Demon's Souls - or How I've Turned In To A School Kid Again

Ah Demon's Souls.
AH DEMON'S SOULS.

I write this at work. I'm 10 hours in to a 13 hour shift, and I really should be elsewhere. Instead, I'm thinking about Demon's Souls, I'm reading about it (on twitter, on blogs, on forums, on amazon) and thinking about my next steps in it, and also about my victory last night against the demon at the end of The Tower of Latria.

Demon's Souls is a game that you really shouldn't play at all. It's one of those games that just about ruins everything that's come before it, everything that's come with it, and probably everything that'll come after it.

I really do want to play Brutal Legend, and the "amazing" Uncharted 2, but both disks are sat there begging to be ran, but the Demon's Souls disk is firmly planted in my PS3's drive. And it's not going anywhere for a very, very long time.

I generally don't like RPGs, I get bored if a game is longer than, say, 15 hours. I also get very annoyed if a game forces me to replay sections I've played before. I also get really, REALLY annoyed at games that are too difficult, perhaps unfair.
Demon's Souls is all the above, multiplied by 10. It is, without exaggeration, probably THE most difficult game you'll ever play.

Yet, I'm 40 hours in to my first play through - I've finished one and a half worlds (there's five worlds in total), and I have no intention of stopping. I want to play it, then replay it (on the more difficult NG+ mode!). If that isn't testament to how great this game is, then nothing is.

Demon's Souls pits you, the lone hero, in Boletaria - a world overrun by bad souls, and demons. You'll have to hack and slash and magic your way through the worlds, each broken down into smaller areas. Essentially you're dungeon crawling.

But oh what dungeons! Each and every step you take in a level, you hold your breath. Is there a trap? Is there an enemy that can kill me with one blow? Am I going to fall down a cleverly hidden pit? And trust me, you will. You will fall, break, burn, paralyse, and die more than you've ever done before.

Die, and you lose all the souls you carried. Souls? They're one of the genius designs of this game - each enemy you kill gives you souls. Souls are the ONE and ONLY currency in the game. You use souls for EVERYTHING! To buy weapons, to repair your kit, to buy health, to learn spells, to upgrade your weapons, to upgrade your stats. EVERYTHING.
So, to die and lose them all is one kick in the teeth.

You'll resurrect, in soul form. As if the game wasn't hard enough, soul form makes you more vulnerable - your health bar is halved. The enemies, on the other hand, also all resurrect BUT they're intact. Health and all.You can't just switch off and on again. The game turns the popular autosave in to your worst enemy. It autosaves feverishly every time you do ANYTHING, hence stopping you from any kind of cheating. Use some health? saved. Use an arrow? saved. Kill
an enemy? saved. Die and lose all your souls? saved. You can't just load an autosave either, you can only load once when you start, and that's it. To make things a bit worse? you can't even pause the game!

Make it back to where you died, and you'll find a blood stain - and you can pick up your fallen souls! Great, if you can make it back without dying - die en route, and your souls have gone forever. Vanished. Just like that.

And there's design genius again. Each time you die and lose souls, you'll want to go back. You'll want to get to where you fell, and pick up your souls. And slowly, ever so slowly, you start knowing where the traps are, where the enemies hide and ambush, and where the ledges are narrow. You'll gradually navigate these areas like a professional - timing your leaps and attacks with pinpoint precision, until you get to your blood stain. There, you'll learn what killed you, and how to avoid it.

And that's why death in Demon's Souls isn't losing. Dying is part of playing the game, it must be accepted. Embraced even. By killing you repeatedly, the game teaches you how to navigate each level with ease, how to kill the monsters that inhabit it, and how to navigate its dungeons. It also teaches you patience, and observation, and not to just button mash in an attempt to kill everything you see. You have to learn the level, learn the enemy, understand their attacks, and strike them down.

It also teaches you to explore. Tempting messages, shining items far away, things that make you want to venture further. And venture you will, and more often than not you'll end up falling for another trap. But the more you explore, the more you die, and the more you learn; and, eventually, you'll discover a shortcut. Some lever or door or bridge that opens up and suddenly you've cut the dungeon in half, making it possible to run from start to end in a matter of minutes, having spent hours upon hours navigating it, and dying in it.

Design genius strikes again. Unlocking a shortcut is associated with one of those rare gaming feelings - that of utter and total bliss. And sense of pride and achievement. YOU DID IT! Now, the level that once killed you over and over again is nothing but an oyster in your hand, you can navigate it blind folded. You'll know every nook and cranny, every enemy, every trap, and every short cut.

But, this is after all Demon's Souls. Simplicity isn't in it's nature. At the end of each level is a demon. Demon's tend to be very, VERY powerful. They are large, have massive attacks, and lots of health. The sensation of elation after finding a
shortcut is rapidly replaced with a sensation of dread: "OH SHIT, I'm about to fight the Demon". And they'll kill you. Many times.

And again, dying teaches you. You'll resurrect, you'll get to the end of the level within minutes (and feel really happy doing so), and you'll also go straight back and spend your souls before you get killed and lose them all again. Sooner or
later, you'll learn what the Demon's weakness is, and how to conquer it.

