Demon's Souls Review

Right, well after so many revisitational posts...its time for something new! :-)

So, yep for a change I thought I would do a new post with NEW content (honest!) and this post is actually one I am quite pleased to bring to this blog as it is based on the one Souls video game I had still yet to play up until now. And that game is of course the one that kicked off the whole Souls franchise, which is Demon's Souls.

Now to play Demon's Souls these days, it isn't as straightforward as the other games in the series as it is a PS3 exclusive game only, so I would either need to get a PS3 (which I don't have) or download the game files or buy a copy of the PS3 disc and run it on a PC based emulator.  This makes it the most difficult and least accessible entry in the Souls series to play, which is unfortunate given it was the one game that started it all off.

Now, I was reluctant to download the game files online as I've seen a bunch of virus warnings on certain websites (could be fakes or hoaxes but didn't want to take the risk!) so I took the safer route of buying the actual PS3 game disc off eBay and running it on the PC emulator called RPSC3. You do of course need a pretty good spec PC to do so but thankfully mine is decent enough and met the requirements and I thankfully managed after some tinkering to get the game running pretty well and have since finished it.

Anyway...with that rather long-winded intro out the way let's take a closer look at this classic game that started off Souls universe and see how it stacks up 11 years on...

And I will say a little about the story below, so the usual warning is coming...

PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD (BUT NOT TOO MANY!)

STORY

So to save time on me typing the story synopsis, here's a decent size snippet of it from Wikipedia

"In ancient times, Boletaria was attacked by a being called the Old One due to the abuse of forbidden Soul Art magic, with the world being almost lost in a magical "Deep Fog" filled with soul-eating demons. The Old One was eventually lulled into slumber, saving Boletaria and populating the damaged world with special humans called Monumentals. In the game's present, Boletaria's ruler King Allant has restored Soul Arts and consequently awoken the Old One and its demon army within the fog. Boletaria is now being consumed by demons, with those humans without souls turning into insane monsters. Players take the role of an adventurer entering the fog engulfing Boletaria. After being killed, the player wakes up in the Nexus and meets a benevolent demon called the Maiden in Black, as well as various other characters.

Now bound to the Nexus until the Old One is returned to slumber, the player travels to five regions of Boletaria, killing the powerful demons controlling those areas and absorbing their souls to increase their power so they can face King Allant".

THOUGHTS

Well, after having played the Dark Souls trilogy that was inspired by this title and given the many thousands of hours I must have poured into those 3 games, I'm happy to say that Demon's Souls is every bit as good and as addictive as those games in itself. And it certainly makes sense that Demon's Souls would be an excellent game given that it started the whole series off and the game is filled with great concepts an ideas, not to mention impressive (albeit dated) visuals and creative, varied environments. Top all of this off also with some very challenging areas, enemies and very satisfying combat then you have a high quality game in Demon's Souls that is well worth looking at.

GAMEPLAY

Now this section will be quite big of course and I will split it as usual like my other game reviews into sub-sections below.

MOVEMENT

Starting with movement, the game follows much the same system as the Souls games that succeed it with a third person perspective view that can be rotated 360 degrees to see the character face on or from behind. The player can also do the usual actions such as attack, run, sprint, walk (of course!) and in addition that was never included in the other Souls games, your character can even climb up ledges! Now, you can't do this all the time but you can do it at certain areas in the game and it makes you wonder just why didn't the game director/creator, Hidetaka Miyazaki bring that mechanic into the sequels?!

CHARACTER CLASSES AND STATS

Next is of course your character classes and stats, which are of course very important and have a big impact on your overall progression throughout the game. Starting with classes, you have 10 different types to choose from that include a warrior, knight, magician (sorcerer in the sequels), priest (cleric in the sequels), hunter and a wanderer and these can be either male or female. These classes will all have their own individual characteristics that are determined by their stats and these can be altered as you progress through the game and this will also grant them usage of different weapons, spells and other items in the game.

As for the stats, similar to the other Souls games you have a set number that are much the same that include vitality, endurance, strength, intelligence, magic and faith. Vitality, endurance and strength are pretty much self-explanatory whereas other stats such as intelligence affect the amount of spells magic spells you can hold and the magic stat determines the power, which increases as you level up that stat itself. Faith is also much the same in that when you level it up you will gain access to more slots and it will boost the strength of offensive miracles or also increase the requirements needed to use these miracles.

