Demon's Souls (Greatest Hits) - PlayStation 3

An action-RPG that prides itself on its difficulty, Demon's Souls is not a game for the faint-hearted. However, for a player willing to overcome a few hardships, Demon's Souls is a well-made, well-executed, highly enjoyable game. Demon's Souls' basic gameplay is hack-and-slash similar to The Legend of Zelda or Kingdom Hearts, i.e. you swing your sword, block with your shield, roll, dodge, and so on. However, Demon's Souls has much higher stakes - your character can die in 2 or 3 hits, for one. Enemies telegraph attacks well enough, and are generally as weak as you are in health terms, so it's at least fair in that regard. It's less that the game is hard directly, and more that the game is unforgiving of carelessness; charging at an enemy as though they can be easily dispatched, like you would in most action games, usually ends up with your death. There's a fairly wide level of customization available in terms of gameplay choices, though. Souls are the game's currency, and are obtained from every enemy defeated. They are used to buy stat upgrades, spells, weapons, armor, and items. In essence, you have a fairly wide set of choices available in terms of how you play the game - as a direct fighter, as a lightly-equipped archer, or as a supporting magic-user. Your class influences your starting stats, but there are very few class-based limitations in terms of equipment and spells. As long as you've upgraded your stats to the right level, you can use almost anything. There is some difference in terms of what weapons are used, so there's at least a lot of diversity in terms of your character's development. In addition to enemy weaknesses, the weapons in the game also take how the weapon is used into account. Most directly, walls and corridors will make it impossible to swing a weapon - a problem if you're using a giant sword and can't get the room necessary to swing it. Generally, stabbing weapons like spears and rapiers are useful in close-range areas, while the giant swings of greatswords and polearms are useful in wide-open areas. It's possible to wield weapons one-handed or two-handed; it's also possible to dual wield weapons, to varying levels of effectiveness. The two kinds of ranged weapon are bows and crossbows: the former can be aimed manually, but requires two hands, while the latter must be locked on automatically, but can be used with a shield. Death in Demon's Souls is frequent, and comes with a few penalties. Upon death you become a ghost, with only 50% of your normal HP (though this is raised to 75% by an item found early on, which is much more tolerable). When you die, you lose all your current souls (but not items or abilities), but if you can get back to the spot you died in and touch your body, you can at least recover it. There are a few ways to recover your body, the most common of which is beating a boss while in spirit form. However, it's often not worth it - you can only beat a given boss once, and it's fairly easy to die afterwards to some simple trap or surprise attack. And given the number of things that are trying to kill you - soldiers, monsters, dragons, rolling balls, pit traps, and the occasional explosion - care should be taken at basically every opportunity. The game's multiplayer is probably its most innovative feature; rather than a direct sort of "join someone else's game" feature, Demon's Souls is more like a persistent online world where you can only occasionally interact with other people. The most common online interaction is messages. These messages are assembled from premade parts ("look out for the ____ ahead", etc.) and left on the ground near whatever they're talking about. Any player can put down a message, regardless of content, so it can be used to help people ("there's a trap ahead", "don't trust this guy") or to hinder them ("if you jump down into this bottomless pit you'll get some treasure"). Trustworthy messages can be recommended; recommending a message provides the player who put it down with an instant full-heal - something that's not to be sneezed at, especially during boss fights. Therefore, it's to the player's advantage to put down helpful notes, and the game is certainly hard enough to warrant them. In one case, for example, an otherwise innocuous NPC was marked with many runes nearby indicating that said NPC was a liar and I should attack him. As it turned out, the NPC was powering a ritual that made the level's boss immortal, and without killing him I never would have been able to beat said boss. The other way that the game presents a passively online universe is through player ghosts and bloodstains. The former is just a glimpse of other people playing the game - i.e., their characters running around in the same level you are in. These are mostly just there for show, though seeing a ghost pull a lever or break down a wall can provide a helpful hint. When another player dies, their bloodstain is left in the location where they died. If you touch a bloodstain, a ghost pops up and runs through the last few seconds of that player's life. This basically shows you where traps are in a lot of circumstances - you just have to watch for the part where the ghost "dies" when you go forward. In some cases, the presence of a great deal of bloodstains serves as warning enough. There are more direct ways of interacting, as well. When you're a ghost, you can offer your services as a Blue Phantom and enter another player's world as a cooperative helper. Beating the level's boss transports you back to your own game and gives you your body back. You can also take the darker path of the Black Phantom and invade another player's world; if you manage to kill them, you get