Demon's Souls
"Deep beneath the Nexus, the Old One has awakened. A mighty Demon horde pours into Boletaria, devouring the souls of men. Called upon by a maiden in black, you go forth to lift the curse..."
Platform: Playstation 3
Release: October 6, 2009
Genre: Role-Playing
Developers: From Software
Table of Contents
(AT)Attributes
(BF)Body Form
(CC)Character Classes
(CT)Character Tendency
(CO)Conclusion
(EQ)Equipment
(FO)Forging
(MM)Magic and Miracles
(OV)Overview
(PO)Playing Online
(SF)Soul Form
(SL)Soul Level
(TN)The Nexus
(TW)The World
(WT)World Tendency
(OV)Overview
If you are an RPG player, like rewarding RPGs, a hardcore RPG player, or just want an excellent RPG game to play in general, then Demon's Souls just might be the game for you. But be warned:
This game can be very challenging and you occasionally might find yourself being very annoyed by how many times you die or how challenging an area can be! But do not worry, because
dying in Demon's Souls is normal! The developers actually encourage that you die multiple times to learn from your mistakes!
(CC)Character Classes
There are a total of 10 character classes you can choose from that each have their own individual strengths, weaknesses, equipment, abilities, and attributes. If you do not like the way how your character is, you can make you character into anything else you want. For example, if you don't like being a Barbarian who excels in Strength and HP, you can turn them into a Mage who uses Magic, or better yet, a combination of the two that uses both Magic and Melee and has High Strength and Magic! You are not limited to anything in Demon's Souls, and eventually your character will be maxed out in every single attribute. (even though that takes countless hours of gameplay, probably 100+ hours to be exact)
These are the classes available in Demon's Souls:
Soldier
"A low-class soldier that always stands at the frontline of battlegrounds. This is the standard soldier type with especially high vitality and hard armor. Besides a straight sword, they are equipped with a spear, thus broadening their battle style."
Knight
"A knight class of a rather advanced area of southern Boletaria. This is a character that is equipped with hard metal armor and shield, and thus, excels in defense, but because they have low luck, it will be difficult to obtain items."
Hunter
"A specialist at outdoor activities. Their specialty is making long rang sniping attacks with a long bow. They are also equipped with leather armor and a battle axe, so they are well balanced overall."
Priest
"A soldier of the cloth that believes in the God of this world. This is a tough character that is equipped with chain mail and shield. They can heal themselves with miracles, but their lack of dexterity makes them poor at handling advanced weapons."
Magician
"A commoner that officially learned spells. They have already learned two spells, called "Flame Toss" and "Water Veil". Since their weapon is small and they lack in defense, they don't do too well with hand-to-hand combat."
Wanderer
"A lightly equipped soldier that continues an aimless journey. They have especially high dexterity and are skilled at using a curved sword. They also have high luck, but because their initial equipment is shabby, they are weak to attacks."
Barbarian
"A person from a primitive civilization. Out of all the classes, they have the highest Soul level, vitality, endurance, and strength, but their initial equipment is the worst. They have no armor and their only weapon is a club."
Thief
"They are hired by royalty and engage in dirty jobs. This character is good at sneaky tactics such as surprise attacks, ambushes, and critical attacks after parrying. They have very good luck."
Temple knight
"A special knight that protects the temple of God. They are heavily clad soldiers wearing white armor with the name of the now lost first temple and mow down enemies with halberd. They can heal themselves with miracles as well."
Royalty
"A person of royal descent who has officially learned spells. They use the spell "Soul Arrow." Their Soul level is the worst and begins as 1, but they are the only class that begins equipped with a rare ring."
(AT)Attributes
Demon's Souls is not your traditional RPG. It doe not feature EXP you gain from completing objectives or defeating bosses and opponents and leveling up for gaining a specific amount of EXP, nor do you gain abilities when you level up. But you do however gain "Souls" for either defeating an enemy, a phantom, or a demon in your world or someone's world.
Your souls can then be spent on leveling your attributes that are:
Vitality - Increases your Maximum HP and your Maximum Item Burden.
Intelligence - Increases your Maximum MP and Magic Memory Slots.
Endurance- Increases your Maximum Stamina, Equip Weight, Fire, Poison, and Bleed Resistances.