There are also some additional stats that would feature in the other Souls game too such as luck, which boosts your item obtainability from fallen enemies as you can increase it. And of course there is dexterity, which is used to handle certain weapons that requirement more refined skill to use such as spears, bows, halberds or katanas.

And before moving on, its worth mentioning of course that these stats are levelled via the NPC known as the Maiden in Black, who appears in the game's main hub, the Nexus, which I will mention in a bit. 

WEAPONS

And this brings us onto weapons and there are plenty of weapons to be found in Demon's Souls just like in the other games in the series and some of these appear in the other Souls games too.

So, similar to the Dark Souls trilogy, you have different classes of weapons such as straight swords, large swords (which are the equivalent of great swords in the sequels) spears, hammers (including clubs I think), bows (including crossbows), katanas, daggers, curved swords (that inflict bleed damage) and axes. And these weapons all have varying requirements when it comes to strength and dexterity although I don't think they require intelligence or faith like some of them do in the Dark Souls trilogy.

There are also a selection of shields in the game too, which you character will use for defence and to block attacks (as you do with a shield!). Again there are different classes of shield such as small, standard and large with a mixture of wood, leather and metal shields with varying degrees of resistance and effectiveness for physical and elemental damage. 

You can still of course use these weapons even if you do meet the requirements for them but it just means, like the DS trilogy you cannot use them effectively until you meet those requirements. However some of these weapons, especially weapons such as large swords, can be used if you meet the dexterity requirement for them and will allow to use them two-handed with most strength weapons proving most effective being held with two hands anyway.

ARMOUR

As for armour there is actually a surprisingly small amount of armour sets in the game with just 18 in total to be found and every class has their own individual set. The armour sets can range from very light for characters such as magicians and hunters to the more heavy sets worn by knights and priests. Again the weight factor of the sets will also impact on your equipment load as you will fat roll (i.e. roll slowly) if you are wearing a heavier and don't have sufficient endurance to wear it. 

COMBAT

As for the combat again it is very similar to the following Souls games in that your character uses a mix of defense and offense when taking down enemies with a weapon and shield. You can also as a caster (mage or priest) use spells to take down enemies at range or use a bow or cross-bow to do the same. The game also introduces the parry and riposte system where you can use your shield deflect an enemy's attack and follow it up with a deadly finishing move and addition to this you can get behind enemies and backstab them.

THE NEXUS

And then we get to what is the game's central hub, which is known as the Nexus and is like Firelink Shrine in the sequels (or Majula in the Dark Souls II) where your character can level up their stats (via the Maiden in Black) talk to other non-playable characters (i.e. NPCs) and purchase items and upgrade weapons. The Nexus also features what appear to be five headstones that allow the player access to different worlds that are the main playable areas of the game but in order to access them you need to talk a specific NPC (the Monumental) to do so.

NON-PLAYABLE CHARACTERS (NPCs)

Then there are the NPCs, who like in the other Souls games can help your character along the way and offer different things such as the Nexus blacksmith, Ed, who can upgrade your weapons and purchase weapons and other items form. There is also an NPC, which can store items and weapons for you if you become over-burdened with your equipment load and this can happen quite often in the game as you pick up items throughout. Then there are NPCs you can purchase spells or miracles from that you find as you travel through the worlds and you can also trade boss souls with them for additional spells/miracles.

Then of course we have the Maiden in Black, who levels up your character and she also plays a pinnacle role in the end of the game but I won't say much more than that! Plus I cannot forget to mention the one and only Patches, who features in just about EVERY Souls game (bar Dark Souls II that is!). Patches if you don't know is basically a sneaky and untrustworthy merchant, who will screw you over at any given opportunity but can later on sell you stuff that is of good use such as healing items, arrows and rings.  

CHARACTER AND WORLD TENDENCY

Another key aspect of the game is to do with your character and world tendencies.

Starting with character tendency, this affects your character directly based on your choices throughout the game to either help NPC's or kill them or invade online players and kill them. So, essentially you will have either a black or white tendency with the black tendency it reduces your health to 45% and your attack power is increased as an invading black phantom.  White tendency however will increase the player's attack power in Soul form and it will also increase your attack power as a blue phantom (i.e. where you assist other online players to fight bosses).