your body back. Overall, there's not a lot of communication possible in-game. The messages serve as the only actual communication; blue phantoms must communicate with gestures and emotes, and there are only a few of these. There's no friend lists or anything along those lines, so you're really just grabbing any random player either as an enemy or a friend. The graphics in the game are excellent - the designs and effects are detailed and well-executed, there are plenty of incredible panoramic views (many of which can be noted with messages) and the characters all move with realistic weight and effort. On the other hand, the Havok physics used in the game are completely ridiculous. Bodies, for one, can be easily kicked around by a player walking slowly into them, which causes them to go into humongous spasms and flail around. The sound is great, being distinctly atmospheric while also serving as a warning. The music is good, but only shows up for boss fights (in a manner similar to Shadow of the Colossus), while the rest of the game is music-less to let you focus on approaching footsteps or flapping dragon wings. As a whole, Demon's Souls is a great game with solid gameplay and fun online multiplayer. However, it's also a very unique game - casual gamers, people who dislike losing repeatedly, and people who want to play with people they know in real life are probably better staying away. The game's difficulty will drive away most gamers; even gamers who stick with it will likely find it frustrating when they die for the hundredth time. The online mode, while interesting and fun, is limited in its long-term applications due to the short "pick up game" nature of coop play. In conclusion, the game is a 9/10 for hardcore gamers, and a 6/10 for casual gamers.

INTRODUCTION - SETTING THE MOOD Hey, I apologize in advance for the super-long review but this is an immense game so maybe it deserves a long review. I'll see if I can abbreviate it a little but I'm afraid it will stay 'long' no matter what I do. Hmmm... I worked so hard to bring my beloved Uchigatana to a +6 but now Ben, Bladwin's brother - they are both blacksmiths - suggests that I give it to him and he's going to make a Crescent Uchigatana +1 out of it. A PLUS ONE out of my +6? Yes, my kids advise, go for it. While it's true that the Plus One Crescent does only 75 damage vs. my +6's 153, my current level of magic 35 should add at least 92 points of magic attack to the physical damage and, with the help of a few dozen Darkmoon stones (lots of Grim Reapers had to die for me to harvest them) and less than 10,000 souls (a bargain) I can immediately upgrade it to Crescent +3 and with THAT weapon, my friends, it only takes one quick slash to dispose of a silver skeleton and I can do away more than half a dozen low-level zombies with one swing. And, did I mention that it will slowly restore my MP (magic points) while I'm wearing it so I don't really need to keep the Fragrant Ring on and I could use the Sharp Magic ring instead to further boosts my magic strengths including Uchigatana's power but, true, it WILL lower my magic defenses. Or use the Thieves' Ring while in Queen's Tower prison so that the lovely bell-ringing octopus-head prison guards (good looking girls with a passion for electrocuting and stabbing while hugging you tight) won't notice me. And the Thieves' Ring seems to do well with those giant flying stingrays. They do notice me eventually but it makes them less vigilant so there are fewer of those 15-foot long, self-homing spikes they keep shooting at me when they get angry or suspicious. Did I say too much? Then, let me say this. Granted, I'm a slow player because I really like to enjoy my games so maybe this is not typical but, after almost 100 hours of play, I'm probably 20-30% into the FIRST round of playing. It's true - after you finish the game, you get to play it again as it gets even harder. BRIEFLY Demon's Souls is, in my view, one of the best fantasy RPGs that ever came to a game console. If you don't mind stabbing, slashing, shooting, cleaving, crushing, tearing, punching, scratching, infecting, slicing, burning or poisoning your enemies (and have the same thing done to you) and watching them die as they bleed, scream, decompose and sometimes howl in agony or even beg for mercy. And you'll be facing several classes of zombies, gargoyles, giant flying stingrays, knights in shining or all-black armors swinging what you could safely call 'weapons of mass destrctions' in the shape of ten-foot long meat cleavers at you, leeches, rats, blobs with shields on top of them, daemons of all shapes an sizes, grim rippers, octopus-headed ladies, immensely powerful fire-breathing dragons, giant steel spiders, huge worms with human faces. Coming from someone who's played the Ultima series way back in the 80's and who's still waiting for the next in the Scrolls of the Elders, having enjoyed Oblivion more than any other console RPG, saying that Demon's Souls is 'awesome' should mean something. But, I was trying to briefly describe the game so, here it is, the story line in a paragraph, as dark and impossibly complicated as it could possibly come out of Japan. A king attempts to keep his kingdom - Boletaria - prosperous by means of some dark rituals involving the consumption of souls which, eventually, awakens the Old One, a great demon whose awakening unleashes lesser but still immensely powerful demons who quickly begin feasting on the regular people souls themselves while the kingdom is enveloped by a mysterious fog, isolating it from the rest of the world. None but one who went into the fog ever returned and that one told the story - everyone in Boletaria is now insane and, unless someone does