Demon's Souls

Yes, we know that we didn't post any review in about a month, but we had other things to do, like playing the game I want to talk about: Demon's Souls. Demon's Souls is a very extensive (and so is this review) fantasy action RPG developed by Atlus exclusively for the PS3. It was released in Japan on February 5, 2009; in the U.S on October 7, 2009 and in Europe on June 25, 2010. Atlus is best known for developing the RPG franchise Megami Tensei.

First of all, what have they done with the title of this game? Shouldn't it be Demon Souls or Demons Soul? I know I may be nitpicking here, but still, at first I thought the game would be full of grammar mistakes. Luckily, they didn't make any more noteworthy mistakes in the actual game. It just looks a bit clumsy when it's the first time you see the title.

Long ago...

The people who united the world by the power of souls awakened the Old One with their insatiable desires. The Old One brought with it a thick, colorless fog and hordes of demons: half the world an countless souls were lost.

The ancients sealed the dozing beast inside the Nexus and entrusted six elders with six precious Archstones. One to the king of a small yet diligent land. One to the king of the burrowers underground. One to the wise queen of the great ivory tower. One to the chieftain of lost and ill-fortuned souls. One to the shaman of the tempest-worshiping shadowmen, and the last to the great giants of the Northern Lands.

In the present day, the northern kingdom of Boletaria, ruled by King Allant the twelfth, was abruptly swallowed by a strange, colorless fog. None who dared penetrate the deep fog ever returned, until Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs broke free and told the world of Boletaria's plight.

The Old King Allant aroused the Old One, the great beast below the Nexus, from its eternal slumber, which brought the colorless fog, unleashing terrible demons that hunted man and claimed their souls. Those who lost their souls also lost their minds. The mad attacked the sane, and chaos reigned.

The legend spread quickly. Mighty warriors were drawn to the accursed land, but none have returned. The colorless fog now slowly creeps beyond Boletaria's borders, and humankind faces a slow and steady extinction as the deep fog will eventually swallow all lands near and far.

But Boletaria has one final hope. A lone warrior has braved the baneful fog... has the land found its savior, or have the demons found a new slave?

And that is the storyline people. Confused? I'm too, but RPG's mostly have confusing story lines so I'll just swallow it. The main goal in this game is to defeat all the demons in all the worlds, and in the end you'll have to put the Old One back in its slumber.

After you've chosen your favorite character class (10 classes!) you'll die in the tutorial and after that your soul is send to the Nexus, a safe place where warriors who are fighting the demons can rest. You can also buy spells, miracles, weapons, upgrade weapons, improve your stats and eventually you'll meet other characters that do other stuff for you. The currency in this game are souls, which you obtain by killing enemies and consuming souls you obtain during your quest. In the Nexus you can choose out of five worlds you want to play, each world is divided in levels and at the end of a level you'll fight a demon. If you're able to defeat the demon you'll obtain a demon soul and your life is granted back.

When you're in soul form you don't have your HP at its max, so it almost is essential to be alive. There are four ways to be send back to the land of the living. The first way I've described earlier, kill a demon. The second way is to use a Stone of Ephemeral Eyes which instantly revives you. The third way is to leave a blue soul sign, which you do by using the blue eye stone (can be done infinitely, but only at certain locations in the world). If another player sees you're sign he's able to summon you as blue phantom and if you together kill a demon, he gets further in the game, and you'll be revived, plus you get souls for every kill. The final way is to invade other players' worlds with the black eye stone, and kill the living player as black phantom. If you're able to kill him and all possible guiding blue phantoms you will be revived. But beware, your character's soul tendency will get black, and if you kill a lot of players even the world's tendency is affected.

World Tendency influences difficulty and controls additional events that occur. It is independent from Character Tendency for the most part. World Tendency controls how powerful the enemies are in a given world. In summary: Pure White Tendency enemies are easier to kill, but drop fewer, less valuable items and hold the least number of souls. Healing items are dropped more frequently. Pure Black Tendency enemies are tougher, but drop more valuable items in greater abundance. They hold the largest number of souls. The actions of the player influence World Tendency while in a particular World, but the effect of those actions on World Tendency is only recorded on return to the Nexus. Earning all Trophies is only possible by changing World Tendency.

World Tendency has events which affect a World, Character Tendency has its own risks and rewards and adds special content as well. Character tendency is roughly analogous to an alignment or karma for your character. Your character's tendency is independent of the world tendencies. Similarly it affects the difficulty, and at Pure White or Pure Black, adds some content to the game. Character Tendency carries over to new games.

Yes, even when you're able to complete this game, you can start all over again with even harder enemies in New Game +. The challenge really begins here.

The developers of this game even did a great job with the graphics, although some people expected more gore in the game, which I can understand. But still, the graphics look fine. The sounds also have been done rather well. You often don't hear any soundtracks, except when you're fighting a demon (every demon has its own soundtrack). Another thing I was surprised about are the short loading times for such a large game, 15-30 sec. And you'll only get a loading screen when you travel between a world and the Nexus or when dying (which happens quite more often than traveling between worlds, believe me).

In conclusion I can say that this game is maybe the most valuable game around on PS3 because of the great replay value with New Game +. A single playthrough will take you more of 24 hours to accomplish. There are also a lot of things you can't acquire in your first playthrough so it even has a purpose to play again. Aside from that the game is just great to play, with nice hack and slash gameplay. The thing I also like is that you're able to leave messages to other players like: 'There is treasure ahead', or even random bullshit like: 'this is no time to read messages' is always great to read when you're in a demon battle and you want a hint to kill it. I even wasn't able to tell you about all the content that's in this game, it's so overwhelming. If you're smart, you'll buy this game, it really is worth your money.