I've fallen in love with Demon's Souls

So I'm gonna open this up saying that I am just go on and on about Demon's Souls because it is exactly what I wanted in a game recently. Castlevania HD was doing a good job of filling that role but now I have found exactly what I wanted. What is frustrating is that I could have been loving this game about a year ago and I have no clue why I didn't get it then. Demon's Souls scratches this exact itch that I have in games. It's actually more like a full body massage on that itch to be perfectly honest. I don't think this game has anything that I don't like in regards to game features. It has New Game+ which is one of the best thing that any game could add. Who doesn't want to play through a game again as a powered up version of the character you have worked on for so long? Chrono Trigger was the first game that I played with that feature and it was the best thing ever! I'm a huge advocate of keeping progress in games even after the game is finished. The kicker for this one is that once you beat it the game gets harder each time. This game is no walk in the park either, it has a reputation for being really hard. I am not joking when I say that I have lost lots of progress due to difficulty but I really don't mind. It feels like whenever I die it is somehow my fault for being too hasty in attacking a enemy or not properly blocking. I never feel like it is really unfair which is very interesting to me.

When you first boot up the game you get to make your character which is not uncommon for games to do especially since it is a RPG. You get to choose from 10 classes and unlike other games this is just a starting location not a destination of where your character will go. In most RPGs you pick a class and that's what you are for the rest of the game. In Demon's Souls you pick something that you want to do when you start. All characters can do everything in this game, what you start with is just that and nothing more. I actually really like that concept in a game especially since your character is the only one you get for that save. When you make your character you go through a short tutorial to get used to the basic mechanics of the game (which is normal). The first thing that will strike you when starting this game is that you will see "ghosts" of other players running around. These are actually other people playing the game and this game is online all the time. At the end of the tutorial you meet a boss and he kills with about 1 hit and you die (if you play this game get used to dying). You go to this place called the Nexus which is basically like a hub world for the game. More about the game after the break.

When you wake up in the Nexus you are actually a spirit and not in your body. You also have about 50% HP now and it stays this way as long as your are a spirit. The only level you can go to is the first one at this point so I click on the archstone and go to the first level which is a castle full of bad guys. You start out at the bridge leading to the castle and the game just kinda lets you go. So I progress for a while killing enemies which are pretty strong for starting enemies. Enemies always drop souls when they are defeated and they sometimes will drop items. Souls are the currency in this game and by that reason they are also the experience points (I'll get to that later). So after progressing a little bit I die and lose all my souls. On top of that you come back at the starting location again with all the enemies back. When people die in this game they leave bloodstains which you can click on and view the last few seconds of their life. So I work my way back to my bloodstain and click on it to get all my souls back. You can get your souls back from your last death but if you die again getting to that bloodstain those souls are lost forever.

So I progress farther up and get to the castle wall and it's at this point that I realize how massive the level is. I looked over the edge and saw the area that I started in. When I looked the other way the whole castle courtyard was rendered. The scale of this game is really good and a good sense of scale is very important for me. I love Shadow of the Colossus and one of the reasons is the amazing sense of scale. When you are scaling on a huge boss in that game you feel very small and pretty high up. That game is full of so many good boss fights, my favorite is the 5th colossus. That one flies over a huge lake and you have to jump on top of it while it is flying. It is a really amazing boss fight. So once I'm up at the top of the wall I decide to explore some and find a way down the tower and open a door near the start of the level. So once this door is opened the game keeps it open even after death. The game is basically giving you a quicker way up to the top by doing this without having the need for a checkpoint system.

So I progress further in the stage and get some souls from enemies (I lost some too by dying too much). Eventually make my way past a dragon and down another tower which leads to another area near the start. The boss room is finally open and it turns out it was the front door to the castle. You fight the boss and when you win that's when the game kinda starts. They don't let you really let you have everything until you fight this boss. You finally get your body back (they don't let you have that until you defeat a major demon). After the boss fight you get a Blue Eye Stone which will allow you to be summoned to a alternate universe and help another adventurer (which is really cool by the way). You can also purchase stat increases with souls and that is how the souls are kinda like experience points. The maximum soul level in this game is 712 which is how much it takes to get to 99 in every stat. I'm gonna write more about multi player tomorrow so I'll be back with another Demon's Souls related blog post tomorrow.