something, the fog is likely to spread and envelop the entire world. And that's where you, the player, get involved so your mission is to talk the Old One into going back to sleep and maybe save the world. MY EVALUATION It's strange how a game that's so unforgiving and that requires you to fight so many battles again and again until you achieve perfection - only to have to fight them some more - can become so addictive and almost obsessively so. There are three gamers in our family and not only do we wait for our turns but we watch each other playing, share 'funny stories' and tips involving gameplay and lose a lot of sleep when we can afford it and sometimes when we can't. It's probably illogical but, having to fight the same battles many times is not only immersive but it's actually fun and rewarding. On the third or fourth try you know exactly how to defeat the Grim Reaper and you know each individual Gargoyle's style and capabilities and you can play each battle in many different ways by slightly changing your tactics and strategies and the weapons you use until you achieve the perfect stab or slash or cast your spell at the time and place needed for it to hit the mark and to maximum damage. The only thing... before you get to the Grim Reaper you must first annihilate a few dozen other enemies, every single time. And did I mention that that worlds of Boletaria are simply Awesome? Exploration and discovery are a joy in this game only balanced by the overwhelming sense of fear, dread and desolation oozing out of it. Most of your enemies don't only die when you dispose of them, but they go screaming, screeching or howling. Their bodies bleed and, through the controller, you can almost feel the the flesh tearing apart or stabbed by your blade or their armor breaking into pieces. Being so hard to master - but not impossible because I won't consider myself a great player - there is a great sense of accomplishment every time a new boss is defeated, a weapon is upgraded and tried out in the field or a new location is conquered. I can't give too much praise to the online play elements. You are NEVER alone in Demon's Souls. Other players can watch you and you can see their ghostly outlines as they play. You can leave messages to warn others of dangers and... you can see how they die or sometimes commit suicide. You can help others and sometimes you must defend yourself from those attempting to invade your world and destroy you. And all is smooth and so well integrated into the game's atmosphere that, in the rare occasions when our PS3 loses its network, all seems disturbingly quiet and lonely. While nothing is perfect and nothing can be perfect and without having finished the game yet, I would say that Demon's Souls is without a doubt a top RPG for the PS3 platform. GAMESPACE You act in 5 'worlds' or locations: the Boletarian Palace, the Stonefang Tunnel, the Tower of Latria, the Shrine of Storms and the Valley of Defilement and you can cross from one world into another via the Nexus, a safe space, to the extent that anything built on top of the Old One can be safe, where you do most housekeeping chores. You can move relatively freely inside each world to the extent that you don't mind fighting... everybody all the time and there are gates that take you farther (usually deeper) into the worlds IF you manage to defeat the bosses guarding them. Along the way, and usually following a fight, you find weapons and armor or items that may help you upgrade your weapons or armor and you decide how to manage your possessions but the main currency in the worlds of Boletaria is now 'souls'. Everyone is after them and the only way you can survive is to get them, usually by killing your opponents and to spend them on things that you need. But this is only scratching the surface. Your eventual goal is to calm down the Old One by defeating and killing the demons that feed him souls and, as expected, this is not exactly a walk in the woods. How about a walk in swamps infested by some of the most foul and poisonous and or disease spreading critters you could never imagine? Or exploring deep and dark tunnels where ghosts and Grim Reapers live, or some immense prison where all have lost their minds and the warden ladies wear tentacles on their heads? Or a mine where... you guessed it right, everyone is insane and they keep acting as if they were working but they will always take a break so that they can chase you around, throw some fireballs at you or drop boulders the size of trucks on you? And if you think that the 'surface' is safer, think huge dragons capable of completely incinerating your with one casual sneeze, or armored and well-armed skeletons always in a bad mood. GAMEPLAY After you create your character - name, gender, class, looks - you start with very little but, as you gather souls, you pay the blind lady who doesn't look like much but almost everything here is deceiving and she will raise your soul level, allowing you to improve on ability: vitality, endurance, strength, intelligence, magic, faith, dexterity, luck and you will need these abilities to be able to cast spells use certain weapons and generally survive in a world in which there are very few you could call 'friends'. You progress by improving yourself and your weapons and defeating the various bosses. Doing so is important because the bosses block access to areas where... the next boss can be found. Once you get killed, something that happens often, you lose the souls that you accumulated and wake up in the Nexus in 'soul form'. And there are ways to regain your body, usually by defeating a boss or... HELPING someone else defeat a boss but acting in human form must be a well-thought decisions. You do have more 