User Review : Demon's Souls

Demon's Souls: Complex and Challenging, Infinitely Rewarding

Well, first of all I think I should define the genre this game falls into. It's an action RPG, not turn-based at all. It isn't an "open-world" game like Oblivion, but if you were to take each of the 5 worlds in Demon's Souls individually, it wouldn't be too different, really, from certain chunks taken from Oblivion. The first world, for instance, is a gigantic castle and its surrounding grounds, outer towers, etc. What follows is a very in-depth look at the mechanics of the game, which are complex. In order to get a true feeling for whether this game will suit you, I think you need to know exactly what you're in store for. So here goes.

The gameplay is action-based like Oblivion, with lots of similarities, and a few differences. Unlike Oblivion, there is no jump button. One of the most important functions in the game is the multitude of actions mapped to the O button. If you're standing still and press O, you do a backstep. If you push in any direction at the same time as pressing O, then you do a roll in that direction, and if you are walking while you hold it down, then you run in that direction. You need to master each of these maneuvers, when and how to use them effectively to dodge, avoid, and escape enemy attacks. In this game, it only takes a couple of hits (for bosses, often one will do it) to kill you, so memorizing enemy attack patterns and figuring out when to attack, when and how to dodge or parry is of utmost importance.

All of those dodge maneuvers require stamina. That's like Oblivion, where every jump, every second you're sprinting, every swing of the sword, etc. will deplete your stamina. Do nothing or simply walk and it quickly restores. If you're holding out your shield, getting hit depletes your stamina. The stronger the enemy attack, the more stamina it depletes. Some enemy attacks will stagger you and you'll be stunned for a second because the attack was more powerful than your shield is capable of absorbing with your current endurance skill. Others are even more powerful and blocking will do you no good and the attack will not only break your guard, but kill you outright. That's where the dodging comes into importance. Also of note is that walking with your shield held up in a guarded position causes your stamina to regenerate much more slowly, so if you're in the middle of a fight with a powerful enemy and you're just swung at them a few times and you're very low on stamina, you may need to roll back and keep your distance for a second and stand with your shield lowered (not on guard) so that you can get stamina back really fast. It leaves you open to attack for a couple seconds, but if you keep your distance, you get all of your stamina back, which is very helpful and then you can put your shield back on guard and know that you have enough stamina to withstand a hit with your shield up, which almost always staggers the enemy and stuns them a second, which not only leaves them vulnerable for a free hit, but always results in a more powerful critical hit when they're stunned.

It goes both ways, though. If the enemy is blocking when you attack, their guard will stagger you, and you'll be stunned, and when they attack you, THEY get the critical hit. So knowing when to attack, dodge, block, etc. is very important, and keeping track of your stamina is essential. Finally, there is a parry move, and it's very difficult to time (I personally don't use it, because if you mess up the timing you're going to get skewered). At just the right time, you press the L2 button to use your left-hand shield (or weapon) to parry the attack. This is like... you're standing open, so to the enemy you appear vulnerable, but just as their strike is about to connect, you pull up your shield and swat their attack away. This move, if timed correctly, stuns the enemy for the longest, and gives you the biggest damage increase, almost always resulting in a one-hit kill. But it's a risk. And every enemy in the game has multiple attack varieties, all of which are unique to each enemy, so you need to know the enemy inside and out, know exactly which attack it's doing and exactly how long it takes from when they start to attack to when they will connect, and exactly how long your parry motion takes with the particular shield your carrying, and get all of those factors correct, get your timing right, and you're golden. Get it wrong, and you're dead. As I said, I pretty much don't even try to parry.

So, there are 5 worlds, and you access them from the Nexus. The Nexus is your central hub, where you can talk to NPC's to spend your souls and access the 5 different worlds. The NPC's you start out with are a guy who stores your excess items for you. You have a limited amount of weight you can carry, like in Oblivion. There are tons of rings in the game that you can wear, one of which is the Ring of Herculean Strength, which increases your maximum load by 50%. I bring it with me at all times, but don't wear it until I pick something up that I'm told is too heavy for me. Then I equip the ring and pick it up. If you attempt to pick up an item that you can't carry and automatically drop it, then when you come back to get it later, it won't be there. So it's important that you pick it up sight on seen, or it's gone forever. So Stockpile Thomas will store all of your items that you can't obviously carry with you all at once, like extra grasses (healing item) or spices (MP restoration item), weapons, armor, etc. The maximum number of any particular consumable item (like spices & grasses) is 99. But it's really 198. You can have 99 with you at all times, and 99 with Stockpile Thomas. For arrows and bolts - there are multiple types of arrow and bolt, and for each individual type it's 999. Of course, you can double that number if you keep that many with Thomas, and that many on yourself (each arrow weights 0.1 pounds. 1000 arrows would weigh 100 pounds. With endurance at level 19 you can carry exactly 100 pounds. So... even though you CAN carry 999 arrows, it would definitely be stupid to do so, because it would mean you couldn't even carry a bow to shoot them with! Or for that matter any armor, or healing grass or anything else. Unless you sink all of your soul levels into endurance.