Strength - Increases your Physical Damage
Dexterity - Increases your Physical Damage and reduces your Fall Damage.
Magic - Increases your Magic Power.
Faith - Increases your Miracle Power, Miracle Memory Slots and Magic Damage Resistance.
Luck - Increases your Item Drop Rate and your Disease Resistance.
(SL)Soul Level
Whenever you put a point into one of your attributes, your Soul Level goes up by one. It doesn't matter if you have a high soul level or not, but it does restrict the people you can play with. The highest Soul Level you can achieve is 712, assuming you have 99 in all of your attributes.
(BF)Body Form
When you are in Body Form, you can see Soul Signs left by other players and call them to your world. If you die in Body Form, you respawn back at the beginning of the map, resetting all of the monsters and traps in Soul Form. Whenever you die, you lose all of your acquired souls, and your bloodstain is left at the spot you were at 10 seconds before you last died. You can touch you bloodstain to gain all of your lost souls back.
(SF)Soul Form
When you are in Soul Form, you do an additional 50% damage, but you lose 50% of your Maximum HP in return, until you gain your lost soul back. You can invade other players worlds or join another player to help them kill the demon in their world for Souls. If you kill a demon in either your world, or another person's world, you gain your body form back.
(EQ)Equipment
Some equipment requires a specific amount of attribute points, and you can use any equipment even if you do not have the required amount of stats to use it but it's effectiveness will be reduced.
Some penalties include:
Slower running with Heavy Armor
Weaker damage with weapons
Less damage blocked with Shields
and more
(PO)Playing Online
When you play online, you will see many things in your world such as Soul Spirits of other players in your area, bloodstains that you can touch to see how a player died, messages that you can read or messages left by you. (They can be helpful because it can forewarn you of dangers or traps) You can leave a message, and other players can rate how useful your message is, but they are only preset messages and you can't type whatever you want and leave a message. You can do emotes which are not all that useful, but are fun to use anyways. Also, you might get invaded by another player while you are trying to kill a Demon in your world. But with the help of another player, you will be able to survive. (Hopefully)
(WT)World Tendency
World Tendency adjusts the difficulty level within a world. Worlds with White Tendency will have enemies with less HP, less damage, and lower Souls and Drop Rate. Darker tendency worlds will be the opposite because they have tougher enemies, higher Drop Rate and more Souls. You can get an idea of the light/dark state of each world by the shade of color of the archstone in the status menu screen. Some in-game events require you to have a specific World or Character Tendency.
(CT)Character Tendency
In addition to the alignment of each world, your character has their own personal tendency. Killing NPCs affects your tendency by either shifting it towards black(evil) or white(good) tendency.
(TN)The Nexus
The Nexus is the main area in the game where you can store your items, repair/buy items and equipment, purchase/learn/re learn Magic and Miracles or just talk to NPCs. You could also kill anyone you want but
killing the anyone will result in them being dead forever until your next playthrough!
(MM)Magic and Miracles
You can learn a variety of Magic and Miracles that all do different effects such as damaging an enemy, healing your HP, making you invisible, and many other effects. The minimum requirement to learning a Magic or Miracle is your Maximum MP (so you can cast the spell) and your Intelligence or Faith Level. Some spells require multiple slots and you can gain more slots for them by having a higher Magic or Miracle level.
(TW)The World
The world is split up between 5 different worlds with five different areas, each having their own unique environments and enemies.
The five worlds are:
Boletarian Palace
Stonefang Tunnel
Tower of Latria
Shrine of Storms
Valley of Defilement
Each area in a world has a Demon boss, and defeating a boss in an area grants you access to the next area and a large boost in Souls. You also obtain the Demon's Soul which you can use to gain a large amount of souls, or for creating weapons and armor.
(FO)Forging
You can create and refine weapons and armor by paying a specific amount of souls, using ore and materials you gathered, or using a Demon's Soul to forge legendary weapons.
(CO)Conclusion
Demon's Souls is one of the best RPG games out there and it is very rewarding and fun to play despite how challenging it can get. With the announcement of Dark Souls (Demon's Souls 2) being released in October this year, Demon's Souls is definitely rising to the top RPGs fast. I hope you consider this game if you are looking for a good RPG, and thank you for reading this review.
"Now go forth, slayer of Demons..."