Brutally difficult yet equally satisfying, Demon's Souls is one of the finest experiences you can have on the PS3.
As soon as you create your character using a surprisingly robust creation palette (it's possible to model your own facial features if you take the time to really mess around), you're propelled in a dark and seedy fantasy environment--where dead bodies serve as your treasure chests and evil literally lurks around every corner. On the outset, it appears as a traditional action RPG, but it sure doesn't feel like one. Demon's Souls is one of those games that will truly test your patience in more ways than you could imagine. If you get killed, you'll enter soul mode with half of your life bar, and getting your body back is about as easy as it sounds. To do so, you will either have to kill a boss or help another player kill one using the online feature (provided they still have their bodies), or try to kill another living player as a 'phantom' by invading their game. And keeping your living form is another ball of fur entirely. In fact, soul mode is considered the game's "normal mode", so you're going to have to get used to it for quite a while. Even if you're successful (or lucky) enough to return to the world of the living, don't expect to stay there for long. As in real life, death in Demon's Souls is inevitable and unavoidable--unlike real life, your death may occur on a frightening regular basis.
You'll collect souls throughout your journey--living or dead--and use the valuable commodities to upgrade character stats, forge weapons, and purchase necessary items. Of course, best of fortune to you if you can hold on to your hard-earned souls because should you die during your adventure, you'll lose them lickety-split. All you have to do to get them back is revisit the last area where you met your untimely end. Simple, right? Not so fast. All the enemies you killed prior to your first death will respawn in their entirety, and if you die even then, you'll not only lose your souls you collected thus far, you'll also lose your earned lot that you had collected before your first death. It's important to note that in spite of the game's cruel difficulty, it is by no means unfair. You'll have a lot of help along the way--you just have to know where to find it. Demon's Souls boasts an impressively handled online mode--which isn't so much MMORPG but rather a single-player adventure you're sharing with others. You can, however, team up with other players to fight bosses or, should you be seduced by evil intentions, invade another living player's game and try to rob him or her of their precious soul in the hopes of retrieving yours. (Don't worry--restrictions prevent flagrant abuse of this option.) You'll also be able to find visual notes left by other players that will certainly act as an interim strategy guide of sorts--pointing you to valuable treasure or warning you of impending danger. Touching bloodstains will allow you to see how another player met their own death--the purpose of which is for you to hopefully prevent your own.
Demon's Souls has been touted as a brutally difficult game, but it's very rare for a game of that nature to work so successfully. Yes, it's not for the faint of heart or for the ego-centric. It will test you. It will knock you on your butt. It will chew you up and spit you out. But you're only a failure if you give up. So long as you learn from your mistakes, tread wisely, always be aware of your surroundings, and take full advantage of all the help the game and its players give you, then you'll truly achieve success and beat it. This is arguably one of the finest games I've ever played and a risk worth taking.