Demon's Souls (a PS3 game review)

 by Chad Law

One thing that most modern day games have been lacking now a day is a difficultly level that causes the player to play at his or her best and to actually face a challenge. I can proudly say that Demon’s Souls accomplishes this goal of challenging the player to the max.

Demon’s Souls background story is basically a medieval world that has been invaded by Monsters and Demons that are bound on destroying all of mankind and taking over the world and your character has to prevent this Doom Day from happening. The story doesn’t really develop much from that plot.

You start out the game creating your character and choosing your character’s class and attributes which will affect how you play during the game. For instance if you choose the magician class you will find your self from afar from your enemies casting spells at a safe range compared to the Barbarian class which requires more physical combat.

Now when playing this game, expect to die…a lot. In a matter of fact you are suppose to die on the first level in order to progress onto other levels. When you die in Demon’s souls you turn into a phantom and start all the way from the beginning of the level despite whether you died fighting a boss of a level or just a regular standard enemy. Yet when you are a phantom you start out the level with less health. Did I also mention that when you die you loose all your demon’s souls, which act as currency in this game to buy spells and new equipment for your character. Now you can regain these souls if you find the spot where you died but you have to go back and fight all the enemies you just killed. As you upgrade your character and as you increase in level and attribute the more souls you will need to gear, weapons, and to gain other levels.  

This game is not recommended for casual games for it does require more of a tactical view on the battlefield compared to games like God of war which are your basic hack n slash game. The bosses themselves are just as awesome as this game with there in depth detail that the game designers took time into making. From beating these bosses and levels there is a weird sense of accomplishment that many games now a days don’t retain.

For all you gamers out there that have a feel for PvP, player versus player, there is a portion of demon’s souls that allows you to become a black phantom and invade another player’s world with intent of killing that player so in return you are resurrected in your world. Yet you can become a blue phantom and help another living player defeat a boss which also in returns resurrects you in your world. You can also make an impact on the levels with a moral system called World tendency which can change to Pure Black(evil) or Pure light(good) depending on how you interact with other characters and events in that world. Depending on your world tendency will determine what kind of enemies you will have to face.

 Demon’s Souls is a game worth playing for those who are hardcore and dedicated to gaming looking for challenge newer/inexperienced gamers will be turned off by the level of difficulty you will have to face.

 Verdict

+ Challenging Game with hard difficulty

 + Fun Player versus Player environments

  + Sense of accomplishment from beating levels

    – Lacking story