'health points' as a 'body' but you are also weaker and while in a body form your world is open to invasion from other players out there. They can show up and kill you and, every time you die (or when you do bad things) the world you died in turns a little 'darker'. And the darker the world, the tougher your opponents become and... you are more likely to find 'good stuff'. While in 'soul' form, you can volunteer to help other players defeat bosses or simply ride along with them. The reward is that you are revived in body form if, when summoned, you help the other player defeat a boss or maybe defeat an invader who teleported into his world to kill him. Now, just to make it all a lot more fun, while you are online, the makers of Demon's Souls have the ability to control the so-called 'world tendency' in each of the five worlds, independently of your own actions so a pure-white world may suddenly turn darker and more dangerous or vice-versa. And this is not all. While playing, you can see the 'blood stains' of the heroes who died on that particular spot. You touch it and you see the last seconds that preceded that hero's death. And you can leave messages to warn others and, you can see in real time, the ghostly images of other players fighting monsters or just running around as you are minding your own business. And, of course, every time you leave a world for the safety of the Nexus, ALMOST everything other than the bosses and some of the NPCs resets and respawns. So you will be fighting the same battles over and over and over again, using different tactocs, improving your skills until you approach perfection and achieve elegance. And... how about whole the game resetting itself? It's true, or so I heard that, after you complete the game you can retain some of your hard-earned possessions and skills and go for an 'encore' but a bit harder this time. THE PAIN FACTOR This is one of the most brutal and unforgiving games I've ever played. And I'm not talking about the slaying of zombies or slimy creatures at almost every turn and having to do it repeatedly. Demon's Souls is unforgiving to the player because nothing but complete dedication and near-perfection would do. The tutorial is probably the threshold that's the hardest to cross. You start weak and almost unarmed and you mission is not only to survive - which, if you are successful, you won't - but also to defeat a mysterious monster that's almost nothing but slime, near-impenetrable armor and dozens of extra-long spears and do it in near-complete darkness. Saying that it's frustrating it's an understatement. I would have given up if it weren't for my kids who won their first victory before I did and motivated me to continue. And the hardship continues and only grows after that. Unlike most other games, you can't just save once you defeat an opponent and establish a safe point to restart from. You are in that world until you are killed and lose your hard-earned souls or you return to the Nexus on your own but, remember, every time you come back from the Nexus, all the monsters you killed except for the bosses are there challenging you again and you have to kill them again. But, not everything resets itself completely. Usually 'the good stuff' only presents to you once or twice, IF you are lucky but the bad guys are always there to challenge you again and, if the world turns dark on you, to maybe slice you and dice you a few times before you develop some new and better tactics to defeat them for the 100th time again. VIOLENCE I believe I mentioned this all throughout my review but maybe the level of violence merits its own heading. There is A LOT of it in this game and all of it is graphic. I believe there is a setting that would hide 'bleeding' but with or without that, there was a reason it was rated 'M' as in 'mature'. So, anyone who doesn't feel comfortable about killing tens of thousands of soulless, computer generated creatures, don't buy this game. TECHNICAL MERIT Demon's Souls was made for the PS3 exclusively and it shows. The graphics and animations are simply breathtaking and, unlike the multi-platform Oblivion where 'fire' and 'smoke' could only be done at the expense of slowing everything to a crawl and the objects in the the distance became usually blurred, the world of Demon's Souls is almost always crisp and responsive visually, it rarely skips a frame and it never slows down, even when dozens of characters are present and moving independently on the screen. Add to the above some of the most realistic sound effects and 'break and shatter' graphics, with the audio-visual experience enhanced by the controller perfectly synchronize vibrations that allow you to 'feel' the blows as your shield blocks them. Unlike many other RPG worlds where a lot of the landscape and the dungeons are cookie-cutter reassemblies of a limited number of elements, the world of Boletaria appears to be fully, uniquely custom-designed. Very little repeats and every new location you discover is different and usually surprisingly different from anything else in the game. FIVE STARS On a 1-100 scale, I would rate Demon's Souls as a 95+. The game is remarkably bug free and the instances where characters do silly things because they can't climb a boulder or can't make a turn are rare enough for the game to stay immersive. I already know that I'll be spending more hours on Demon's Souls than on any other PS3 RPG or any other type of games I own so far. -- >> Brush your teeth, it's the law! <<

Gioco completamente in inglese, ma giocabile! Consiglio vivamente

so happy it came on time and on a good condition :D

This is the most toughest games along with dark souls i have ever encountered this gen . Casual games BE AWARE !!!

