Rated 4.14 out of 5 stars 205 Reviews
"This game cannot be paused! What a major flaw in design, especially in offline mode."
Demon's Souls (Playstation 3)
Beautiful, compelling, and at times unforgiving, Demon's Souls is the hardcore RPG experience PS3 owners have been waiting for since the platform's launch. Revolutionary online features define your adventure like never before, presenting seamless interconnectivity that serves in every instance to enhance the single-player game. Unprecedented in its depth and subtlety, peerless in its relentlessly challenging gameplay, Demon's Souls is the ultimate action RPG. KEYFEATURES - Ultimate hardcore RPG challenge - In this brutal land, death is inevitable, but not final. Combining the best features of an action game and RPG, you'll slice, smash, shoot, and cast magic against some of the most horrible, vicious enemies ever encountered. Are you strong enough to face up to the impossible and win? - Ground-breaking online capabilities - Network features go far beyond any previous RPG, allowing players to leave hints for each other, replay death scenes, cooperatively revive dead players, or invade and wreak havoc in another's game. Not merely an add-on feature, multiplayer options are vast, and uniquely focused on changing and intensifying the single player experience. - Freeform and flexible - The open-ended structure of the game means that there is no single path, but rather a wealth of options. Set your own pace and progress as you like. Build exactly the character you want by creating a detailed avatar, nurturing the right stats, and customizing your skills and equipment.
Demon's Souls (Playstation 3) Reviews
Demon's Souls is not a game for everybody. That being said, if you're up to the challenge, it's one of the best games of its kind to be released in recent memory. Most game review sites gave it high marks, and Gamespot recently awarded Demon's Souls its 2009 Game of the Year award, so it's clear that this game is doing something right.
Demon's Souls is basically a combat RPG. You run around and kill all sorts of different monsters with lots of different weapons and spells, get currency called "demon's souls" (hence the title of the game), and use that currency to level up, upgrade your weapons, buy items, learn spells, etc. The game takes place in five different worlds, each of which has its own style, both artistically and in terms of gameplay. The game world is one of the most atmospheric in any game I've ever played. There isn't really much of a story (don't expect anything like Dragon Age or Final Fantasy), but you really do feel like you're in a kingdom being overrun by chaos and evil.
The gameplay in Demon's Souls is spot on. There's a great sense of progression, since you slowly but surely become more and more powerful throughout the course of the game. A huge amount of the progression doesn't actually come from any statistical boosts, but from simply going through the game, dying a lot, and learning from your errors. As you learn how to beat different monsters and bosses, you really do feel like you're accomplishing something nontrivial. There aren't a huge number of weapons (maybe a few dozen?), but they each have a distinct role in combat, and the game really forces you to think about which weapons and armor you want to use. You'll find that there isn't one best answer; rather, the best equipment and spells to use will depend on your playstyle and the monsters you need to fight. One of the great things about Demon's Souls is that there are all sorts of different ways to progress through the game. The boss fights in this game are fantastic - they involve lots of different sorts of crazy, mostly huge, monsters, some of which seem overwhelmingly powerful at first, but which upon closer inspection have their weak spots.
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Demon's Souls is the multiplayer system. It's kind of hard to describe, but it involves you either helping or fighting other players by invading their worlds as a "phantom", or by leaving notes on the ground. You can also touch other players' bloodstains to see how they died, which might serve as a warning for you. You can't chat with other players, but this really adds to the atmosphere of the game.
One of the most frequent complaints about this game is the difficulty. It's true, this game is hard, but not unfair hard. There are ways to beat every monster in the game using the tools available to you, and if you take the time to be patient and learn from your errors, you'll find that the game isn't unreasonably difficult. That being said, Demon's Souls is more demanding than almost any other game out there, and probably isn't appropriate for more casual gamers. If you're unsure if your skills are up to the task, try playing the game at a friends or renting it first. The first few levels are pretty indicative of the difficulty of the rest of the game.
Demon's Souls isn't a perfect game, but the flaws are all minor. I don't know if this is the best game I've ever played on the PS3, but it certainly is one of the best games currently available for the system. If you're unsure about whether this game is for you, rent it first, but I'm sure that many people will be pleasantly surprised with Demon's Souls.
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This game made me remember something I had forgotten: that fear of failure makes victory that much sweeter. Today's games can be frustrating, they can be challenging, but they are almost never ever HARD. Bastard hard but never unfair, Demon's Souls will have you hyper-ventilating with fear in your living-room, throwing your controller at the screen, and doing wild dances of joy when you finally beat that end-of-level boss.
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This is a MUST-HAVE for all PS3 owners. I thought Fallout 3 would reign for a while, but this RPG really gets it to the edge of fun!
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