Fear not, old school gamers! To those of you who yearn for the days, seemingly long-past, when you would come home from school and flagellate yourselves with a punishing round of Ghosts ‘n Goblins, those of you who stayed up late trying to kill Air Man in Mega Man 2, and those, like me, who have fallen to your deaths in Castlevania, cursing the words “Medusa Head” more times than is reasonable, I offer a new form of video game masochism.
While not in this game, his spirit lives on.
Atlus has brought us a game from the company who brought us Armored Core. From Software’s Demon’s Souls remembers a time when games were hard.
Your character will die in this game. He or she will probably die a great many times. Some of those deaths will be from cheap, nearly-unavoidable kills—like the aforementioned Medusa Heads from Castlevania—and others will be from difficult fights against opponents who seem, at the time, to be unvanquishable. You will likely be frustrated by your loss of progress and Souls (the game’s currency which doubles as experience points) that accompanies each death. Amid the frustration, though, you will find, if you’re anything like me, a sense of supreme satisfaction in the challenge that Demon’s Souls presents.
The entire game is thematically centered on death, dying, and insanity. The fictional country it takes place in, Boletaria, is already mostly dead. Your character ventures there from another unnamed land in an attempt to cleanse Boletaria of a vile fog that drives men mad and of the demons behind this fog. Your first heroic act is to die. Immediately upon dying, you are pulled into the Nexus, a place where the dead are suspended and kept from rest. It is explained that you are bound to the Nexus and will remain as a phantom until your work is done. Some of the NPCs you meet in the Nexus and in the connected worlds are already dead and will tell you so. Others will die if you don’t save them, though for reasons unknown, they don’t end up in the Nexus unless you do save them. Maybe only non-natives get trapped in the cycle of death.
It’s a horror game, right?
There are five game worlds, outside of the Nexus, in which to roam around and get killed by horrifying creatures. One of my favorites—The Tower of Latria—is a dark, frightening prison tower. It reminds me why someone going medieval on my ass is an undesirable thing: medieval things are brutal and horrifying, and so is the Tower of Latria. If you like Silent Hill, you will probably like this place. There’s also probably something wrong with you as both Silent Hill and the Tower of Latria are awful places that nobody should like (I’m admittedly a big fan of both). The environment crawls with terror and just-out-of-sight evils. Your way is lit by flickering, insufficient flames that create ghastly shadows over stonework that is virtually perspiring with tension, and by your own little crystal that provides enough light to see yourself and a few scant feet around you, leaving the horrible residents of the tower out of your sight until they’re too close. It’s a marvelous example of how to properly convey a horror atmosphere in video games.
Another favorite, The Storm Island is a beautiful and forlorn place once populated by a civilization now long-dead. Inline with the death theme, its people were fascinated by death and now inhabit the island as ghosts and living skeletons. What the Tower of Latria has in horror atmosphere, the Island has in a lonely one. It’s far better lit, and the landscape is just awesome. Scattered with ruins and perched precariously on the top of a craggy precipice, the entry area is breathtaking. As you progress through the levels, you descend to the rocky coastline of the island, and you can see where you came from if you look up. In addition to being a lot of fun to play, it’s really quite something to look at.
While enjoying the view, be careful not to get murdered.
The other levels include a vast, sprawling medieval castle, a wretched swamp that actually made me feel unclean when I played there, and a claustrophobic network of subterranean caverns. Regardless of which level you play on, you will be in for a very scenic experience and a thematically-unified treat.
The music is very ambient and stays in the background until boss fights, where it flares up appropriately. Bad music can break an otherwise good game for me (see the DS sequel to Yoshi’s Island), but Demon’s Souls offers no problems in that regard. The music is mostly forgettable, but it is well-integrated and does not distract. The sounds effects are fairly good. I especially like the metallic rustle of the armor my character wore. I have little to offer on the matter of graphics, myself still being satisfied with Super Metroid’s visuals, but it certainly looks like a current generation PS3 game. While it may not be a standard-setter, the graphics in Demon’s Souls are certainly up to snuff, and exceed my humble expectations.
But it’s an RPG
Your character has an array of familiar stats like Strength and Intelligence. With enough Souls, you can buy upgrades one at a time to any of the points of your choosing. Don’t let this fool you into thinking that you can grind your way to victory, however. The emphasis in Demon’s Souls, like in the games I mentioned earlier, is on player skill, not on character skill. Sure, having a huge pool of Vitality and Endurance means you’ll last longer, but that doesn’t mean success if you’re still dying in a handful of hits. The stat upgrades are more like a buffer against carelessness. Like armor replacements in Ghosts ‘n Goblins, you’ll be able to take an additional hit, but that alone won’t earn you the key you need to open the door to the next agonizing level. Rather, being a good player earns you that key, and the armor is there in case you screwed up on the Red Arremer demon before you got to the boss. Except in this case, it’s a Red Eyed Knight instead of a Red Arremer, but it’s no less difficult.
In addition, enemies become steadily stronger as you progress, so that buffer diminishes as you proceed, and the difficulty remains nearly intact from start to finish. I’ve read accounts of players finishing the game with the minimum possible stats, and while I doubt I could do such a thing, it’s heartening to know that the leveling system is there to support rather than constrain the player. Finally, there is a wealth of equipment that you can choose from, most of which requires relevant ability scores to be at a certain level before the gear in question can be used effectively. Whatever gear you equip also shows up on your character model in-game, so you can tell what another player is using (though weapon upgrades are less apparent), and you can customize your appearance. There is little to speak of in terms of actual roleplaying, though, as your character does not speak. Some choices you make in-game do affect the world, though, so think twice before killing residents of the hub world.