日本語版のPlayStation 3 the Bestに比べて半額に近い激安価格だったので、この輸入版を買ってしまいました。 プレイ60時間、一度クリアしてソウルレベル80です。 熱中度の高いゲームでした。『難しいのでプレイヤーを選ぶ』というレビューが多く見られたので心配でしたが、心折れずにクリアできました。 ■英語について 『レビュアーの方々は英語が得意だから理解できるに違いない・・・』と半ば英和辞典を引きながらプレイする覚悟でスタートしたのですが、英語は本当にカンタンです。 長文は理解できないことも多々ありますが、とりあえずデーモンを倒すことが目的で、人を助ければ『Thank you, ゴニョゴニョ・・・』など、感謝しているんだなということがわかれば十分です。 あとから動画サイトにある日本語版のプレイ動画で確認しましたが、大体は間違っていなかったと思いました。 プレイ動画は見ずにプレイした方がおもしろいとは思いますが、そういったテキストは確認しても良いのではないでしょうか。 最も重要なのがアイテムの名称ですが、難しい英単語も少ないので説明文から理解できますし、アイテム名を検索すれば日本語版の名称と比較しているページもありますし、そこは補えると思います。 とりあえず序盤は草を食べると体力回復することを覚えておけば大丈夫です。 武器・防具は数値の変化を見れば十分ですし、不自由はありませんでした。 これはムリヤリ満足した気になっているというわけではなくて、本当に輸入版で良かったと思っています。 難易度は最終局面だけは一段階上の印象がありましたが、思ったよりは死にませんでした。 なお、最初のステージをクリアするまでは、ソウルレベルを上げてくれる『火防女（ひもりめ、輸入版ではMaiden in Black）』にレベルアップしてもらうことが出来ません。 大変に思えましたが、死んだ時には必ず『こうすれば良かった』という課題があって、それを踏まえて再プレイするのが楽しかったです。 最初のステージをクリアしても難関は続きますが、失敗しても目先を変えて違うステージに挑戦すれば新しいアイテムが手に入って楽になったり、武器をアップグレードすると強敵を倒せるようになったり、そういうバランスがよく出来ていると思いました。 オンラインについてですが『塔のラトリア』というステージで他のプレイヤー（黒ファントム）に侵入され、殺されました。侵入はその一度だけです。 オンライン接続中のプレイヤーは現在も多く、半透明のプレイヤーをたくさん見かけます。地面に多数のメッセージも残されています。 英語は『この先、○○がある』といったものが多いです。難解な表現はないので不自由はありません。 実はこのゲームでこの『オンラインのプレイヤーが見える』『他のプレイヤーが残したメッセージを読める』『他のプレイヤーの死に方が見える』といった要素が一番うれしく、『ほとんど干渉しないが、まったく干渉しないわけではない』という、ちょうどよい関係性がすごく新鮮でした。 逆に言えばオフラインにすると完全な孤独なので、オフラインではまた違ったデモンズソウルになると思います。 日本語版の方で、自分には合わなかったという方のレビューを読むと、どんな苦行を強いられるゲームなんだ・・・というイメージがあったのですが、いざプレイしてみると自分のような『PS3を買ったから、人気のあるゲームを買ってみた（もちろんゲーム性を理解したうえで）』みたいなライトユーザーにとっても楽しめるバランスの良いゲームでした。 日本語版と500円ぐらいの差なら日本語版を購入したと思いますが、1000円以上となると好みじゃなくてもダメージが少ないので、とりあえず輸入版で体験しても良いのではないでしょうか。迷っている方にぜひ。

Package came nicely. Great game.