Dark souls has been released and in case you didn't know, FromSoftware had another masterpiece before it. With the servers of this game likely to go down in a few months, most people are missing their chance to fully experience this game.
Demon's souls is a third person action RPG set in a fantasy world called Boletaria. At the beginning of the game you create your character (choose your starting class and customise their looks) and then there is a nice little tutorial that helps you work out the controls and introduces you to the game's fighting mechanics. R1 and R2 control your sword and L1 and L2 control your shield. Simple, right? You click R3 to lock on to enemies and tap circle to roll. These are your basic combat techniques. By the end of the tutorial, the player will be feeling rather confident about themselves. This is a fleeting feeling, though as they encounter their first boss, the vanguard who is more than likely to one hit kill the player. This intentional because it introduces the player to the harsh difficulty of the game as well as showing them to a new area called the nexus.
The nexus is a sort of hub world where you can warp to all the different levels in the game. Some levels will be locked out when you start: not to worry, they'll all open up eventually. Also, in the nexus, you can interact with NPC characters who can look after your excess items, repair your weapons, upgrade your stats, teach you spells/miracles and sell you things etc. This is your safe haven to return to, if you like.
Now, I mentioned earlier about the difficulty. Here's the thing: the game isn't really hard, it's just if you make a mistake, you die. During the game you can either be in human form or soul form. In soul form, you lose half of your health, but are slightly stronger. If you die in human form, you revert to soul form and there are 2 ways to return to human form. 1 is to defeat a boss, and the other is to use an item called the stone of ephemeral eyes, which can be found lying around sometimes and there's another special way, but I'll get on to that later.
Throughout the game, if you defeat an enemy, you get a number of souls. Souls are the game's currency and are used to do more or less everything. From upgrading and repairing your weapons, to increasing your own stats. On top of that, if you defeat a boss, you can get a demon's soul which can be used to create unique weapons or spells or be consumed to get a large number of souls. Best to keep these for later, it isn't worth using them for souls.
Now, back to dying, now that I've explained the souls thing, I can give you some bad news... When you die, you lose all the souls you've earned. Now there is a way to get them back. You have to run through the level to the spot where you died and touch the bloodstain you left when you died. This returns your souls, but doesn't bring you back to human form, unfortunately. This is a feature which makes the game even more difficult.
Let me go in to even more depth with the difficulty, here. A weak enemy can kill you in 3 or 4 hits at the beginning of the game if you don't make good use of your shield. This causes you to learn the game's combat system or die. You will find that if you spend some time training your reflexes, you will get much better at blocking and knowing when you can attack.
The options for fighting are unreal. There is a tremendous choice of weapons ranging from spears and daggers to giant poles and longbows. Everything's fantastical though, so no guns, sorry. Now, the weapon upgrade system is excellent. What you do is you bring your weapon to a blacksmith, give him some souls and some stone (which can be collected all over the place) and he'll strengthen your weapon, allowing you to do more damage, great, right? Well there's more. Depending on what stone you give to him, he can strengthen certain properties of the weapon. For example, if you give him a bladestone to upgrade your shortsword, he'll turn it into a sharp shortsword. Now, this gives it new statistical properties. The damage this weapon does will scale with you character's dexterity stat. This can be done for a variety of stats so you can make your weapon strong, no matter which stats you want to specialise in. For example, even if you're a magic user, you can upgrade a sword with moonlightstone so that it's power scales with your magic stat. The options are endless.
Now, I'm wary I may be prattling on, but I haven't even spoken about the online features, yet. So, once you reach a certain point in the game (very early in the game) you can begin to summon other players (up to 2) into your world to help you complete the level. If they do succeed in helping you beat the boss, they are revived to their human body again because they beat a boss. You can only summon players into your game if you are in human form and can only summon players who are in soul form. If you are in soul form, you can also use an item which lets you 'invade' someone else's game and fight with them to the death. If you succeed in killing them, you get revived and return to your human body and get all their souls. If they kill you, they get all your souls.
So, I've gone into as much detail as I feel is physically possible for this game. As I said, the online servers for this game are likely to go down soon and I cannot recommend getting it enough. If you like action games, action RPGs, hack and slash games or are even remotely interested in this game, don't think, just get it. The game isn't too difficult, if you're okay at games, you shouldn't have any trouble. Just remember that you're supposed to die a lot. The reward in defeating the boss is well worth it.
You might not be able to believe this, but Dark Souls is a pretty tricky game on the PlayStation 3.
Dark Souls and its antecedent, Demon's Souls, changed the gaming industry, but some games came away with the wrong lesson.
I’m not at all saying the souls like games are bad. The fans speak to how good the games are, but those games just bore me to tears. It’s just combat combat combat. I know the worlds are interesting and there is lore if you search for it, but there just aren’t enough lulls in all the fighting to enjoy any of the art and lore. Wish there were more story elements.
Are you saying people can't have a preference towards story-driven games?
My wife is, frankly, not very coordinated, and that's a big reason she gravitates towards easier gameplay and more story.
And having many people (gamers) who have many different preferences and opinions is very good for the gaming industry.
You don't have to understand, but you certainly should be thankful and respectful, because diverse interests bring variety. That's a great thing to have for anyone who loves games.
I’ll try to explain. Not everyone wants to only do combat for 50 hours. Lack of combat doesn’t mean boring to some people. I never said I didn’t want there to be combat, but when there is a beautiful intricate open world with lore it would be nice to have the time to explore it and have some down time. In the souls games there is very little in the way of narrative, cutscenes, or exploration other than just finding the next boss. Too much of any one element can be boring. Sorry if that is too big of a concept for you.
