Demon's Souls

Aside from your untimely death being a part of the excellent storyline (which if you are good enough you can prolong for a short period of time whilst becoming a tad richer in the process), you will find that this game is very unforgiving of any (and I do mean ANY) mistake, and so before long you will be pushing up daisy's like there's no tomorrow. Don't let this put you off though, as if you are able to learn by your mistakes I can guarantee that with a little dogged determination you will progress slowly through the game, and before long will be pulling off moves that will leave you feeling like the greatest Adventurer that has ever lived!

With this in mind, I urge you all NOT to be put off by the supposed difficulty of this game, as this is IMHO probably the finest RPG that has ever been written and is without a shadow of a doubt an absolute must for every PS3 owner out there.

One final point of note, to get the most out of this game you really do need to play it on-line (logged onto a PSN account), as this little gem brings on-line gaming to an all new level.

This game blew me away. First off, this game is not for the casual gamer. This game will punish you over and over for every small mistake, and the punishment can be overly harsh. Take a wrong step -- dead. Not see an enemy -- dead. Advance haphazardly through the levels -- dead. Many enemies are strong enough to finish you in 2-3 blows. This difficulty can make the game extremely frustrating, and gloriously rewarding.

The visuals are ambiance of the levels are fantastic. All of the worlds have a dark/foreboding presence to them, which is only increased by the slow/cautious approach that you must take the first time playing through the game.

The aspect that really sets the game apart, however, is the ability to team up/compete against other players playing through the very same worlds. At a certain point, you receive the ability to summon other players into your game or be summoned by other players into their game. This function is brilliant and loads of fun to use. Again, given the difficulty level, I often found myself hesitant to advance in certain sections until I found another player (or two) to summon. You can have up to two allies while playing. There are advantages both to being summoned and to summoning, so this mutually beneficial relationship works out great. In addition to helping other player in a co-op fashion, players can also leave helpful hints for each other. These messages can be read by all players on the Demon's Souls server. They disappear if no one recommends them, but linger around if other players recommend the messages.

In addition to summoning, a player can also invade another player's world, hunting the player down, immune from enemies, to combat and hopefully slay the opposing player. My heart sunk numerous times as I was fighting for my life as the words "Player XXXXXXXXXXXXX has invaded your world" flashed across the bottom of my screen. In a game where the difficulty level is through the roof, this bit of knowledge was rarely welcome (unless I knew I had the upper hand).

Overall, Demon's Souls is an extremely good, dark, and captivating RPG, but it's made fantastic by the continual online interactivity between players.

I didn't quite let go of my skepticism about Demon's Souls especially knowing that it has gotten the Game of The Year Award of Gamespot, the website that ringed my bell the most times in recent years. That's the first time I got my copy of Demon's Souls. The fact is, this game is intentionally made for obsessive people, that one can easily dump half a day into the game-playing.

Trying to compare Demon's Souls greatness with other big titles is meaningless and effective-less. The charisma of the game almost entirely comes from the fact that it's uncompromising at all. When you finished the game for the first time and have a brief look-back at the levels you've passed, you will realize they are actually not as massive as they once looked and felt. That is to say, on your first tour to every level, you will probably die every first time at every next corner. In order to defeat one particular level, I've printed the walk-through provided by IGN on papers, and had to follow them almost religiously. I have been already wondering if the game designers meant to make a 100-hour training that will improve your perception, cognitive reflection, etc. It's that different. The other games rarely round up to this level of involvement for any gamers.

After beating Demon's Souls for the first time, although there are still literally tons to do in the 2nd, 3rd...playthrough, I chose however to let go of it. With every help you can get from others and managing to push 120% of attention and intelligence into it, you can also beat it. And, it's also a proof about a Chinese proverb, "No task is impossible because somebody will try to accomplish it."

Great game, style, gameplay, with original mechanics, everything is at a good level. But the game is not player-friendly, and I'm not talking about its complexity in terms of the walkthrough itself, it's difficult in that it doesn't inform you in any way how something works here, where to find the object, what it does, how and why.

You need to learn everything yourself along the way, by trial and error, as well as with completion of the bosses, enemies and levels. If you don't look for info on the Internet, then just to understand HOW you can kill the boss, you have to spend a lot of time by trials and errors.

For this reason, I dropped game walkthrough, it is not interesting to play by the guides, and it's a big waste of my time to find out, it's not worth it, and in the end it won't bring so much pleasure.

A meticulous masterpiece of infuriating struggle to free the world from demons that started the souls legacy. If you're familiar with the concept, you know what the game is about. Still Demon's Souls, just like any other souls games, looks very different in its' own way. The combat system is smooth, the world is huge enough and has a lot to offer to explore with plenty of bosses. The graphics despite of the age are still stunning. This is the third game that justifies the purchase of older Playstation, in addition to PS4. So if you're a Dark Souls fan hesitating whether you will like the souls' predecessor, compared to later games, go ahead and buy it. This game was so much ahead of its' time it's still fresh.