Demon’s Souls… When hearing “difficult game” lots of people might think about the kind of difficulty that I call “fake difficulty”. Surprising deaths. requirements to know exactly what and where to do, which is only possible after countless attempts, impossibility to complete the game on the first go… Demon’s Souls is not like that. You can see any dangerous moments coming. Yet, it’s still difficult. But in the most enjoyable sense of the word.
Some might get spooked after hearing that this game is difficult, but wait – first listen to how it actually works. If you’re patient, you will avoid lots of deaths, if you’re careful, you won’t get backstabbed, if you’re smart you won’t try to take on an entire horde of enemies or some gigantic monster that’s completely out of your way. You will still die occasionally, mind you. But far less, as long as you’re careful, as long as you know your strengths and weaknesses, as long as you can react to things that give you enough warning. Besides, dying in this game is part of playing.
One of the key mechanics of Demon’s Souls is gathering souls. Souls of defeated enemies, souls that were hidden in soul stones near dear bodies. And those souls work both as currency and attribute points for leveling up. Unlike a lot of traditional aRPGs, you don’t have any traditional “skills” apart from your player skills. You can upgrade your stats and it helps a lot. But you don’t have to either, since theoretically it is possible to complete the game without leveling up once. There are no classes in a traditional sense either – the ones selected as you start the game work more as prebuilt and slightly leveled up characters with specific equipment, but you can recreate these “classes” yourself from level one. Even equipment here is less of the thing that’s constantly upgraded – it works more like specialized tools to use for specific ways of playing the game. There’s no “loot” and you don’t get new weapons or magic rings too often, and all of them are also pretty specialized. And what happens when you die is that – you just get reborn again as a phantom and all the enemies on the level are reborn again. But all the things that have been done on the level remain done. And when running to grab your bloodstain (which contains all the souls that you drop as you die) you might actually get even more souls, learn more about the level or enemies, rethink your approach to some of the challenges.
And what’s even more unique – the bloostain isn’t just your dead body like you’d find in Diablo. This game has one of the most innovative ideas I’ve seen in games in years – Online Play. As long as your console is connected to the internet, your game is online. You see faint phantoms of other people playing the game and appear as one for them. Every bloostain you find or leave contains the last moments of the player who died becoming a warning for others and a bit of a hint. You can also leave a glowing message on the floor that will contain a hint, or just some vague text, for all else to see. Though, some tend to leave jokes instead. Also, every player has an option to either summon other people for help, or get “invaded” by black phantoms – other players who forcefully enter your game with the sole goal of killing the host of the game. This is one of the most incredibly ideas I’ve seen in games and I’m genuinely surprised why are we not seeing more games that mix singleplayer and multiplayer in such an amazing way (apart from The Crossing that got cancelled a few years ago). I’m sure we will see more of this in the near future, because this is just too cool.
But despite the fact that most of the game is really well designed, made up of puzzle pieces that slot beautifully, requiring different approach, yet always feeling fair and fun, some of its parts are of lesser quality. There are moments that essentially just kill or damage the player with little to no warning. There is an opening spell you can get very early on that works just like Hurt in Arcanum – it’s far more useful than anything else in the game to not cheese some fights with it. And there’s a swampy area with constantly respawning enemies that is just obnoxious to go through. All of which makes this “fair challenge” game feel less well put together, less thought out. But don’t ruin the overall experience.
Demon’s Souls is a unique game and I doubt that we will soon see anything even remotely similar to it (at least from other developers). It’s something that anyone who likes playing games not just to chill should try. It’s grim, it’s hard, it’s exciting, it’s stylish, it’s amazing. Prepare to spend a lot of time with it, though.