What I REALLY Thought of Demon's Souls

Hi everyone!

Unfortunately, I haven't had time this week to put together a Follow Friday, but I still wanted to get an article out; since I seem to be getting asked all the time about what my opinion on Demon'sSouls was, I thought this would make a good topic for a post. Warning: this post contains a lot of MAN in it, simply because he's the reason I'm even aware this game exists.

So... What is Demon's Souls?  According to Wikipedia (the source of all truth on the internet *snicker*) Demon Soul's is "an action role-playing game video game developed primarily by From Software (with assistance from SCE Japan Studio) exclusively for the PlayStation 3. It was released in Japan on February 5, 2009 and published by Sony Computer Entertainment."  It has received much praise for it's dark fantasy style art, and challenging gameplay.  Hordes of gamers (including one close to my heart) salivate at the very mention of this game, drooling over the prospect of once again diving into the world of Bolitaria and bringing peace back to this troubled world.  So.. where's the controversy?

Do you think MAN's a little excited to be playing Demon's Souls again?

First, some history.  MANvsGAME LOVES Demon's Souls, if he could, he would have Demon's Souls' babies I'm sure.. which leads me to some very awkward imagery... ANYWAY, MAN plays Demon's Souls a lot, and it was through his channel that I was introduced to Demon's Souls.  I have to admit, I've never been impressed.  I found the environments dull, uninteresting and lifeless.  The gameplay seemed okay, very challenging of course, but just okay.  There really didn't seem to be much of a story either.  It wasn't until I started voicing these opinions in MAN's chat that I came to realize just how LOVED this game is.. I didn't get it. 

So begins the controversy; back and forth MAN and I go about the game.. and always MAN's comeback was "how can you talk badly about a game you've never played?"  Well, you all know how much I hate to lose an argument (especially to MAN), so what did I do? I bought the damn game!  Now some of you are thinking.. why would she buy a game she was sure she wouldn't like?  I bought the game for a couple reasons: 1) I trust MAN's taste, he knows his games, and in general I agree with him about most games (JRPGs excluded, but that's for another post, and 2) I wanted to give myself as MUCH incentive as possible to like the game, so I could say for sure that I wasn't hating it just to win the argument.. so what was the verdict?

All in all, I found the game to be a below average action RPG, or, as I've been saying in chat "Meh at best".  I understand that the game developers were making a world that is basically dead, where the souls have been stripped of it, however, I didn't really get an eerie feeling.. I just found it BORING.  Never in my life have I seen a game with all of three colours on the palette.. brown, grey and brown-grey.  The environments which COULD have given more diversity, are shrouded in darkness, so that you can only see a couple feet in front of you, thus totally deadening everything.  Also, I find the armour to be incredibly boring, it is possible to have realistic armour without it being completely dull and unimaginative.  

The game that I compare Demon's Souls to most is Oblivion, as they both have the sort of realistic-esque worlds.. lets take a look at a visual comparison of the two..

Gee.. hmm.. which one do I wanna play.. I mean.. Demon's Souls could have come out on the original Game Boy as far as colour palette choices!

Okay, enough about environments.. what about gameplay?  Quite frankly, the game is incredibly unbalanced.  As MAN laments constantly, the only way to be a melee character is to wear no/light armour and roll like a mofo.  He attempted to play the game as a heavy armour wielding knight, and it's just too hard.  Also, magic is INCREDIBLY powerful, and can take the game from very hard, to hard difficulty.  Overall the mechanics are alright, and once you get past the learning curve, the combat is satisfying.  I found the enemies to be quite repetitive, especially since you are going to be running through the same levels again and again and again.  

The story in Demon's Souls is very basic, you are a hero, you are there to save Boletaria.  That's about as in depth as the story gets in game, apparently there is a lot of literature to be found outside the game, but I want the story in the game, not to have to go read a book!

All in all, Demon's Souls is meh, I pop it in every now and then to give it a go, but I still don't get the intense love of it. The only thing that distinguishes it at all is the difficulty level.  It is a hard game.  For those of you that are thinking "well that's why she doesn't like it, its too hard for her", I LOVE Super Meatboy, difficulty doesn't scare me, the reason I don't like it is that this game gives me NO reason to keep playing it to overcome the difficulty. I'm really glad I didn't pay more than $20 for this game, and frankly, it's on the "to trade in" pile of my games.  I really believe a lot of people are jumping on the "it's cool to love difficult games so this game is the best ever cause it's hard" bandwagon, and I'm sorry, but to people who say it's better than Dragon Age or Mass Effect.. I say "you should be committed".  I admit, I don't get it guys, but everyone is entitled to their opinions...

I don't get why people like it either MAN.

Flame shields are to max, come at me!

BTW if you DO like Demon's Souls, I have two channels to recommend to you, of course the wonderful MANvsGAME, but also Benderofx.  Bender does challenge runs of Demon's Souls, such as "crossbow only" and whatnot.

(This post dedicated to Boomzies, GQ and Duffmana)