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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  Gaming  |  But is it Fun?  |  Topic: Demon's Souls - From Software - PS3 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Demon's Souls - From Software - PS3  (Read 26406 times)
schild
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on: March 18, 2009, 11:28:59 AM

Submitted by Nonentity.

To say that From Software has made another quirky game is a bit like saying that sometimes, dogs look so darn silly. It's a pretty obvious statement, but it still feels like a statement that does need to be made.

The quirk is toned down quite a bit for Demon's Souls, and I can recommend this game to anyone who has any kind of interest in Action RPGs. To get the obvious out of the way first, this is absolutely a fun game.

I'm not a person who commonly imports games, but upon hearing that the Chinese version of this game also includes full English support for the entire game, I had to pick it up. It really couldn't be easier - you pop in the game, and it already knows that your system's language is in English, so away it goes.

After receiving the package that looked like it came directly out of the Ming Dynasty, I brought it home and managed to get a couple hours in, through the tutorial, and two or three hours into the first area. This is my initial impressions of what I played.

The first thing you do upon starting the game is to create a character. The closest comparison I can come to is Oblivion - there are some starting template classes, which provide you with a starting base for your statistics and items. There isn't a way to customize a character template, that I've seen.


The amount of sliders here is absolutely a throwback to Oblivion or Everquest 2. Some of the facial dimensions can get pretty extreme, and you end up with the same thing you ran into with those games, where when you started to tweak too much, you end up with something looking pretty terrible, and you end up having to reset it back to default a few times to really find something that actually looks good.

From that point, you're thrown into a tutorial. Sadly, based on your class, they'll usually throw a helmet on you, which makes a lot of that customization useless.

I can make this statement now, and it will sound weird, but the majority of the game feels like a Web 2.0 action RPG.

Basically, though you are playing by yourself, there are constant reminders that other people are playing this game alongside you at all times.


People can inscribe messages on the ground, and you'll see them in your game. It works on a rating system, so at any time, you can rate the last message you've just read. The popular ones that have been rated a lot will stick around for a long time. Suprisingly enough, most of the time these messages are pertinent. It's all based on a common phrases list, so you won't be seeing any Mudkip-related messages.

As an example, I was running around in a tower, down a set of descending stairs, when I ran across a note that said 'Don't attack!' - just as I read that, I saw two zombies running up the stairs. Deciding to follow the instructions, I just stood there and watched them run up. Sure enough, they ran into some barrels with their flaming torches and immolated themselves. When they died, I still got their souls.

That leads me to one of the cooler parts about the game - the environment so far has been very much an actual part of the game. If creatures fall off of cliffs, get hit by rolling blocks, and so on, you still get the souls for their death. Souls are the main currency in the game, and are used to get equipment and stat upgrades.


The main mechanic to keeping players in check is also tied to these souls. If you do manage to die out in the field, you drop all of your souls in a puddle on the ground on your bloodstain, and you are kicked back to the beginning of the level, with everything respawned. From there, you can decide whether to just call it quits and return to the Nexus (the main game hub), or try to hoof it back to your corpse to pick up all of the souls you dropped. Regardless of souls, you'll retain any items you've picked up in the field.

One other fun aspect of this is that you can access other people's bloodstains, and it will replay the last 10 seconds of their life or so in soul form.


The red soul in the screenshot above is the replay of a bloodstain. You don't see any monsters or see exactly how they died, you just see the motions and animations their character went through before death, so sometimes you can get the implications of how they died. Slightly ahead of the red soul is a white soul, who happened to be another player who was running by at the time.

There is also a degree of persistency to the world - when I fought my way down the guard tower and flipped the gate switch, the gate slid open. Every time after that when I went into the map, that door was always open, which saved me some backtracking time.

Ultimately, there are a lot of features I haven't tried yet - I haven't gotten into the co-op, and I haven't done any of the modes where you enter another player's game as a demon and try to kill them.

That being said, I feel the hooks starting to set in - I haven't even begun to scratch the surface, but there are souls to collect, hidden items to find, and an ENORMOUS landmass of stuff to explore. It really does feel like a spiritual successor to King's Field.

BIIF VERDICT: Get the damn thing, it's only like, 10 bucks more expensive than a retail PS3 game if you get it imported.
Hindenburg
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Itto


Reply #1 on: March 18, 2009, 12:28:11 PM

FOUR PARAGRAPHS and FOUR HUNDRED WORDS, DAMNIT!  why so serious?

