Demon's Souls is one of the best, most difficult, and most immersive, RPG I have played in a very long time.
The story behind the game is probably the only bad thing about this game, if your a story buff that is. If your not, you will be fine. The story is basically, you're the hero, kill the bad guys. To be honest I love the simplicity of it, but if your into deep stories then Demon's Souls won't do it for you.
There are 5 different areas in Demon's Souls, all connected by an area known as the Nexus. Before you can access the 5 areas though you must first beat the Demon of the first area, after that you are free to go to any of the 5 levels, and level up. Thats right you can't level up until you beat the first area Demon, you must first prove you are worthy of the level up system.
Of course to level up, you need enough Demon Souls. Demon Souls are the all around currency of the game, you need Demon Souls to buy EVERYTHING. To collect Demon Souls you ask? well simple, kill the enemies. Every enemy drops a certain amount of these Souls. After you collect enough, you can buy what you please, of course this is where the difficulty kicks in. If you happen to die, you lose all your Demon Souls, and start back at the start of the area with all the enemies back, exactly where they were. You can go back to were you died to collect your lost Souls, but if you die on the way, they are gone forever.
The controls are perfect, by every sense of the word. You control your right hand with R1 and R2 and your left hand with L1 and L2. you can choose 5 items to quick select and use with square. Circle allows your character to dodge and when held down run. Finally X allows you to interact. Movement is with the left stick and camera is with the right. This set up is flawless and everything is fluent. you can select any weapon to go in your left and right hands allowing 2 for each that you toggle between, so you can combine any weapons together to suit your playing style.
Its a good thing that the controls are so perfect because if they weren't, this game would be damn near impossible. Every area and enemy is hard and must all be approached with skill and patience, you need to do this one at a time and not over whelm yourself, but don't worry because you will die allot in this game, but every death is a learning experience, and at no point could you ever say that your death was "cheap". You were either to slow, or not careful enough.
Even though the common enemies are hard, they are peanuts compared to the incredible boss fights, and I mean incredible. They ware epic to say the least. The first boss takes up half your screen, and they only get bigger and harder. Each boss must be approached cautiously and you must learn their weak points to defeat them.
Thankfully even though this game is hard, you will never want to put it down because of how immersive and addictive it is. The environments are huge and simply just suck you in. There is no music, which in any other game would probably hinder it, but not here, here it simply sucks you further in. It really helps by the fact that everything simply looks good, they aren't the best on the PS3 but they will still leave you in awe. One of the areas has you in a creepy dark prison, and as your walking through you can hear the sound of a woman singing, and it sent chills down my spine, it was that good.
Most of the game will be spent in your "Soul form" this form is the form you take after you die. You lose about half your health but in exchange you are stronger, and you glow a really cool blue color. To get back into your living form is simple, either use an item (a very rare item mind you) kill a Demon, or take over another players game and kill them, the latter is the coolest thing ever I might add.
Thats right you can take over other players games to try and get their souls, and regain your living body back. If this sounds to intimidating to you, you can always try assisting another player and helping them to defeat a Demon.
Once in your living form, you can choose to summon players to help you, and nothing feels more badass then having 2 players by your side and ripping through an Area. Of course once in the living form, another player can invade your game, and nothing will make your heart beat faster, then when you see the warning about some one about invading your game.
If this was the only multiplayer in Demon's Souls, it would be fine, but they take it up a huge notch. The message system used in Demon's Souls is very useful. Players can leave you messages on the ground warning you about things up ahead, telling you about enemy weaknesses, and even just some sick humor thrown in to lighten you up. Dumb messages won't last long though because they probably won't get recommended. Recommending a message allows the player who left it to get a nice full bar of health, and also leaves the message up for other players to see in the future. This recommendation system keeps you wanting to leave messages to, as you hope people will recommend them at just the right time, taking you to full health.
Another great multiplayer aspect, is the ghost and bloodstain system. As your playing you see ghosts of other players who are also playing at the same time. This is really cool, and can also serve as a warning sometimes as to what is ahead. Although the blood stains are much better for that. Once you interact with a bloodstain, it shows you the last 10 seconds of a players life. It may not show you what killed them, but will certainly warn you that danger is ahead. There isn't any sort of better warning I could think of, then a ton of bloodstains sitting at the bottom of a stair case, and seeing one enemy lurking ahead, all your thinking is, crap....
So again, what is Demon's Souls? I'll tell you what it is, it is in the simplest form of words, one of the best RPG I have ever played in my life. Its hard, immersive, rewarding, has insane multiplayer, and by every definition of the word, perfect.