Fighting on bridges
The platforming in Demon’s Souls is simple and fairly limited, yet remains important for two reasons. First, you can die easily from falling. A good dexterity score can reduce falling damage, but there are plenty of points in the game where no amount of such reduction can save you. Second, terrain factors heavily into combat. Fighting on a narrow catwalk over a bottomless pit (see above point) changes the dynamic of combat drastically, and even a difference as small as having a slight height advantage on a staircase can mean the difference between killing an invading Black Phantom and starting the level over with a big 0 on your Souls counter. The platforming element makes the combat fun and involving. There are also some sections where you can take a shortcut through a level if you’re willing to take a risk and jump onto a narrow platform below. This takes me back to the NES days and is one of my favorite parts of the game. How many games made since 1999 offer shortcuts? Not many that I have played. The fact that few of these shortcuts are without peril maintains the game’s theme of death and danger.
The combat is the meat of Demon’s Souls. Much of the time you spend playing this game will be related in some way to killing something or getting killed. Rather than the traditional face-button format, this game uses the shoulder buttons to control attacks, spells, and defenses. R1 performs a normal attack while R2 delivers a staggering power attack, and each consumes an appropriate amount of your stamina gauge (the size and replenishment-speed of which depend on your Endurance stat, so yes, I suppose stats matter). L1 operates your off-hand instrument, be it a shield, wand, or another weapon, and L2 is the sub-function of that instrument. Shield blocks, like attacks, consume stamina, in amounts dependent on the strength of your opponent’s attacks. Managing stamina between defense and offense provides a depth to the combat that many games lack, and that depth is added to by the platforming and distance mechanics. Keeping out of reach is a game in itself that adds a layer of strategy to the fighting. Each weapon has its own purpose and style, and finding the weapons that suit your character is easy and fun. My character was heavily dependent on a shield, so I found myself gravitating toward spears, which can be used while the shield is up, though I initially intended to use a longsword as my primary weapon. Enemies are weaker or stronger against certain forms of attacks, so every character will end up using at least a few different weapons throughout the game. In sum, the combat in Demon’s Souls is solid, varied, and enjoyable, but also difficult.
One of many ways to get your head handed to you.
If combat is the meat in Demon’s Souls, then exploration is the bread. The levels are well-designed, sporting multiple paths, variability in structure, and a different theme of design for each world. There are traps, treasures, environmental hazards, and even some places that are good for nothing more than getting a good view of the landscape. The exploration was rewarding and fun, and that means a lot to me in a game.
Finally, I’ll address unique game mechanics. The cycle of death and reformation, in gameplay terms, means that you can die as often as you like, and the only consequences are the loss of the Souls that you accumulated and your immediate teleportation—in the form a ghostly dispersal and wickedly cool reforming—to the Arch Stone (entry teleporter) at the beginning of the level. The loss of Souls can be fixed by returning to the point where you died and touching your bloodstain, but they are lost permanently if you die again on the way there. There are some other gameplay elements related to this, such as Body Form and Soul Form, World Tendency and Character Tendency, and Blue and Black Phantoms. The only bits among these that bear discussion are World Tendency and the Phantoms.
World Tendency affects some things like how much damage you deal and take and how likely you find items, but more importantly, it determines whether or not you have access to certain events involving NPCs, locations, and unique weapons and such. This is the one aspect of the game that I did not like, and for one reason only: once you miss one of these events, you’re pretty much screwed until you start a new game (which fortunately includes New Game +, where you take your experienced character and start again in a harder version of the game). While it’s possible to backtrack and find these events, it’s more likely that your World Tendency will have reset and there is no way to raise it again once you have defeated all the bosses. Events requiring dark World Tendency are more forgiving.
Phantoms are one of this game’s coolest features. When in Body Form, you can summon another player to help you in the form of a Blue Phantom or be invaded and attacked by one in the form of a Black Phantom. Near the end of the game, I was invaded and killed by a Black Phantom as I tried to progress through a very difficult area. I was frustrated at first, but then the other player performed an in-game emote. His celebratory cheer made it seem like he thought his victory was hard-earned and worth something, and that made me smile, even as I fought my way back to my death spot to recollect my Souls.
A Blue Phantom
The other unique and very worthwhile features of Demon’s Souls are the messages and bloodstains. This will be your primary way of interacting with other players. You can read and leave messages for other players concerning such matters as directions, warnings, greetings, or even attempts to bait them into getting killed. There is a wealth of terms and phrases you can choose from, so it’s not hard to find a message to convey what you want to say. The message pops up where you’re standing, too, so context is easy to establish. Bloodstains are simply places where other players have died, and a recording of their actions leading up to their deaths. What you don’t see is the instrument of their death. Rather than watching an enemy knight impale their corpse and fling it, you will simply watch their ghostly form rise up into the air, limp and lifeless, before flying across the room. It’s amazing how entertaining, foreboding, or informative such deaths can be.
Demon’s Souls is a wonderful example of a video game and proves that even in today’s market of forced-tutorials, hand-holding, and hours of cutscenes, there is a place for a game that focuses on good, solid, challenging gameplay but doesn’t skimp on the aesthetics.
Demon’s Souls was the winner of several 2009 Game of the Year awards, and is available for PlayStation 3 in both standard
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