"Who uses Outlook anyway?  People who get what they deserve, that's who." - Ard.
schild
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Reply #2 on: March 18, 2009, 12:46:35 PM

FOUR PARAGRAPHS and FOUR HUNDRED WORDS, DAMNIT!  why so serious?

Demon's Souls deserves 14 paragraphs and 1400 words.
Nonentity
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Reply #3 on: March 18, 2009, 03:42:08 PM

Fuck trees, I climb buoys, motherfucker.

But that Captain's salami tray was tight, yo. You plump for the roast pork loin, dogg?

[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.
Rendakor
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Reply #4 on: March 18, 2009, 06:38:50 PM

Any chance of this getting a PC or 360 port, like, evar?

"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
Hindenburg
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Itto


Reply #5 on: March 18, 2009, 06:46:01 PM

360, nevar.
PC, given From's track record, nevar.

"Who uses Outlook anyway?  People who get what they deserve, that's who." - Ard.
schild
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Reply #6 on: March 18, 2009, 06:47:03 PM

From Software titles do not get ported to the PC.

Sony owns this property, so the odds of seeing this on the Xbox are between Slim and Never.
Nonentity
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Reply #7 on: March 18, 2009, 07:10:41 PM

With how the whole notes and souls thing works, I really don't see how this would work on the 360 anyways, unless they went for a whole FF11 style 'launcher' thing, where the xbl app just launches its own thing, which seems unlikely.

But that Captain's salami tray was tight, yo. You plump for the roast pork loin, dogg?

[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.
Rendakor
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Reply #8 on: March 18, 2009, 07:18:20 PM

Heartbreak

"i can't be a star citizen. they won't even give me a star green card"
lamaros
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Reply #9 on: March 18, 2009, 10:34:16 PM

tl;dr!
schild
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Reply #10 on: March 18, 2009, 10:40:35 PM

tl;dr!

Thanks for posting! Don't post to hear yourself talk.
apocrypha
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Reply #11 on: March 18, 2009, 11:50:00 PM

I'm now frothing slightly for my package from Hong Kong to arrive.

Interested to find out how many people it takes to rate messages enough to persist. Are we going to be able to have an f13 message trail I wonder?

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.
schild
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Reply #12 on: March 19, 2009, 05:55:49 AM

I'm now frothing slightly for my package from Hong Kong to arrive.

Interested to find out how many people it takes to rate messages enough to persist. Are we going to be able to have an f13 message trail I wonder?

You can't stop here, this is Trap Country!
Nonentity
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Reply #13 on: March 19, 2009, 08:22:11 AM

Killed the first boss, the big slime thing. I ran around it in circles for a good 10 minutes before I felt confident enough to start attacking it - it wasn't all that bad once I just got into the groove of it.

Got resurrected out of soul form, felt pretty good about myself. Bought a weapon, upgraded it a few times, and then trucked it into the second area. Everything was going dandy until I read a note that said 'Watch out for Mass Foes ahead' or something along those lines, so I figured it was a pile of zombies or something - I had gotten used to the pace in which characters moved - fairly slowly. Then, upon rounding the corner, I was attacked by a pack of wolves that moved 3x faster than anything else I had fought so far. I started failing and turned around to book it, and they basically kept pace until they dropped me like a sack of wet cement.

Back to soul form, I guess.

But that Captain's salami tray was tight, yo. You plump for the roast pork loin, dogg?

[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.
FatuousTwat
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Reply #14 on: March 19, 2009, 08:50:41 AM

If I had a PS3, I would probably get this... But I don't, so I won't.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Morfiend
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wants a greif tittle


Reply #15 on: March 19, 2009, 10:04:28 AM

Still waiting for mine to arrive.
Mrbloodworth
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Reply #16 on: March 20, 2009, 06:36:29 AM

So how would one go about "Importing" this game, for us who have never done so.

?

Today's How-To: Scrambling a Thread to the Point of Incoherence in Only One Post with MrBloodworth . - schild
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schild
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Reply #17 on: March 20, 2009, 06:37:42 AM

Ebay, old chap.
Moaner
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Reply #18 on: March 20, 2009, 07:56:12 AM

I've beat 4 bosses now and love the game.  Work keeps getting in the way of more play time.  Grrr.