The next NPC is Boldwin the blacksmith. You can buy some rudimentary equipment from him (basically just a crappy sword, crappy axe, crappy shield, and lowest level grass and spice, and actually quite importantly he sells basic arrows, which I still always buy from him... his stock never changes, even as you progress through the game, he never gets better items in stock, but there are other retailers in the game, more on that later), and he can repair your weapons, and upgrade your weapons. Upgrading requires ores that are dropped by certain enemies throughout the game, there about 15 different types of ore in the game, each one used to upgrade different types of weapons toward different types of abilities. For instance, there is a rare ore type called moonstone, which can be used to turn most physical weapons into a magical weapon. There is spiderstone, which is used to upgrade bows. The most common are hardstone and sharpstone, which are your basic ores used to upgade shields, swords, hammers, axes, spears, etc. Each ore type has different grades of quality. You can upgrade weapons up to +10, each time you upgrade it requires more and higher quality ores. To go from +9 to +10 always requires an extremely rare "pure" version of the stone, some types of ore only have one "pure" version of themselves in the entire game and requires special conditions to acquire. These conditions are called World Tendency.

It sounds really complicated, but World Tendency is not as hard as it sounds. The basic thing you need to know is that if you kill a boss in a world, that world's tendency goes towards white. If you die in a world AS A BODY (read: not as a soul... more on this in a moment), it goes towards black. The only place you can die in body form without it making your world tendency go towards black is if you die in the nexus. So, if you are trying to get all pure white worlds, then you have to commit suicide in the nexus every time you kill a boss and get your body back. Once you die in body form, you become a soul, and you will always be a soul until you kill a boss. The best way to get pure black world tendency is to use an item called Stone of Ephemeral Eyes, which turns you into body form without having to kill a boss. Because if you kill a boss, world tendency goes +1, and then when you die in body form in that world, it goes -1, which evens out at neutral 0. So to get pure black, you have to basically just use a stone of ephemeral eyes, go into a world and get killed by enemy (suicides don't reduce your world tendency, very important note!). Repeat it 3 times without killing any of the bosses and you'll have -3, which is pure black. To get pure white, just kill all the bosses in a world, and don't ever die while in body form in that world.

When you get pure black and pure white, different unique events occur, and you can get very rare and unique items in this way. Also important is that the blacker the world, the more difficult the enemies are, BUT the better their item drops. The whiter the world, the easier the enemies, BUT the worse their item drops. The major differences between body and soul form are:

- In body form, you have 100% HP, in soul form you have 50%, but you can wear a ring called Cling Ring, which gives you 75% instead of 50%.
- In body form, dying reduces your world tendency towards black, in soul form dying has no effect on world tendency
- In body form, you can summon other people playing the game online who are soul form to enter your game and help you in co-op. In soul form, you can only be summoned into other people's games, you can't do the summoning. (Think of summoning like an invite, I guess)

OK, back to NPC's. At the beginning of the game, the only NPC's available are the two that I've already mentioned, Stockpile Thomas, who offers his services for free, and Boldwin the Blacksmith, who requires souls for all of his services. After you beat the first world's first boss, you get a couple more NPC's in the Nexus. There's one guy who sells magic (these are your attack spells, and some defensive ones, like water veil which increases your fire resistance temporarily, hide which makes you harder for enemies to detect, or protection, which increases your physical defense temporarily). You cannot buy magic until you have soul level 10 in both Will and Magic. Some classes start out with that, others do not. I won't get into all of the starting classes.

Then there's another guy who sells miracles (these are harder to describe, but there are a wide variety of them, like healing spells, cure poison, evacuate which lets you instantly leave a world and go back to the nexus without having to get to an archstone [more on that later], and wrath of god, which is a very powerful area of effect spell that kills almost everything around you, and requires 3 miracle slots and lots of MP, and you can only get it later in the game). Buying miracles requires soul level 10 in Faith.

