Demon's Souls

[MobsterOO7]

This is a thread about Demon's Souls. I haven't played the game yet, but I've come across a blockbuster gift card and I will be renting it to check it out this weekend. Has anybody here played this game yet?

[Paradigm Shifter]

There is currently no UK or EU release date.

Which has me sad, as I'm interested in this too! :D

[01Boxer]

The reviews are very positive but apparently the game is very hard. You can expect to die very often.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Ah, so it's like Baroque, then. (That game was nasty when it came to difficulty level...)

[MobsterOO7]

The reviews are very positive but apparently the game is very hard. You can expect to die very often.

That's why I'm renting it first. From what I can tell so far, it's very hard but still doable. I can't wait.

[Downtown1]

Bought this game been playing it since the weekend.. it's really a lot of fun.

[MobsterOO7]

Well, since Blockbuster fails epically and didn't have the game I just bought it. It took me an entire evening just to beat the tutorial and the first chapter. But it was fun the whole time. The game rewards smart players, and isn't as punishing as it seems at first. Yes, you will die. Several. Hundred. Times.

But unlike a lot of games, you are given the chance to keep the souls you gathered during your previous life. As long as you can get to the spot you died in you get it all back.

[StingingVelvet]

I guess hope for a PC port is pretty small.

I hate when PC genre games don't appear on PC! Arg.

[01Boxer]

I have never seen a game that is so fun and frustrating at the same time. My magician was breezing through the first level until he ran out of mana. Then he got repeatedly killed until i decided to try another class. My priest lasted longer but until i finish the first level, i can't level up the character.

[The_cranky_hermit]

I got this game yesterday, somewhat inexpensively. I'm still stuck on the first non-tutorial level.

Maybe I don't get it, but so far I'm not really impressed. The game's combat heavy, and the combat mechanics are solid, but slow paced, and the majority of enemies have given me no problems at all. My technique is stay just out of lunge range, wait for the enemy to lunge and miss, then step in and lunge myself while he recovers. But the fighting just isn't that much fun.

So, the combat is simple, but repetitive and quickly becomes tedious. So why haven't I finished the first level yet? It's got a bunch of impossible to predict deathtraps in it. Similar to I Wanna Be the Guy, but without any of the imagination or humor. And while I Wanna Be the Guy has checkpoints aplenty - bosses aside I don't think I ever lost more than a minute of gameplay from dying - I haven't even seen ONE checkpoint in this game yet. I play for twenty minutes, then I approach a doorway filled with wooden kegs (identical to ones I had smashed previously) and then suddenly the kegs blow up in my face. Return to beginning. I play for another twenty minutes, reclaim my souls, and slowly approach the kegs, and jump back just as soon as I'm in conflagration range. They blow up, I live. Ten minutes later, I'm fighting enemies on a wall, and then a boulder hits me from behind, knocking me to the ground. Ten more boulders follow, rolling right over me. I get pissed off, turn the PS3 off, and eat some lunch.

[Fraggle42]

Sorry to tell you, but get used to dying.

It took me almost 7hrs to finish the first level and that was with someone helping me who had finished that level. 2 months on i have only killed 3 more bosss. this game is very unforgiving.

The game only seems to save in the nexus. On the plus side any door/shortcut you open stays open even if all the mosters come back (except boss monsters after you kill them).

Having said that I am still enjoying playing this game. Its nice to have an adventure game thats as hard as some of the ones i use to play on my C64 as a kid, instead of being lead though a million checkpoints safe in the knowledge that if i die i'm only going to back about 2 steps cause i just passed a checkpoint. It brings back a real consequence for death.

[The_cranky_hermit]

I don't mind dying. I don't even mind dying a lot. I do mind having to replay half an hour of game because of some boulder trap coming out of nowhere and instakilling me.

If a game is going to kill me a lot, it should either make the deaths avoidable through skill (like Ninja Gaiden Black) or it should minimize how much game I have to replay (like I Wanna Be the Guy).

[MobsterOO7]

Honestly cranky what you're experiencing is to be expected, in my opinion it gets better though. Once you are beat the first level and are allowed to level up your character the game gets much more forgiving. It's been a while since I've played that level but I'll try to cover two of your specific gripes.

Barrels that explode:
Thinking back, I don't think there are any barrels that don't explode. Anyhoo the exploding variety have red bands on them; and they only explode when damaged with the fire element. If I'm imagining the correct place, those barrels exploded because there was some slave demons on the other side of the door that mindlessly swung at you with their turpentine soaked weapons and hit the barrels instead. They don't always do this, it only happened to me once.

