game is shrouded in greys and brown color schemes. Each of the five levels are all very unique when compared to each other. The first level is set in/on an epic castle, the second is set in what seems to be a fiery mineshaft, the third level in a gothic church tower, the fourth level in an open stormy world, and the last stage set in a poisonous swampland. I love each and every level and they are all pretty much their own game. The game overall certainly doesnt look like the best graphically for its time, but the aesthetic and atmosphere make the visuals still very good and gorgeous. The games audio is also very unique and is almost soothing to listen to. During the levels their is no music, just the sounds of the environment. Listening closely will no doubt help the player learn and get through levels, and each and every sound effect in the game sounds truly amazing. Once you get to the boss fights the epic musical score takes over. The music is really outstanding and fits the atmosphere of the game so well. The boss fights are a sight to behold as each and every boss is a truly epic combat experience. Surprisingly, the bosses are not too hard, and all of them can be easily defeated once you figure out their weaknesses. The boss battles almost feel like a reward for getting through the grueling levels. One of the only downfalls to Demon's Souls is that the game lacks some depth in terms of the games story. The game was designed with story on the backburner, but the overall back story to the world fits with the game.

Overall Demon's Souls is simply put a masterpiece and one of the biggest surprises i have found in a game. It has become one of my all time favorites, and the game offers perfect gameplay and almost unlimited replayability.

5 stars (10.0)

Gameplay: 10

Replayability/Value: 10

Graphics: 9

Audio: 9.5

Presentation/Design/Story: 9.5