As for the world tendency, this directly affects the difficulty level of events that take place in the game's different worlds and are specific to that world. So, essentially if you stay in human form and keep dying then this will lead toward the world tendency turning black, which in turn strengthen enemies HP and attack power but they will end up dropping more souls when they die and you will have a better chance at obtaining rare items. Your character's maximum HP will reduce in Soul form also, which can makes thing very challenging indeed! There will also be more black phantoms of standard enemies that appear at different areas in that world as well to challenge you.

As for white world tendency, enemies will have less HP and attack power and will reduce the chance of dropping rare items but they should still provide health items when they are killed. Your attack power is also increased when in soul form and can go up in increments based on how white the world becomes.

SOUL AND BODY FORM

And this brings me onto the two different forms your player can take, which are soul and body form as both these forms have different effects on gameplay.

Starting with soul form, the player will have reduced health but they can as previously mentioned have more attack power in this form based on your world tendency as it will be more if it is white and less if black. They will also appear more ethereal than they would in body form and one benefit also is that they make no noise when they move around. When you are in body form however you will have full health but you will do less damage than in soul form and you will also make audible noise when you move.

ARCHSTONES 

Another key aspect of the game are the archstones, which your character will use to travel between the different worlds and the Nexus and there are often more than one to be found in each world. Each world will begin with one each but as you defeat bosses, more will appear as you progress and they can allow you to checkpoint your progress in the worlds as you make your way through them. You can also use what is known as shards of archstone, that are the equivalent of your homeward bone from Dark Souls that can return you to the Nexus at any time.  

ENEMIES AND BOSSES

Moving onto the enemies there are is plenty of variety here with no shortage for your character to fight against that range from your low level scrubs that are the dreglings up to red eye knights. There are also some really annoying enemies called fat officials, who are appear in a couple of the worlds who armed with whips or axes and can throw fireballs at you. Plus there are also plenty of monster/creature type enemies such as giant bugs, rockworms, gargoyles, man centipedes, storm beasts and of course your typical rabid dogs!

There are also hybrid-human enemies such as mind flayers, who are essentially octopus headed magicians that can deal out some pretty nasty damage, shadow lurkers, who are like ghostly spirits that deal out magic damage and of course we have armoured skeletons, who can really mess you up with their falchions (i.e. a curved sword that deal heavy bleed damage!). So there are certainly plenty of bad guys here to keep you on your toes and will test you throughout the game.

There are also another type of enemy in the game that are NPC invaders, who appear as red phantoms and they can interrupt your progress at different times in the game. The invaders will vary in challenge as you progress and their presence can also be affected by the world tendency of the game as they will often appear more if you have a black world tendency than white.

Boss wise there are plenty on display here and they of course will allow the player to regain their body form if they were in soul form when the boss is defeated. The bosses will of course drop a high number of souls as well as their own soul, which can be traded with the magician or priest NPC's for special spells/miracles. Bosses also come in different types such as humans and monsters and there is plenty of variety on display here in the game in that regard.

The bosses definitely vary in their challenge level and I have to say that most of them are pretty easy in comparison to the rest of the bosses found in the Dark Souls trilogy but some of them are pretty interesting in their design all the same.

RINGS 

Then there are the rings in the game, which just like in the other Souls games, grant the character different abilities and resistances and they can equip two at a time. There are 26 rings in total in the game and as a few examples there is the Cling Ring, which can be used to boost your HP when you are in soul form and the regenerator ring, which slowly recovers your health over time. Other rings also include the Thief Ring, which enables you to become harder for enemies to detect, Ring of Magical Sharpness, which boosts your magic power but also lowers your magic defense and the last one I will mention is The Ring of Herculean Strength, which boosts your equipment load similar to Havel's Ring in the sequels.

WEAPON UPGRADE STONES

Next we have the stones used for upgrading weapons and there is a big variety of stones to be found throughout the game that all have different properties and can add various effects to weapons such as infuse them with fire, magic, bleed or poison.

There are too many to mention here to go through them all but the two primary types of stone you will use in the game are hardstone and sharpstone and they can fully upgrade your weapons from its base level up to +10. These types of stone however are the basic upgrade paths and will not add any additional elemental effects to weapons.

