Demon's Souls

Not strictly speaking being a dungeon crawler fan myself I went by reviews that had this loosely tagged as an RPG.

What a brilliantly absorbing game this is. I am only about a third of the way through my first playthrough but this has grabbed my attention and not let go even when close to the 20 hour mark.

The best aspect is perhaps that there is only one difficulty setting and this is 'hard', while being at a high level, it is refreshing to have a game that is not afraid to set the bar high rather than offering silly lower difficulty settings that can all too often cheapen an otherwise good title.

Great game, highly recommend.

Demon's Souls is a hardcore RPG. It's not in any way for the casual gamer so if you are then don't even bother. Demon's Souls is initially a punishing and harrowing experience whatever your skill level but if you stick with it just a little it soon reveals a bounty of hidden treasures. It features a risk/reward system that is highly innovative and brings the old-school difficulty back to this generation of games. The more enemies you defeat and the further into a level you explore, the more souls you earn and the closer you get to that level's next archstone (major save point). However, if you die you lose all of the souls you were carrying and the enemies respawn. You can go back and reclaim any lost souls from the very spot you met your end, but if you fail to reach that point in the level in the next go your souls are lost. Soon the thrill of running into a level's more advanced enemies with a high soul count to try and make it through to the next archstone in one piece kicks in and you are realise that this is one of the most addictive and challenging RPGs ever created.

When you die you are reduced to a phantom in soul form and lose a portion of your health. Risking true body form at appropriate times is another of the decisions that make this game so great. Also, major actions in the game change the neutrality of the world and your character from white (good) to black (evil). Certain events, rare demons and characters are only triggered when a world is in a pure white or black tendency which adds immense depth to the game..

Demon's Souls does not feature turn-based combat, this is all real-time and frenetic stuff it is too. Combat is dependent largely on timing your attacks to be most effective depending on your character's weapons, skills and magic. And there is a deep vault of all three in the game if you look hard enough. In fact there is so much to see and so many rare artifacts to acquire that Demon's Souls demands and encourages multiple playthroughs.

The graphics and art style are outstanding as are the bursts of obtuse orchestral music that accompany the demons. There are occasional graphical glitches but these are barely worth mentioning when considering the scale and ambition of the game. Demon's Souls is a classy package.

It also features an online mode that is truly revolutionary. You cannot chat directly with other players but you can leave messages for them based on a large bank of set terms and phrases. This leads to all sorts of strange messages, some humorous, some completely misleading, most useful to your quest. You can also touch bloodstains and watch how other players in your realm recently died to work out how to avoid the same fate. This all works amazingly well. You can also be summoned by another player as an ally or invade another players world as a black phantom which adds to the online experience immensely and can make all the difference when facing major demons.

Demon's Souls is an unusual but brilliant hardcore Japanese RPG and North American PS3 owners should be thanking their lucky stars that Atlus ported this over for us. This has to be the outstanding game of the current generation so far, if you can cope with the demands of collecting those souls. If you have a PS3 you need this right now. If you don't, you should buy one just to play it. Demon's Souls is one of those rare, sublime games that amounts to an experience that will impact you long after you've finished playing it. If you ever finish playing it that is...