First Impressions – Demon’s Souls

After opening my mailbox today I found my package from Amazon containing Demon’s Souls for the PS3 lying there! After ripping it open and giggling like a school girl for a few minutes I put the game into my PS3 and played through the tutorial and beat the first major Demon boss.

First off the game has a really weird if not terrible character creator, that only serves to make your character look weirder and weirder. I guess that’s what helmets are for, covering up ugly faces. Also the game has a lot of character classes, but I picked the Knight because he looked the coolest.

After hitting the randomize button 50 times to get a decent-looking character I set off into the game’s tutorial stage, which really didn’t tell me much and was pretty vague. For example it doesn’t tell you how to lay messages for people or how to other peoples rate messages.

Here I would like to comment that the combat feels really solid, and has the right weight to it that an action RPG needs to have. The dodge rolls are pretty weak though and I don’t use them, but the spirit feels right at least. Also for actual fighting your got 2 different types of attack, light attack with the R1 button, or heavy attack with R2. My favorite combo is using my shield to block an enemy attack, then stab them with a heavy attack for massive damage.

I trekked ahead and after slaying many weak enemies I confronted this gigantic evil-looking dude, after yelling my head off  at the sight of the thing it promptly crushed me and killed me in one blow. My pride would’ve been wounded until I realized that it was that silly thing RPG’s do when you’re supposed to die.

I got turned into a spirit form, in spirit form you get half of your HP taken away and can only regain it after defeating a big boss Demon dude.

After some long boring story-telling I entered the 1st dungeon and ran through the level slashing fools up, dodging clever traps (Indiana Jones-esque boulder roll down some stairs at me)and picking up some herbs and stuff. Eventually I decided to head off the beaten path and got raped by this badass Demon Knight dude who was weak to magic, which I didn’t have at that point.

That was the only time I died throughout my entire play session, and overall I didn’t find the game as difficult as people have been telling me. If you take it slowly and use your brain you should be good. Also read the messages people leave on the ground for you, they have a lot of useful information.

After dieing you lose all of the Demon Souls you’ve collected, which are the sole currency in the game, until you go back to where you died and reclaim them. After running through the entire level again I regained my souls and continued on. Eventually I activated the lever to open the door to the Demon boss room.

I didn’t die once during the battle, and defeated the Demon boss. Not to say the boss wasn’t challenging, but I was playing defensively and slowly which helped me stay alive, taking shots at it when I could. After beating it I gained thousands of Demon’s Souls and regained my body, getting my full HP bar back.

So far Demon’s Souls is a fun and enjoyable experience, with a fun combat system and challenging gameplay, I’m looking forward to running through this world again and experiencing its rich atmosphere. I just hope the RPG part of the game deepens a little, as for now it’s pretty shallow I feel in that regard.

At that was the end of my first trip through Demon’s Souls, check back here in a while for a full review of the game.