I had heard a lot of things about DS going in, particularly regarding its harsh difficulty and rough edges. After spending most of my weekend with it I have to say that there is something special going on here. Make no mistake; this game is broken and bad in almost every conventional way, but it does a few basic things in refreshing ways that kept me coming back for more.
Structurally the game revolves around a whole bunch of boss fights with fairly short levels in between. I mean short only in actual length to travel, given that you’ll be extremely cautious and die a lot these short segments end up taking hours. You can also tackle most bosses in any order leaving a lot of the sequence up to the player. I ended up changing my route a few times in an attempt to find a boss that I could tackle.
The truly interesting thing about the game is that uses really simple mechanics but makes you apply them in very rigorous ways or face the consequences. DS uses it’s difficulty as a tool to train you to play smart, you literally cannot play this game passively. As far as RPGs go this is so refreshing and has me hoping to see a fully polished version of the ideas this game brings in the near future.
My favorite part about that game is when you collect like 15000 souls and then die, but on your way back to collect your lost souls you die again (ya know, because all the enemies are back) making your new bloodstain worth like 600. That game makes me want to murder.
Last night I had a 30k corpse that I didn’t even go after because I died down a no return path with a guy I can’t beat impeding progress. It’s one of the few areas of the game that I would argue is broken simply because you can’t go back. It kinda fits in though so I wasn’t too upset.
Oh also 4-1 for farming (the easy skeletons) will help a ton. Get like 2k in a couple minutes.
A good thing to do is get the miracle that lets you return to the nexus, that thing is wonderful for farming souls.
Also, 4-2 has a grim reaper right at the beginning that is easy cannon fodder for a decent bow and will net you over 2K souls in less than 30 seconds. Good farming spot.
It’s one of those games that is janky as hell but i’ll always get that urge to go back to… I’ll probably pick it up when it drops to like $20, but who knows if I’ll ever finish it.
Demon’s Souls is stern but fair with its rules with the only thing that really infuriating me was the way the lock-on camera would randomly target the totally wrong creature allowing my face to get horribly violated by approaching monstrosity while my character suddenly found a shiny lizard to be the only thing of massive importance in the vicinity. Then you got fighting on stairs. Of course I mentioned all of this in my review of the game, still a great game because it demands so much out of you and doesn’t give you one inch without you earning it.