"I never said I didn’t want there to be combat, but when there is a beautiful intricate open world with lore it would be nice to have the time to explore it and have some down time. In the souls games there is very little in the way of narrative, cutscenes, or exploration other than just finding the next boss."
These games are quite well known for their lore and narrative, it just isn't spoon fed to you. I really appreciate that the games aren't out to insult your intelligence and trusts you to read item descriptions, explore locations, meet NPCs, and put the pieces together. The macro level narrative is easy enough to understand, but it's when you want that granular understanding of the lore that you need to explore, talk to people, find items, play the DLC, etc etc. It often invites multiple playthroughs. It's one of the unique qualities about these games where you don't have to learn what happened/what's happening in detail, but it's a lot of fun. Reminds me of reading the diary entries in Resident Evil titles.
Yes, there's a ton of combat (who would've thought in a broken world of miserable vagabonds and corrupt abominations, am I right?) but they do a great job of varying it: you can play defensively, aggressively, evasively, from a distance (bows, spells, pyromancies), with various weapons, and any combinations thereof while incorporating secondary weapon effects like elements, toxicity/poison, bleeding effects. The combat isn't stagnant. If you find it boring, you might not be exploring your possibilities very well.
"Too much of any one element can be boring. Sorry if that is too big of a concept for you."
You don't have to be condescending about it. I don't take issue with you not liking these games or finding them boring, but I also think your take is a bit myopic.
I don’t understand why people like Fortnitre ,CoD etc. I enjoy story driven games but love souls games too. We all have different tastes though
That's what people love about it. It's all about the Gameplay, challenge, world building. What more do you want from a game.
I though Gameplay was one of if not the most important aspect of a game? What's your idea of a better souls like game then?
"What's your idea of a better souls like game then?"
World building isn't the only element of story that people care about. That user said, "more story elements (plot, characterization, story growth, etc) and less combat."
It's perfectly healthy for people to express why they don't like From Software games, because a new dev might create a new, amazing game that bridges those dislikes into the genre for something new.
It's also great that you love all the aspects that Souls have brought to the gaming industry. Enjoy what you enjoy and let others do the same.
Some people prefer games where you spend more time watching than playing, and that's okay. Everyone doesn't have to have the same tastes.
Are CBR so desperate to generate clicks to their articles that they've got obviously spam accounts leaving random positive comments? sakshi97978 & arpitachowdhary9797 in case they've been marked as spam by the time you see this comment.
I thought I was the only one that noticed the spammish nature of those accounts. Glad to see I wasn't the only one
The spirit of each game ripples into the next, and Demon’s Souls was the trailblazing catalyst.
'Helped' shape? I mean this is the blueprint that the rest are built on. I often see many claim Dark Souls as the revolutionary entry in the series and responsible for the Soulsborne genre, but when I ask what Dark Souls did that Demon's Souls didn't, the only answer I get is 'it had a connected level design rather than separate levels'. Something that could be in most genres of games. The truth being that Dark Souls is the first one they played or the first one that came to their platform, it has a special place in their heart, and they want to give it more credit than it deserves.
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No, King's field was the blueprint that layed the foundation for future FromSoftware RPGs and Demon's Souls built on it. Environmental storytelling, difficulty, weapon degradation, strategic combat where every move counts and that opressive atmosphere of loneliness were all present in King's Field.
"Environmental storytelling, difficulty, weapon degradation, strategic combat where every move counts and that opressive atmosphere of loneliness were all present in King's Field."
These alone do not make a Souls game or else playing Fallout 3 with a hardcore mode would be a Souls game. To be a Soulsborne, you need to be a 3rd person action RPG. You need the death mechanic where you're gambling your XP (essentially) 'souls\blood echoes\runes' with one chance to win that progress back if you return to where you fail, this risk-reward element is essential. You might also need the co-op mechanic that allows you to be invaded and turned into PvP.
"These alone do not make a Souls game" I didn't say it did. I said that King's Field layed the foundation for future FromSoftware RPGs and that Demon's Souls built on it. The things I mentioned immediately come to mind when I think about the experience I had with Demon's Souls and I would bet that most people that played it think the same as well.
"The things I mentioned immediately come to mind when I think about the experience I had with Demon's Souls"
That's cool but my point and what this article is about is what shaped the 'soulsborne' franchise. Soulsborne is a distinct genre, Demon's Souls did all the heavy lifting for what we call Soulsborne today. King's Field contributes nothing unique to that genre.
Agreed. I personally enjoyed Demon Souls much more then the Dark Souls series for whatever reason, and it definitely served as the blueprint for those games and most of Fromsoft’s other IPs to current date. They found their “style” of game making Demon Souls.
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I remember playing demons souls on ps3 when it was released(not popular yet during that time), I didn't expect to be mind blown. Can't forget the feeling. Without it no DS1, 2, and 3 for sure.
great review i want to start 1 last character before the servers close.
My friend just bought a PS3 today. I brought this game over. We played it for over 9 hours. Glad you like it.
To me it's better than Dark Souls. I'm not saying Dark Souls is a bad game, in fact it's one of the best games I have played this generation, but Demon's Souls is just so fucking amazing, it's one of my favorite games of all time. FromSoftware = amazing.
It seems to me that Dark Souls is like a relationship with an abusive spouse. It is totally obvious that you are getting injured, abused and cheated and the only reason you stay is for that one rare moment where they DON'T abuse you.
Demons souls is for me the better off the 2.