Starting with hardstone, this is used to upgrade weapons such as straight swords, axes, hammers, bows and even shields and they come in different varities that are shards, large shards, chunks and pure stone (maxes out the weapon to +10). So, basically hardstone would be used to mainly upgrade strength based weapons as opposed to dex based ones. As for sharpstone, this is used to upgrade weapons such as spears, curved swords, katanas, daggers and rapiers, which are all pretty much dexterity based weapons. Again similar to hardstone, sharpstone comes in varieties of shard, large shards, chunks and pure stone.   

CONSUMABLE SOULS AND ITEMS

And last of all for the gameplay section, I will mention a bit about the consumable items in the game as well as souls that you can collect throughout. To start with the consumable souls, these are often found on dead bodies and will range in the number of souls they give you from as little as 200 up to 10,000 souls. These are very handy for boosting your souls count when you might be low and want to purchase items or even uprgade weapons or level up.

As for the consumable items there are plenty also to be found in the game and primary ones are for healing your health but some can also be used to cure status ailments such as poison or toxicity. The healing items vary from the smallest, which are Crescent Moon Grass alway up to New Moon Grass, which completely restores your health. As for the status healing items there are three usable ones here that are Widow Lotus that cures the plague, Royal Lotus, which cures poison and Soldier Lotus that cures bleeding.

Other consumable featured also help restore your magic power and there are two such items that can do this that are Fresh Spice and Old Spice. Fresh Spice will only recover a small amount of your magic power whereas Old Space will recover a larger amount of it. These items can also be purchased from different NPC merchants in the game.

GRAPHICS

Finally moving onto the game's graphics, well its safe to say that Demon's Souls graphics are easily the most dated looking of all the Souls games, especially given as it was initially released on the PS3. However even by PS3 standards, the graphics are still a bit behind the times but I guess this might have come down to the budget limitations available to the developers at the time.

Regardless of this though, Demon's Souls graphics still show an impressive variety in their area design with five different worlds to explore they all look quite different from each other and there is no doubt that the visual design of the Nexus itself is truly stunning. In fact when you look at Dark Souls III, its safe to say that its re-design of Firelink Shrine was easily based on the Nexus from Demon's Souls but the Nexus in my opinion is way cooler looking.

Character model wise however there is no doubt that the game is very dated looking as these characters would pass off more for a PS2 game than a PS3 one as they look OK but very much dated by today's standards and especially even the PS3's top tier titles of the time. The same can also be said for the enemies as they do look pretty rough and undefined and not a patch on the later games visual designs in that regard.

All the same, the graphics for Demon's Souls are far from bad and they show plenty of variety and creativity in their design but its safe to say that graphically it is the weakest of the Souls games.

MUSIC

As for the music, the game features a pretty good score by Shunsuke Kida and it is largely very orchestral and features choral sections also very much like the Souls scores that would follow it but I would still say that the Dark Souls trilogy's music scores were far more memorable than this one here. Regardless of that though there are still some good themes here that include the themes for the bosses, Armour Spider, Tower Knight and my favourite is Maiden Astraea, which is quite different from the rest of score and is easily the real standout of the soundtrack.

FLAWS

So finally moving onto the flaws section. Does Demon's Souls have any? Yep it does but I have to be fair to some of these flaws I will mention as this was the first game in the Souls series, so its only fair to expect that they would need to iron any of the issues featured here in future games.

Anyway with that said, I would begin by saying that one thing that is a bit annoying and a drawback is to do with the equipment load system, which is inferior to the Souls trilogy's. And the reason why is because you can only carry so many items before you get the annoying message "you cannot carry this item. It would overburden you" comes up! Now, the way to deal with this would be either drop the item to pick up the other one, or head back to the Nexus deposit your items with the NPC that stores them for you, Stockpile Thomas.

However, if you there are several items you want to hold onto while you are in one of the worlds and you need to sacrifice some, it can be a real pain in the ass when this overburdening message comes up. Suffice to say, I was glad to see that this issue was successfully rectified in the sequels as all you had to do was equip or unequip items without having to drop them off at a specific NPC but here it is a bit of a nuisance.

