Demon Souls Review

Demon Souls is an often over looked gem usually being over shadowed by its little brother and progeny through a spiritual successor of Dark Souls. While it was well received in its inception, it’s odd this is less talked about just because most people played Dark Souls first. Now, having never played that game, this is a fully unbiased review from somebody who hasn’t been spoiled to what most claim to be the superior title.
Demon Souls was released in February 2009, exclusively to the PS3, and was developed by From Software and published/ localized by my boys at Atlus. It’s very weird to think Persona 4, a PS2 title and one of Atlus’s best, was released only a few months prior to this but that’s hardly relevant. What we have is a freedom induced action role playing title. How hard is this game? So hard it killed my original PS3!
The first thing a player is tasked to do is create their character and it’s all framed around a very depth set of choices and sliders for so many minute details that it’s actually very impressive just how many things a player can mess with to get their appearance just right. I have a tendency in this sort of games to create a cutish lady versus the macho guy character for one of a few reasons. Firstly, girls kicking ass is excellent and underutilized in games. When there’s a choice for memorable female in gaming that the player can control it’s far more satisfying and unique in my opinion. Secondly, the aesthetic persona of a player’s vision of their ideal character is vastly important here as the option is presented. As I said the customization here is super in depth for appearance and you’ll get a standard choice for classes which is sort of a basic mould for what kind of build of a character you want to play. I chose knight because I like a heavy built character that can take a lot of damage and swings hard.
Once a character has been completed and you proceed into the only open level, you’ll begin to notice the token difficulty most players seem to build this game up with, it’s almost legendary for it at this point. The enemies are smart but also predictable so once you get their patterns down it’s no problem getting through them but prior to then it’s likely you’ll die many times figuring out how and where their placed. This is ok though as this entire game is cleverly built around this in not only level design but enemy placement as well. See, the pacing of the first level sets you up for most things you’ll encounter later, a hole where you fall and don’t get your souls back, enemies that progressively get smarter, unlocking areas through exploration and switches, firebombs, dragons, tough areas you can go to… or not! You, the player is in control… after the first boss.
It’ll take a while to make it through the first part of level 1 for beginners more than likely but all of that will teach you the mechanics of exploration and combat, attacking, blocking, watching for ins and outs to strike, rolling, parrying, etc. There’s a lot of nuances and variations to this formula. If you’re a conservative player like me you’ll grind this game’s currency, the souls, to death and upgrade weapons only to find once you’ve made it through the challenging first level that the boss is a joke. Use fire, he goes down insanely easily. After this though, the game opens up entirely.
At this point you are introduced to a blind witch who can level any skill you’d like with varying affects to your build as a player and this is the brilliance and lastabilty to these games as no two runs will ever be the same due to the myriad of choices the player is given. Say you just want to level up endurance so that you can hit/run harder/longer or you just want to diversify into all skill sets, the choice is up to you! Hell, you don’t even have to level up if you don’t want to, people have beaten the game level 1 with a basic slave shield! That’s the beauty here. No restrictions. You go to whichever level you feel like and do it at your own pace. There are very few gates, other than the player’s skill, to stop someone from reaching the end of any of the 5 levels as soon as they want to.
There is some challenge in the fact that souls are currency and experience to level up with all at once but it works rather well. It’s a bit devious that you lose all your souls every time you die but if you’re truly good enough it’s a simple as getting back to the point where you lost them to retrieve them. This incentivizes the mastering of enemies and levels so that the same mistakes are not repeated and the player gets better because of it. This is a clever piece of design.
Gushing about all of the details of the levels and world and how fucking beautiful and excellent some of the visuals are would be useless as the atmosphere here is beyond explanation. Simply put it’s very dark, moody, but in more of a somber way that doesn’t depress and rather captivates the player. The sound design is also really excellent from the voice work to the swinging of swords to telegraph an attack is all fine. It just feels like a very engrossing world by the design and characters that each serve a unique purpose and you can save or kill along your journey. Some can craft you spells or even special weapons out of the boss souls as well or they just sell you stuff. Also while there is a story and characterization, it’s all completely optional as well which is a great touch.
There’s very few complaints I have but a few would be the inability to sell stuff for souls as I ended up with some much junk stockpiled given I stuck with the same shield and axe the whole way and just powered those up so all the extra stuff I found around was useless to me even though I kept it all. The other thing is the bosses were generally not even that challenging. While unique, they certainly went down pretty easy with the exception of the last guy in level 1, the False King who has an ability that actually steals you’re last level which is utterly bullshit. While the levels each felt very unique from one another, the design of the ones with narrow paths often pissed me off as they served to make me fall due to targeting the enemy and I see that as a weak challenge.
Also, the amount of grinding for a conservative player like me was pretty insane. Now I’m down for a good grind and generally it was not too tedious for me as the game is fun enough to grind in but I’m guessing I spent around 30 of my 80 hour adventure grinding so it’s notable, though I was never bored which is vastly important. The other stupid thing was the Soul/Human forms. Okay so I lose a ¼ (a ½ without the cling ring) of my health and can’t have that just because I died once in a game designed around dying and retrying? It’s an arbitrary but unnecessary challenge and I know it can be circumvented via beating a boss or using a stone but what’s the point? It’s just a worthless mechanic.
Anyways there’s probably a lot I missed given it’s 9:30 in the morning but the bottom line is this is a great depthy, lengthy, balanced, and excellent adventure. It’s fun to talk about with other’s who know it like my friend John because of all the little subtleties that make it so excellent and discuss the different playing styles and parts of the game. The complaints are minor ones and don’t detract much from the experience much.
In the end this is about a 9/10 game. I enjoyed it a lot, so much so that I found myself constantly wanting to play it, thinking up strategies to get past the next part or a boss I was stuck on. It’s an engrossing experience I would highly recommend.