...
Damn...
Just... damn...
I've never felt so much anger and joy from a single game. I'm only about 5 hours in but this game is really awesome. The best way to describe it is to take an oldschool Nintendo game like Castlevania or Megaman and mix it with Oblivion. But I'm not really good with words, so... CTRL+C
Demon's Souls is pure game, a complete and darkly fascinating vision that makes no concessions to the modern conception of how games should be. Instead, it was an exploration of how games could be; how bleak, how twisted, how focused and – most famously – how challenging. Most developers take pains to protect you from failure. FROM Software turns it into an artform.
-Keza MacDonald, IGN
Basically the game is tough and it's not for everyone but it's definitely worth a shot. if your still curios, I recommend checking out the Escapist review(http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/9171-Dark-Souls-Review) or the Giant Bomb quick look(http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-dark-souls/17-4966/) which these guys play the first hour of the game and they get a couple of surprises too.
Has anyone here played it yet?
Yup. Played it. Just finished NG+. So beat it twice.
I'd give it about a 7. Yes it's atmospheric and oozing with blah blah blah, but the gameplay is broken on some fundamental levels; the hit detection is awful, hitboxes are so disjointed you can end up dying by being struck with empty air, characters tend to get hung up on tiny pieces of the floor, you slide down hills to your death seemingly at random, the controls can be very awkward, but most importantly?
MOST IMPORTANTLY
A lot of the 'difficulty' in the game comes from out-right bullshit. And always in the later sections of a level. For example:
After the Catacombs (which is full of skeletons that don't drop souls, which makes them completely unrewarding to fight, also they're immortal unless you somehow know to be carrying a Divine Weapon with you() which isn't that bad of a section, you come to the Tomb of Giants. This is a completely unlit series of ledges and corridors full of hills.
Now, I've previously mentioned that sometimes your character will just slide off a hill and die. Did I mention this section is unlit?
So say you don't succumb to bad physics. Unless you're straining your eyes to see and walking with a shield up, you'll be jump-attack ambushed by a giant skeleton, which will probably knock off half to 3/4 of your health, depending on your equipment and stats.
That's not the big issue though. Every attack the big skeletons have? Even when blocked, they do knockback. Now, remember when I said this takes place on an unlit bunch of ledges? Even if you're blocking, there's a good chance you'll die just because of the knock-back.
*every* enemy in that section of the game focuses on knock-back. You can't afford to roll out of the way because you can't see the ledges. This is what I mean by 'bullshit'.
also some of the boss fights. A reasonably challenging boss is fought. . .IN A FIELD OF LAVA. Now if you don't have the ring the boss drops, lava deals about 15% of your health per second.
So the arena is actually more dangerous than the boss. And guess what? Our old buddy cheap knock-back attacks is right back! You're more likely to die from being knocked into lava than from the boss.
There's also a boss fight that is two bosses at once, and when you kill one boss, the other one goes super-saiyan, restores all its health, and tries to kill you.
And then there's the boss fight that is 4 at once. If your character isn't built to pump out shit-loads of damage and doesn't have a very high poise (hit stun resistance, basically), you *can't* win, because the only way to get through the fight is to kill one before the next spawns, otherwise you'll just end up nailed by unblockable player-seeking magic.
There's a lotta bullshit in Dark Souls, stuff that was not present in Demon's Souls, which I really do consider to be a superior game.
Other downsides: the frame-rate chugs like a frat house at keg night in certain sections (Blight Town, any time there's a ladder), the ending is the worst thing I've ever seen, compared to the bullshit you had to get through to get there).
On the plus notes: The sections that don't rely on bullshit are excellent, enemy design is incredible, stages are laid out well and very pretty, the lore is amazing, and I'd like to see more of it in-game. Also, the music is great. Even if Sakuraba is a hack.