As you increase your level in Will, you can gain more magic slots, up to 5 slots. You can memorize as many magics to carry with you as you have magic slots, but some magics take up multiple slots. Same goes for miracles, but you get more miracle slots by increasing your Faith. Will also increases your max MP, Faith increases your magic defense. The Magic stat ONLY increases the attack power of your magics (not the attack power of offensive miracles, which is dictated by Faith).

A final word on magic and miracles, you can only cast them if you have a catalyst or talisman with you (respectively). You need to equip a talisman to cast miracles, or a catalyst to cast magics. One of the important items you can get only through world tendency is the Talisman of Beasts. It's a very powerful catalyst & talisman in one, that lets you cast either magic or miracles without having to switch items or carry two items with you. Very nice indeed. You can only get it by having World 2 in Pure Black Tendency. Another option is to have a catalyst in one hand and a talisman in the other, where the L1 & L2 buttons represent primary and secondary functions for your left-hand weapon (shields in this game are technically counted as weapons, and even have an attack power rating. You can attack with a shield by swinging it or lunging it into your opponent, which has a high chance of staggering them). But having a talisman in one hand and a catalyst in the other means you have no melee attack ability and no shield. You've got to have some pretty good magics and miracles in order to effectively get through the game that way, but it can be done. It makes more sense, though, just to get pure black in world 2 and get the talisman of beasts. Alternatively, you can just switch items whenever you need to switch between magic and miracles. You can equip two items to each hand. And with the d-pad, you hit the left d-pad button to do a quick switch of what you're wielding in your left hand between the two things you have equipment, the right d-pad button does a quick-switch of what you're wielding in the right hand. So if you're primarily magic but haven't gotten the talisman of beasts yet and want to have a shield equipped at all times, you can just put the shield in your left hand, and fill both right hand slots with a talisman and a catalyst, and quickly switch between them as you need to use either a miracle or a magic depending on the situation. There are literally infinite ways to go about playing the game.

And last but not least, the final NPC that enters the Nexus after beating the first world's first boss is The Maiden in Black. She is the most important NPC, because she is the one who you can spend your souls to increase your soul level. Note that this means you CANNOT level up until after you beat the first boss. So expect to die a whole lot and try, try again on the first world, but once you persevere and get past it, you can start to level up your stats. At first, it only costs a few hundred measly souls to level up. But as you level up each time, it requires more for the next level up. You can potentially reach something like level 720, but to get between level 719 and 720, for instance, would take millions of souls (A LOT), and just getting to 719 to begin with would take a cumulative billions of souls and probably a thousand or more hours of gameplay. No real point of attempting to get maxed out like that, but it's technically a possibility.

When you level up, you pick one stat to increase, from the following, with a note on what they correspond with:
- Vitality: max HP and the total weight you can have equipped
- Will: max MP and # of magic slots
- Endurance: (possibly the most important skill) max stamina, max weight (load) that you can carry with you, bleeding resistance, poison resistance, fire resistance
- Strength: no direct effect, but can effect attack power [more on this later]
- Dexterity: how far you can fall and how much damage you take when you fall + can effect attack power (similar to strength)
- Magic: magic power
- Faith: miracle power, # of miracle slots, magic defense
- Luck: plague resistance, item occurrence rate (how often enemies drop items and the quality of the items dropped)

Notice that none of them dictate physical defense. That's because they ALL do. Every time you level up, regardless of the stat you pick, you get a bonus to your physical defense.

OK, on to strength & dexterity. Different weapons, first of all, have requirements for a minimum of strength & dexterity. If you don't meet the minimum, you can't wield the weapon effectively. You can still equip it, you can still use it, but your movements are really sloppy and slow, and you take a HUGE hit to your attack power. The only way to wield certain weapons is to increase your strength or dexterity (or both) to meet the requirements. Alternatively, you can wield it two-handed (obviously you can't have a shield, for instance, when you two-hand a weapon). When you two-hand a weapon, it effectively increases your strength & dexterity by 50% of your current skill in those areas. There's a weapon called the Keel Smasher, and it requires 30 strength to wield. This means you can one-hand it if you have 30 strength, and you can two-hand it if you have 20 strength (because 20 * 1.5 equals 30). But more importantly, each weapon gets an attack power bonus from your strength and/or dexterity. For each weapon you'll see a letter-grade next to strength & dexterity (or a dash if no bonus for that stat). If it's an E, then you get a very small bonus for every point you have in that stat. An S is the highest, A the second highest, etc. One of the best bows in the game is the Vicious Compound Long Bow +5 (you make it out of a Compound Long Bow and spiderstones), and it has an S for dexterity bonus. This means that for every point of dexterity you have, your attack power with that bow goes up significantly. The more dexterity points you get, the more attack power you get with that weapon.