Boulders:
This trap will bite you in the ass if you approach the area from the wrong direction. If you approach from the downhill side a slave demon will release the barrels to kill you. If you approach from the uphill side you can activate the trap yourself and it kills all the demons in the walkway.

Fraggle42:
The game saves literally all the time. Whenever you do absolutely anything except move around it will save. Kill an enemy? Save. Re-arrange inventory? Save. Drop/Pick up item? Save. But the game does not save your progress in the level for when you die, but it will return you roughly to the same position if you quit the game or turn off the PS3 mid-level.

[Timobkg]

I don't mind dying. I don't even mind dying a lot. I do mind having to replay half an hour of game because of some boulder trap coming out of nowhere and instakilling me.

It's funny, because I felt exactly the same way. You said, word for word, what I was complaining about after playing DS. I started as a soldier, got to a fork, went right, got insta-killed by a red eye knight. Back to the fork, went left, killed by a blue eye knight. I didn't know the difference, so I kept going right, and kept dying to the red eye knight until I gave up. Then I read online that I'm not supposed to fight the red eye knight yet, and he's much harder than the blue one. Also, I should re-roll as a Royal instead. "F this!" I said.

Then the weird thing happened, I got drawn back to the game. It was a feeling of, "Ugh, I hate this stupid game, but I'll be damned if I let the game beat me!" So I re-rolled, beat the level, even beat the stupid red eye knight, and kept going until the next wrong path of a fork. ;) After beating the first demon, and leveling up, the game did get easier. Surprisingly, the game also got more fun. It's a fun gained from fear for your life, like a horror game but without the scares. In other games, I see a dragon, and think "Ok, this'll be a tough fight." In DS, I see a dragon and think, "Oh, god, a dragon! AHHHHH!"

If a game is going to kill me a lot, it should either make the deaths avoidable through skill (like Ninja Gaiden Black) or it should minimize how much game I have to replay (like I Wanna Be the Guy).

This game makes the deaths avoidable through knowledge and experience. First time through a level, learning the level, took me 8 hours. I carefully crawled around each corner, carefully fought each monster, carefully died several times. But after those 8 hours, I knew the level inside and out, knew where to go, who to fight, and how. I could run through the level in 30 minutes.

But there is some skill involved too. I sat my friend down, let him try DS. I used a careful, sword and shield, approach. He went with a reckless 2-hand approach, and it worked, it worked really well. He was 1-shotting enemies that I had to duke it out with, and (with some guidance from me) ran through the first level in 3 hours to my 8. DS has a lot of freedom to make different approaches viable. Sword and shield, dual wield, 2-hand, magic, archery, etc. That said, it's also a game which benefits strongly from reading the wiki for it. There's a lot of stuff that isn't made clear, or is hard to figure out on your own. You can even do things that can seriously hurt your game, like missing a ring in the first level that increases your soul form health by 40%.

[MobsterOO7]

Then the weird thing happened, I got drawn back to the game. It was a feeling of, "Ugh, I hate this stupid game, but I'll be damned if I let the game beat me!" So I re-rolled, beat the level, even beat the stupid red eye knight, and kept going until the next wrong path of a fork. ;) After beating the first demon, and leveling up, the game did get easier. Surprisingly, the game also got more fun. It's a fun gained from fear for your life, like a horror game but without the scares. In other games, I see a dragon, and think "Ok, this'll be a tough fight." In DS, I see a dragon and think, "Oh, god, a dragon! AHHHHH!"

Quoted for truth. This is one of the best things about this game.

This game makes the deaths avoidable through knowledge and experience. First time through a level, learning the level, took me 8 hours. I carefully crawled around each corner, carefully fought each monster, carefully died several times. But after those 8 hours, I knew the level inside and out, knew where to go, who to fight, and how. I could run through the level in 30 minutes.

What I really love about this game is that death is built into the lore. It's not like most games where it goes unsaid that "you died, but lets go back and pretend that you didn't". In Demon's Souls it is specifically stated at the death screen something like this: "You Died. But the Nexus binds you to this world forever."

[The_cranky_hermit]

I started as a soldier, got to a fork, went right, got insta-killed by a red eye knight. Back to the fork, went left, killed by a blue eye knight.

I had no trouble with the blue eye knights at all. Just the red eye knight and the invisible deathtraps.

This game makes the deaths avoidable through knowledge and experience.

If this "knowledge and experience" comes from dying on every single trap in the game until you've memorized where they all are, then it doesn't make them avoidable at all.

But there is some skill involved too.

That's just the fighting you're talking about. Maybe the red eyed knight can be defeated at the beginning through skill, but everything else that killed me, can't be survived just by skill.

[01Boxer]

Most of the traps were accompanied by warnings left by other players. I found that aspect of the game quite useful and original.