PSN: Happy_Hedonist, SteamID: Happy Hedonist
LK
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Reply #19 on: March 20, 2009, 09:27:16 AM

Once you get the hang of it, it's really fun, though I still don't understand all the stats and the ramifications of my character development decisions. I'm just raising the stats my Wanderer had a high level in.

The first boss was perhaps the perfect example of a good boss. Once you figure out the trick, it makes you feel all warm inside.

"Then there's the double-barreled shotgun from Doom 2 - no-one within your entire household could be of any doubt that it's been fired because it sounds like God slamming a door on his fingers." - Yahtzee Croshaw
Nonentity
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Reply #20 on: March 20, 2009, 10:39:40 AM

I'm on the second boss on Castle 1-2, the big metal knight dude. After getting through that terribly frustrating bridge stage finally, I was met with a tower of metal rape.

He two shot me. I managed to kill all the archers on the platforms around him, but he just hits like a truck. I want two people in the game so one can attract the attention of him while the other attacks.

But that Captain's salami tray was tight, yo. You plump for the roast pork loin, dogg?

[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.
LK
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Reply #21 on: March 20, 2009, 11:30:55 AM

If I can figure out how to get online, I'm there.

"Then there's the double-barreled shotgun from Doom 2 - no-one within your entire household could be of any doubt that it's been fired because it sounds like God slamming a door on his fingers." - Yahtzee Croshaw
Grand Design
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Reply #22 on: March 21, 2009, 04:52:14 AM

It really does feel like a spiritual successor to King's Field.

That's what I wanted to read.  Christ, now I'm considering doing some shady ebay deal to get this.
LK
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Reply #23 on: March 21, 2009, 06:19:42 AM

It's not shady. The guy's pretty professional.

"Then there's the double-barreled shotgun from Doom 2 - no-one within your entire household could be of any doubt that it's been fired because it sounds like God slamming a door on his fingers." - Yahtzee Croshaw
MrHat
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Out of the frying pan, into the fire.


Reply #24 on: March 25, 2009, 07:50:28 AM

Got resurrected out of soul form, felt pretty good about myself. Bought a weapon, upgraded it a few times, and then trucked it into the second area. Everything was going dandy until I read a note that said 'Watch out for Mass Foes ahead' or something along those lines, so I figured it was a pile of zombies or something - I had gotten used to the pace in which characters moved - fairly slowly. Then, upon rounding the corner, I was attacked by a pack of wolves that moved 3x faster than anything else I had fought so far. I started failing and turned around to book it, and they basically kept pace until they dropped me like a sack of wet cement.

Back to soul form, I guess.

Ya.  I got pretty sad after that too.

schild
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Reply #25 on: April 03, 2009, 01:30:21 AM

FOUR PARAGRAPHS and FOUR HUNDRED WORDS, DAMNIT!  why so serious?

Demon's Souls deserves 14 paragraphs and 1400 words.

Or apparently 40 paragraphs and 3,523 words.
Murgos
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Reply #26 on: January 03, 2011, 06:42:04 AM

Rise from the grave! Cthulu

I just got this over the weekend.  Yes, I know I am late to the party.

It rocks, if you have a PS3 and haven't played it yet it's 29.99 new GO GET IT.

I'm at work, bleary eyed from lack of sleep because I was up all night playing it.  So, nuff said.

"You have all recieved youre last warning. I am in the process of currently tracking all of youre ips and pinging your home adressess. you should not have commencemed a war with me" - Aaron Rayburn
schild
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Reply #27 on: January 04, 2011, 07:22:22 AM

Best console game ever, still.
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Reply #28 on: January 04, 2011, 09:31:56 AM

I totally missed out on the Pure White event.  Is there a mailing list?

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
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Reply #29 on: January 04, 2011, 10:54:52 AM

I totally missed out on the Pure White event.  Is there a mailing list?

Yes and no...  Yes if you signup for the Atlus Faithful mailer they usually send something out when they are going to shift the world.  No in that you get more than just Demons Souls stuff.
stu
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Reply #30 on: January 04, 2011, 11:55:31 AM

Last year, Atlus held a Tendency Event on Valentine's Day, so that should be the next one.

Dear Diary,
Jackpot!
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