Now, about other NPC's. Some worlds have NPC's in them that you can find hidden away. Some of them are just retailers that sell various things (some EXTREMELY valuable, useful, and important), and they are always in that location of that world. One of them is a blacksmith Ed in world 2, and he can upgrade your weapons to higher qualities than the blacksmith Boldwin in the Nexus can. As you kill bosses, you get unique Demon's Souls, which you can trade for things. Some weapons can be upgraded to unique and very powerful weapons by trading a specific demon's soul to Ed. Others are prisoners that need to be rescued, and when you rescue them they appear in the Nexus from then on. Some of them are more important than others. You can rescue two people, Sage Freke and Saint Urbain, which will - respectively - sell more powerful magics and more powerful miracles. For the more powerful ones, they require a unique demon's soul in trade. Everyone should know BEFORE THEY PLAY THE GAME that there is an NPC named Yurt The Silent Chief, who can be rescued from world 3. He WILL start killing the other NPC's in the nexus after he is rescued. That means that you will lose access to buying magics and miracles, and you'll lose access to your stockpile as well. This is BAD. You want to rescue him, and then kill him right away and loot his body for his very nice equipment.

OK, now on to the final important factors: souls, death, and the archstones.

First of all, the archstones. These are your "spawning points." When you choose to enter a world, you pick one of the archstones to spawn at. Each world starts with one archstone that you can start at. After every boss (each world has 3 or 4 bosses) there is another archstone that acts as a waypoint to that location within the level. In order to leave a world, you have to touch an archstone or use the Evacuate miracle.

Every time you get a kill, you get souls. The number of souls depends on the enemy. Some enemies give as little as just a couple of souls, others give hundreds, some give thousands. Bosses give many, many souls in addition to their unique demon's soul.

When you die, you leave a bloodstain at the location of your death. When playing online, all other players in that world, at that location, at that time will see your bloodstains, and they can tough it to watch how you died. This is an interesting factor of the game, and can serve as a good warning of what not to do for people walking into an unfamiliar area. To see how somebody else died gives you some clues.

Also, when online you can leave messages for people. These messages may contain hints or help, but there's nothing stopping you from posting misleading or false information. BUT, if you post good information, people will thank you for it in the form of what essentially amounts to a "thumbs up" for your message. If your message gets rated highly, then it stays there, if it doesn't get rated, then it disappears quickly. Also, when your message is rated by someone else you get all of your health back (rated means thumbs up, there is no way to leave a "bad" rating, other than to NOT rate it).

But back to your bloodstain. When you die, you lose ALL of the souls that you currently possess and haven't spent on equipment, items, level ups, etc, and you start back at one of the archstones. Not necessarily the closest one, but not random... If you're "behind" the second archstone, you'll start at the first, if you're "behind" the third, you'll start at the second, etc. So even though I may be right next to the second archstone when I die, if I'm behind it, not in front of it (in front would be in the direction towards the NEXT archstone), then I start back at the first one. There are shortcuts in each level that you can open up, and these stay open forever once you've opened them, so as you progress, dying isn't as much of a burden if you've managed to at least get as far as opening one of the shortcuts.

So you've died and lost all your souls, started back at an archstone, and all the enemies you killed except bosses are now revived. If you can make your way back to your bloostain without dying again, then you get all of the souls back that you'd lost when you died. If you die again before getting to that bloodstain, then you lose all of those souls forever, and the amount of souls you had at your most recent death is now going to be lying in wait for you at the location of your most recent death.

Well, I think that about covers the mechanics of the game. It's a very deep, very big game, with lots to do. Once you've beaten it, you've really only cracked the surface, as there is an infinite number of New Game+'s that you can start with your character, and there are plenty of things that you can only get on subsequent play-throughs. Some of the unique demon's souls that you acquire from bosses have multiple uses, like there could be 2, 3, or 4 magics/miracles you have the option to acquire from it, and maybe even some upgraded weapons too. But you can only get one of that demon's soul per play-through, so if you want all the magics, all the miracles, all the unique/valuable weapons (and there's gold trophies for acquiring all of each of those) you HAVE to play through the game multiple times. And the challenge goes up with each play-through, but so do the number of souls you get from each enemy. So the game lives on, it'll get its hooks in you. You won't be able to stop playing or thinking about playing it.

Like everything in this world, it's not flawless, but it comes pretty damn close, and the flaws it does have do not in any way shape or form effect the gameplay itself, so they're only worth mentioning in a summary of ups & downs (below).

I can't recommend it enough.