Another issue is to do with the World Tendency concept, which if you are new to the game then its something that might trip you up as it did in my first playthrough (which the save file got corrupted for, so I had to start a 2nd playthrough to finish the game!). And the main problem with this is if you stay in body form and keep dying, the world tendency will turn black as mentioned in my WT section and the enemies become stronger and harder to kill and your max health is reduced in soul form. So, this is a real pain in the asss if you get stuck in such as situation and it can also force to deal with an extra bunch of in-game invaders who also have more health! So, in short you really need to take care when you play this game at first and if in doubt, just stay in soul form to avoid this trap.

Something else that bugged me in the game was to do with how the Maiden in Black keeps changing her position every time you travel back to the Nexus and given it is a pretty big place, its easy to lose track of where she is! I mean one minute she's at the bottom of the stairs and the next she is right up the top where you can't see here without running around or she might sitting down in a crouched pose! So, I wish they would have limited the amount of positions she can move to when you travel back to the Nexus to make your life just that bit easier to find her and level up.

Another problem found was to do with the lack of archstones at times in the game, which can cause much frustration in certain areas, particularly in the Tower of Latria world, as I had found myself having to do a massive runback from the second archstone to try and progress through the swamp area and up the top. However, when I did this one time, I was killed enroute to the top by a gargoyle and another time I carelessly jumped off a lift taking me up, which meant I had to start all over again! So, the lack of archstones really does force you to be extra careful in these areas, which can also be pretty challenging.

Then there is of course the issue relating to the sheer amount of upgrade stones throughout the game as there simply too many to choose from and they are quite confusing in what some of them even do! In fact I think overall there are 16 different types of stone to be found in the game, which is too many if you have ask me and serve more to confuse the player than help them.

Another thing that might also be a big problem in the game is that there is no forgiveness system like there is in the Dark Souls games, where you can be pardoned for your sins if your accidentally attack an NPC either in the Nexus or in the worlds. And if you make this mistake that means you are pretty much scuppered with dealing with that NPC, so if you e.g. unwittingly attack the magician, Freke, then he will refuse to deal with you and will try and kill you instead, leaving you no choice but to kill him. So, if you are a mage then that's you pretty much screwed!

I also noticed in the game that there are certain weapons that cannot be upgraded, which I found a bit annoying such as the crossbows and certain shields like the leather ones. Now I can sort of see the point of not necessarily wanting to upgrade a leather shield but a crossbow?! I mean come on! A crossbow can be a pretty essential weapon in the Souls series and to not allow it to be upgraded is frankly ridiculous! So, I'm not sure what the game director, Hidetaka Miyazaki's logic was here when he made these upgrade decisions in this game.  

And last of all is to do with the game's difficulty level, which it has to be said is pretty uneven overall and the main reason for this is because the standard enemies and areas tend provide the game's main challenge but most of the game's bosses are far too easy. Now, the Dark Souls trilogy and even Bloodborne are well noted for their share of difficult boss fights but here in Demon's Souls, you could potentially beat most of the bosses in just one try!

So, for me its actually one of the more disappointing aspects of the game as some of the boss designs are pretty cool but its a real letdown when you end up beating them so easily. I mean the final boss of the game, King Allant, who is essentially a large grub is ridiculously easy as you can even just finish him off with magic spells without even going anywhere near him! However, its safe to say that apart from Soul of Cinder of Dark Souls III and of course Isshin from Sekiro, FromSoft's end game bosses have been pretty easy. However with King Allant here, you are a given a boss that is WAY too easy and I couldn't see anyone really struggle with him at all!

Anyway that's it for the flaws.

SUM UP

So to finally sum up, Demon's Souls is an excellent and very enjoyable role play game that kicked off a great series of games and I was quite pleased to find out this game is just as addictive as its successors. And the game's visual design, combat, enemy variety are all great and like the other Souls games, it has great replayability thanks to being able to create different classes of character with a whole host of weapons and spells available to them.

The game's visuals are of course pretty dated looking by today's standards and yes there are still some issues with its gameplay that would thankfully be ironed out in the following Souls games. However that aside, it was great to finally get a chance to play this game and to complete my Souls experience. Let's hope one day that the game will get a much deserved remaster but until then, I'm quite happy to relive it again using the emulator version and its certainly worth revisting.

Right, so that is FINALLY the end of the review and I will be back sometime hopefully before the month is finished.

Till then its bye for now!