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An intense, exciting, danger-filled action RPG that offers a truly novel and compelling online component, Demon's Souls is absolutely not to be missed.
Designers in combat-heavy games constantly face the question of whether and how to gate players into fights. Demon's Souls prevents you from plowing through the world by giving you a clear reason to walk cautiously: you will die otherwise. You will die anyway, sometimes this will be painful because of lost souls, sometimes not, but you will die nonetheless.
Aesthetically, Demon's Souls looks wonderful. The world is rich with detail and destructible objects. However, the "distant mountains" are always nearby. At every turn, you are pressing against the edge of the story world, always filled with questions about background, characters, history. Oblivion offered a similarly rich world, but with stacks of books, characters, and back-stories that expanded the story world beyond the physical bounds of the world geometry. Demon's Souls has a substantial world in terms of physical space, but the story world is constrained, choking the world explorer who thirsts for a deeper structure.
The most heart-stopping, intense moment in the game occurs every time the message "You have been invaded by a black phantom" flashes across the screen. Unless you are a seasoned professional, this is a gut-wrenching moment. The exit is blocked, disabled. The Quit Game menu option is disabled. There is no escape. Only two options are available. If a boss remains at the end of the level, you can pass through the fog and fight the boss, evicting the black phantom from your world. The other option is to face the enemy. The black phantom will hunt you down. The AI will not attack the black phantom, and some spells can make the black phantom invisible to you. Sweat beads on your forehead as you wait. You look around with a hint of panic. Nowhere to go; no escape. Maybe you will get the drop on the black phantom, maybe not. In either case, you will fight a desperate, epic battle against this foe. It will be a glorious victory, or end in a humiliating, frustrating defeat. In victory, you will breath a sigh of relief, followed by thrusting your fist into the air, physically releasing the tension that has built up in the last minutes. In defeat, you will hate. You will seethe with black rage. That sonofabitch will make you grind your teeth. You need more power. The Power to defend yourself. The Power to punish. To murder. To avenge. The black phantom took not only your life, but a piece of your self, your pride, your humanity.
And that, That, is what Demon's Souls is about. It is how we choose, little by little, to accept the evil to obtain the power. Each time you want to level up, the NPC even says "...then touch the Demon inside me." You kneel in reverence, with outstretched hand, partaking in the black bargain. To what end it does not matter. Without any spoilers, it is safe to say that you can replay the game while retaining your current level and equipment. But it is harder. No longer will you dominate foes as you had in the last game. Your previous gains are only sufficient to aid in your survival now. That power that you worked for is supplanted by an army of deadlier foes.
Worse still, the black phantoms are waiting. As you grow more powerful, the higher the likelihood that the next invading phantom is a mini-maxed character with near perfect stats and equipment. Unless you did the same, your chances of surviving the encounter shrink. This is the most maddeningly frustrating proposition, one that can easily be your undoing, causing you to quit playing altogether. In that sense, the lessons of the game extend beyond the boundaries of the PS3. To counter that perfect black phantom, you can go to the Internet, read about all the weapons and equipment, build a mini-maxed character yourself. What then? Surely you cannot waste all that invested time and effort, perhaps you should try your hand at invading another player's world and see how well your black phantom fares against an opponent. Is this the slippery slope to the side of evil?
The flip side is willingly summoning blue phantoms into your world for cooperative efforts. This can only be done if a boss still exists in the current level in your world. This is potentially profitable for the blue phantom as well, since he regains his life upon successfully assisting you in defeating your boss. The game proper does not support any kind of voice chat, so you are left with a small range of gestures for communication. For the world explorer, the adventurer who seeks to examine the richness of the world, this is a bad idea. Most likely, the blue phantom is experienced and, as a result, knows the critical path to the boss, in addition to the spawn locations for all the enemies along the way. If you are lucky, this guide will lead you around to the good treasures available in the level along the way. All in all, you will race through the level, missing all of the tense moments and discovering nothing.
Alternatively, you can bypass the game's voice chat limitations by employing some other means of communication to team up with a couple of friends. I did this via an Xbox Live Party or a Vent server on other occassions. Yes, I used Xbox Live to chat while playing a PS3 game. And I was not alone. The same spoiler pitfalls are to be found if any of your friends have already completed the level, though world-exploring can still be somewhat rewarding simply because you can talk about the shared experience.
It is a challenge. It is rewarding. It has a steep cost, both of time and of self, but it is worth it in the end. While you will not dominate the leader boards in the Pantheon high atop the nexus, you will emerge from the fog with a few stories of your own.
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