Demon's Souls Review

Demon's Souls
When I was younger I could not play RPGs all the way through because I had to do things like school and after school activities that kept me involved in the community. Also, I wouldn't read the dialogue and my puzzle solving skills were sub-par. Since I've been 15, and pretty much since the N64 came out I've been playing through games more and more, with each successful completion adding to my ego and making me think “Hey, I'm a pretty good gamer. So I can't get everything in the game, but I can do a ton of quests and actually beat the game.” Underneath those thoughts has been the sneaking suspicion that I wasn't actually improving, but the games themselves were getting easier.
Enter Demon's Souls.
Demon's souls is a cold iron spike in lieu of the warm nipple that gamers up till now have been sucking sweet sweet milk of ridiculously powered up characters and forgiving puzzles. It takes things that we have taken for granted and throws them away; leaving us with our hands outstretched, mooneyed, and putting together exactly what just happened. Demon's Souls is how I imagine it feels to be raped.

Consider this all too familiar scenario with dungeon-crawlers: has there ever been a moment when you were a tiny bit annoyed with the bartering system of a game? You wish to purchase a particular item from a vendor to make the beginning levels easier, but won't have enough money to purchase the item until after you complete the first few levels. Not only that, but after you complete those levels, a new merchant is unlocked that has even better stuff that you can't afford, and it's insinuated that you'll find better equipment if you just hunt around for it.
Annoying, right?
Well, you can't buy anything from demon's souls that's particularly useful. Also, your experience is your currency.
Wait, what?
Oh, and if you buy something you can't sell it back. Don't want something? Fucking drop it, it'll disappear forever.
Fuck. It's like when you got fed-up with a game and said something like “stupid system” in front of your mom and then walked away. The next day when you decided that you could probably take another crack at it you find that your mom has melted it down to create a new toy made out of roughly the same parts, but definitely incapable of anything ever being played on it again, with a note that said “I heard you were annoyed, I hope this will be more entertaining and educational.” You then cut yourself trying to figure out how to play with it.
The merchant system in Demon's Souls is exactly like that.
Despite the whole bartering system being called on account of extreme difficulty (Aitches actually said, “Then what's the fucking point?” and hasn't played it since) Demon's Souls also brings up all the old fears and nagging thoughts that I had when I was younger. In the beginning I was so bad and constantly dying I had the feeling that the point of the game was to watch a pretty looking character lurch clunkily around in armor, trying to figure out how to raise a gate and then get stabbed repeatedly in the back or be hit once by a blue-eyed demon-knight and die horribly, over and over again.
It turns out there's some old demon thing that.... actually I have no idea what the stories about.
The cut-scenes are beautiful when they're a movie, but once they turn into stills with script underneath them and some horrible olde-englishy girl saying the same lines over and over, I mash that x button harder than overcompensating for a mis-press in a quick-time event.
So, yeah, Demon's Souls is hard and should be classified as a skill based RPG.
You character can take two forms: The Soul Form (half HP but higher damage dealt) and Body Form (all HP but less damage dealt). YOU WILL NEVER BE IN BODY FORM. Seriously. You'll start out in soul-form, get your body back, prance into the next level with a sense that you understand how the game works and then get gang-banged by a bunch of mine-folk. This is a definite if this is your first (and probably last) play-through. We'll call that “option one”. “Option two” is to successfully avoid all the bullshit enemies and fall to your death because you didn't see the fucking pitfall in the death shrouded surroundings. Seriously, you can't see more than a few feet in front of you with the brightness turned all the way up. I got the sense I was controlling some sort of rat in a labyrinth that was filled with famished snakes on multiple occasions. Also, there is no cheese.
Also if you curiously step on a panel you'll be impaled.
Also, death-panels are not marked.
That covers “option two”.
“Option three” is you carefully avoid both things and, assuming you're playing online and not cowering behind a disconnected PS3, receive a message saying “A black phantom is invading your world.” That's a warning that, if your experience is anything like mine, your shit is about to be rocked. You're going to lose all of your experience because some dick wanted to lower his karma by attacking people. Also, he may be trying to get his body back. Good luck on them not being a dick and running away to enlist the help of the surrounding monsters, by which they are not and will never be damaged, but can still kill, making it impossible for you to gain the experience.
My point being that being a black phantom is a dick, and you may just kill yourself in order to avoid them when you're in Body Form.
That's just one angle to the whole online experience though. One of the cooler options is the ability to see where people have died and left a bloodstain for you to activate, hopefully alerting you to some shit-storm that's going to be raining hard and probably result in your instant and violent death. These are incredibly useful for figuring out where traps are, but after you get the sense that the game is constantly trying to fuck you over, you tend to be pretty alert of where traps are, everywhere.
Another cool indirect online feature is you can leave a message for other people to read that include useful things like “Use _____ on the next enemy” and so on. These appear in red writing on other people's screens in some “mystic” scrawl that can be activated. Most of the time, the only thing you're going to read is “OH shit, you just got fucked” as you've inserted yourself into some hopeless situation who's only answer is commiting suicide with steely reserve. Don't get used to these always being full of helpful information. Also, another dick thing you can do is tell people to jump down in the swirling vortex of magic because there's treasure. YOU DEFINITELY WON'T DIE, PROMISE.
You can also see the ghostly images of people doing different things around you, but usually this pans out the same as those bloodstains; them flailing desperately, followed by crumpling to a heap.
The last online interaction you can do is use a blue stone to lay down your sign in the hopes that the people around you have their fucking body. ODDS ARE THEY WON'T. There was one place in the game that I consistently was able to help people in, and that usually involved them waiving, attacking a group of enemies and me getting slung back into my world because the host died.

Awesome.

The cool aspect of this is that if you theoretically complete the boss battle that the current player is working on, you'll be able to revive in your world, and get a ton of experience. Of course, you better use that experience quickly, because a black phantom is breathing down your neck with white hot bloodlust fury.
Overall, it's a great game. I had a ton of fun even though I died more often that I care to recount, each time gripping the controller in a stern manner and leaning forward a bit in concentration. Buyer beware, though, you will lose hours of your life. BECAUSE OF BULLSHIT.
9/10