I know most of my reviews seem to favor the games investigated in them, but in my defense, I can’t help having near impeccable taste. 

Developer From Software (how’s that for stereotypical Engrish?) known for their Armored Core and Tenchu series have succeeded in cooking up one of the most exciting, exclusiveaction RPG titles on the PlayStation 3 to date. The game is essentially like Dark Cloud 2, minus the sweet character design and jolly music. Instead, the theme in Demon’s Souls (as if the title didn’t give it away) is everything Gothic multiple times over. The story begins with little to no premise: You are the brave warrior who has made himself distinguishable in combat, able to slay foes that left others dead, and as such, you are logically the chosenwarrior whose sole duty is to rid Boletaria from demons who have nested in the city thanks to a great black fog cutting it off from the rest of the world. Bad king, you see.

The beauty of Demon’s Souls lies in the fact that it will challenge you. As you die, it becomes more difficult.

Unlike most games on the market today, there are no save points, and when you die, you lose all the souls you had earned killing enemies. Souls are the currency in this game, so you pretty much lose all your money when you die. You need that “money” to repair your armor, upgrade your weapons, buy rations and medicine, arrows, as well as new spells. If you spend a lot of the game dying, you’ll spend a lot of it in Spirit form, which, unlike your Physical form, has less health and strength. Your ability to survive depends entirely on your speed at picking up on your class’ strength. The learning curve is steep, to say the least, so you are either on board or busy running back to your blood stain, which if you touch, refunds all of the souls that you had on you before you died. The game is fair. The game is also merciless, which is something that you’ll come to appreciate. Victories aren’t handed to you.

When you make a mistake, you’ll know better next time since Demon’s Souls makes it a point to jolt you into realizing that the entire feel of  it is in fact, morbid, and that the stakes are high. Letting your guard down will almost always cost you.

In all fairness, however, if you are connected to the PSN, you’re able to see white phantoms occasionally, which are just other players online at the time. You’re also able to read the messages they leave behind, which include tips, or general dorky humor. You also spot their blood stains. The blood stains show you the last 10 seconds of that player’s life before they died, which usually gives you an idea of what foes lie ahead, and more importantly, how that player misjudged his enemy, giving you an advantage.

You begin the game with the ability to choose from 10 classes, each with their own primary stats. Notable classes include the Knight, which excels in melee combat and heavy armor, the Magician class which excels in offensive spells with the lightest armor; then there is the Barbarian class, which runs around with a giant two-handed weapon clobbering foes with little to no effort at the cost of armor.

You’re given the choice to level up your character’s attributes any way you please. For example, I started out with a thief, and invested points in dexterity, luck, magic, and strength. What that means is that she’s still essentially just a thief (low armor, high damage) but she also has an edge in magic, which means her ranged attacks aren’t just limited to bows. She’s also able to wield medium-sized shields thanks to my choice to buff her strength (STR) attribute. Many players of the game seem to agree that it doesn’t really matter what class you start off with, since you’re still able to level them up in any way that you can, since the primary stats are still very primary. Translation: I could make my thief into a knight if I pleased.

Because Demon’s Souls is a dungeon crawler minus the random stage layout, it’s an extremely fresh game compared to other games on the market. It is definitely something different, and all too appealing to ignore.

Hold on! How does the game get harder as I die? World Tendency. Since Demon’s Souls excels at taking your skills on as a gamer, it will compose its difficulty based on your performance. It will kick you when you’re down until you learn to pick yourself up. It sounds hard, but finally succeeding (depends entirely on your ability to pick up on your own strengths and weaknesses, as well as your enemies’) gives a great feeling of fulfillment. Any victory you claim is the fruit of your labor, never a generous act of kindness given to you by the game. Now, as for World Tendency, it alters between two primeval concepts: black versus white.

World Tendency shifts towards black when you lose your body form. Merciless, I told you. It also moves to black when you invade another player’s game and slay that player as a Black Phantom. World Tendency shifts to white when you defeat major demons,  Black Phantoms, or assist another player via a co-operative assault on any stage. Each tendency also opens up its own events, where you meet new NPCs. Black = stronger foes, better loot. White = weaker foes, less loot.

Player Tendency: Like the world, your character’s actions also alter his own tendency between black and white. Your tendency edges towards white when you fend off a Black Phantom, or evil NPCs. It morphs to black when you kill friendly NPCs or invade another player’s game.

I’ve only had my game invaded by a Black Phantom once, and that was only during the time that I was connecting with another player in a co-op mode. We killed him. :D

This game is definitely worth buying, you’re not doing yourself any justice if you don’t. Demon’s Souls is an experience that you must at least savor. Grant yourself a challenge and get this game especially if you think it sounds too hard to enjoy. You’ll really be in for a great surprise, not because you’ll come to think that it’s a lot easier than you thought it would be, but because you’ll come to realize that you actually become a better player than you were when you first started playing the game. It’s hard, but you’ll see yourself rising up to meet the challenge. I remember fetching my blood stain so many times when I first started playing the game, and cursing my rotten luck at falling off ledges, into packs of dogs, while being burnt to a crisp by giant dragons. The game deliberately throws you in with little to no advice on how to attack, even survive, but the fact that you learn all of that on your own serves to allow you the opportunity to become a true hero in the game. The fact that you know you started off so green makes victories that much more sweeter.

Demon’s Souls won’t spoil you.

Are you up for it?

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