So The World Might Be Mended...
Demon's Souls is an amazing game. An amazing, crushingly difficult, death-prone, seemingly unfair one, but an amazing game nonetheless. Go buy it.
Published: October 8, 2009
By balancing all of these different forms and items (including some that will let you cast off your mortal shackles to help someone out or regain your soul if you need it), you can join a game fairly easily, but once you're in someone's game, there's only one way to communicate: gestures (either via a menu pulled up by holding X or with a X-plus-SIXAXIS gesture, which is spotty at best). No voice chat, no text chat. Oddly, though, it works. Because of the slower pace and the ability to point or beckon, help is reduced to, well, just help rather than some barking dog or crying baby on the other line. If cross-game chat is rolled out soon, this will be rendered moot, and you can always set up a chat room between players in the XMB, but despite seeming crippled, this decidedly Japanese approach to things really does work better than you'd expect.
And it's a good thing, too, as you'll likely need help when exploring the various worlds in a more or less open-to-all fashion once you've finished your first boss. Each of the five worlds is broken into a handful of different sections capped off with a boss, and some of them are absolutely massive. It's easily one of Demon's Souls' best features; the atmosphere and sense of visual splendor that accompanies every one of the slow crawls through increasingly hostile areas. No two parts of the worlds connected by the Nexus are alike, each sporting wildly different (and creative) monsters that will challenge how you fight them and what tools you'll use to do so.
I'd love to say it's all pulled off with the same kind of self-assurance in terms of the performance, but there are a few quirks here and there; the framerate can get absolutely choked in areas with a lot of filler objects (usually stuff that can be destroyed), and the ragdolls go absolutely insane as you run over them (From Software apparently wasn't keen on turning off the ragdoll effects in Havok after the enemies died, so they'll get dragged along, flailing wildly as you run past). The initial load times, too, can be fairly meaty, though the levels can take hours to get through. Just expect a bit of a wait when you meet your end. Even still when it counts -- particularly during the epic boss fights -- things are usually quite solid.
And the boss fights are epic in every sense of the word. Even mini- or mid-bosses often tower over your player, reducing them to a spec and making it a mystery as to how they can be dealt with. Luckily, the game's simple dodging and rolling system, careful blocks and slow, practiced strikes can take them all out -- and of course having the world with a mostly-white tendency will do wonders to lessen their attack power (a few dozen herbs, accessed through the quick bar, are the only real means of restoring yourself as the game doesn't have a pause feature and will keep going if you press Start to access your inventory).
The voices are probably the only part of the audio that hurts the game's sense of immersion, and that's saying something. 90% of the time, you're either speaking to someone with an interesting European accent or listening to the somber, melancholy and downright depressing music while still somehow loving all of it. The few voices that don't quite seem to match up are little more than an amusement anyway, and the rest of the clangs, growls and shuffling feet will more than make up for any dips in the quality of the localization.
Simply put, Demon's Souls is the kind of game you'll rarely experience in a console's life, to say nothing of the impact is has on the history of games in general. Plenty of people have at least played the King's Field series that DS is a spiritual successor to, but I've never heard of the series spoken about with such reverence, whereas Demon's Souls is looked upon as one of the most rewarding, unique and satisfying games you'll ever play. Sure, it's challenging -- moreso than most games today -- but it's never to the point of being cheap or unfair; once the lessons drummed into your head through trial and error and hundreds of deaths make themselves plain to you, the only person you'll kick for dying is yourself. This is a game that every single person who owns a PlayStation 3 needs to check out -- if not outright buy -- and if you don't have a PS3 yet, here's a game that will help you instantly justify the purchase price.
