Demon’s Souls is a Japanese RPG released on the PS3. It wasn’t published in Europe, so I had to import it from the US. The PS3 being zone-free is really awesome.

The game is about a Deep Fog, an Old One and Souls. Basically, a king made a deal so his kingdom would flourish; but soon after a demon, the Old One, appeared and covered the kingdom with a Deep Fog, in which demons thrive and devour humans’ souls. Humans without a soul become insane and violent. Many adventurers tried to solve the mysteries of the Deep Fog but none have returned. The Player Character (PC) is one of those; s/he breaks through the Fog and tries to figure out what’s going on.

The game is really oppressing. It’s dark and silent. You have to mostly rely on sounds to not be ambushed. Or you can use the online feature of “messages” and “blood stains”. These are left (voluntarily for the former, by dying for the latter) by other players. You can even see them at times as white ghosts. They appear as red ghosts if you inspect a blood stain, which allows you to see how they died. They can also appear as blue or orange ghosts when they enter “your” world. More on that later.

The game is divided into 5 worlds (themselves divided in a number of parts) which you can complete in any order, except for the first part of the first world, which you have to complete first, both to unlock the other ones and to unlock the NPCs that give you levels and spells. All of this happens in the Nexus, the “hub”.

For now, I’ve only visited two worlds for now: the Boletarian Palace and the Stonefang Tunnel. My character, Josua, is a Wanderer, one of the many classes you can choose at the beginning. Note that those only matter for your starting stats & equipment; the way you build your character afterwards is totally up to you. For example, a Wanderer isn’t supposed to have Magic (they have low Magic & Intelligence stats) but I leveled up mine so he can learn some spells.

The gameplay is really immersive, really feeling like you are doing the battles. You can equip stuff in both hands; whether you make that Sword & Shield, two Swords, Shield & Crossbow, whatever. Left hand is linked to L1 & L2; right hand to R1 and R2. With a sword in the right hand, R1 will trigger a small, quick attack, while R2 will trigger a rather powerful one. You can of course make combos, whether by pressing R1 R1 R1 or by alternating R1 and R2; for example starting with a powerful attack and chaining two quick ones. If you have a shield in your left hand, holding L1 will keep your shield up, protecting you; pressing L2 will bash with it, which can be used to parry, countering the enemy attack if used with a perfect timing, which allows you to quickly counterattack with R1.

However, you are heavily limited by a Stamina bar, which depletes with every action you make (or nearly), be it attack, evade move or blocking hits with your shield. It fills back automatically, quicker with less equipment and while not having your shield up. Yes, there’s also a weight factor.

Equipment is really important. It can make the difference between survival and death, really. Speaking of which, you can’t really die in Demon’s Souls. The PC has two forms: Body & Soul. You go Body to Soul when dying in Body form. The reverse needs you to either kill a big Demon or an invading player. Being in Soul form makes you do more damage but you also have less HP (50% less unless with some ring equipped, with makes that 25%). Frankly, not sure about the benefits of the Body form. When dying, you lose all the Souls you collected (which are used as a currency to level up, learn new spells, buy new equipment); but you can get them back if you find your bloodstain, near where you died. If you die again before doing so, all your souls are definitely lost.

I skipped a lot of stuff about the game; I’m not really an expert in any way, just began playing it. I can say that it has a very immersive ambiance, a solid gameplay and that it can be really hard if you don’t have the good strategy; one example is in the Stonefang Tunnel, where enemies are vulnerable to pierce attacks and magic but resistant to fire and most other physical attacks. My PC had no magic and dealt slash attacks…

Anyway, I really like that game. More on my actual playthrough later =)

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