Conquer it in soul form, and you regain your body back, regaining all your health and power. And, trust me, there is NOTHING to compare to the feeling of beating a Knight that's ten times your height and power! Watching him fall to his death, die and leave behind his Soul is one of those moments where you get up and pump your fist in the air, jump up and down, and smile for the rest of the day!

Killing a demon not only gives you your body back, it gives you plenty of souls to spend on whatever you like. And spend you will, there's no "soul bank" as such, you either carry souls (and lose them when you die), or spend them on stuff. It also, crucially, places an all-important check point in the world, letting you start from there each time you want to play.

You'll venture on, more powerful than before, better armor and better weapons and better stats, and a human body at last. And, again, another raw emotion comes with this process. Starting new, undiscovered territory, especially in human form, is probably the most fearful thing you'll experience in any game.
The sense of paranoia is huge - you don't know what's lurking behind each corner, what traps there are, and what the game's going to do to take away your precious body (and health and souls!). You'll literally inch down narrow corridors, jumping at every sound or light flicker, shield up in guard and sweat poring down your face. Despite all this, you'll still die, and lose your body, a sensation of overwhelming sadness and defeat as you realise that all the hard work beating the Demon earlier has just gone down the drain.

Again, this will spur you on and on, making you learn about the level that made you feel so sad. And again, eventually, you'll conquer it and make it your own and show off to yourself how you can run through it with hardly a scratch.

But there's still more. The game is constantly online. As you play, you'll see ghostly apparitions of other players, playing the same level as you. Sometimes, you're comforted by their presence. Other times, you'll be so paranoid you'll start
slashing at them when they suddenly appear.

You'll also see phantom blood stains. Other players dying is useful to you as well, just like your death is useful to them. Activate a phantom blood stain, and you'll see the last living moments of another player. If they fell for a nasty trap just ahead, or if they got killed by a nasty enemy around the corner, the phantom serves to warn you that there's something harmful up ahead.
Again, death is turned in to a means to teach you - even the death of other players.

You can leave messages too. Premade messages (like: Beware drop ahead) can be left, and rated, by you and other players. Most messages are useful, but the game has a habit of dropping fake messages, as well as other players do, so you'll learn to be just as paranoid about the messages as everything else.
In another example of design genius, if you leave a helpful message that someone rates positively, you'll instantly receive a full health bar. This once saved me from a horrible death, and I was grinning like a maniac for ages!

Better still, as a human you can summon other players that are in soul form. These will help you in your quest, and more importantly help you take down the demon. You'll learn from them, and, when you inevitably become a soul yourself, you'll help other human players conquer the game. Beat the demon, and you're resurrected. Something that proves invaluable.

Last, and perhaps the worst, later on in the game you gain the ability to "invade" other players' worlds. As a soul, you can use a special stone that turns you into a black soul and finds a human player to invade. That player will receive a chilling
"you have been invaded" message, and a very tense game of cat and mouse emerges, with the invader hunting down the invaded human. Kill them, and you get their souls, and get your body back. Die, and you lose a soul (experience) level.

This adds to the tension of being human. As you traverse unknown territory, you are constantly worried that the dreaded "you have been invaded" message appears. The first time it happened to me I panicked and fell down a trap, dying ungracefully and cursing the minute I bought the game. The next time though, I was well prepared and managed to strike down the invader with brute force.

And, I must confess, I've killed a human or two as an invader. It's a funny sensation, that of betrayal, of treachery, of pity, on this other player who, just like you, has struggled to resurrect and is now trying to keep his human form, only for another player to strike him down.

SO - you've probably guessed it by now, but I am in love with Demon's Souls. It is a game of pure genius, one that throws away the rule book, and presents you with it's unforgiving, dark, imaginative world. A game that's more retro than new, yet fresher than you'll ever experience.

Not since the old 8 bit days has a game caused so much frustration yet generated such sensations of dread, despair, elation, and strength! Conquering a level, finding it's shortcuts and secrets, finding a hidden weapon, reaching the Demon and then striking them down, all of these things remind me of a time when games had to be finished in one sitting. Where you'd learn a level inside out, die at the next one, and eventually learn that one, until you manage to finish the game in one, glorious, sitting. And feel proud about it.

You won't finish Demon Souls in one sitting. In fact, 80 hour first playthroughs are common.

You will, however, experience the same feelings you had as an 8 year-old, sat in front a TV, in both awe and anticipation of what's coming next, hoping that this time round you'll get a little bit further than before. You will hear others brag about their achievements, you will brag to others about your achievements, discuss with them how to get passed tricky scenarios, learn tricks and tips from anywhere you can get it, and hear fabled stories of the strong and the bold, some who conquer the difficult levels easily, those that strike down a Demon without a scratch, and those that find items and secrets beyond anyone else's reach. It, essentially, turns you in to a school kid again, in the school yard, exchanging tales about your favourite game.

And, if this last paragraph has made you misty eyed with memories of years, games, and feelings so far away, then Demon's Souls is for you.

Get it, it's worth buying a PS3 for.