Review of Darvo.org about Demon Souls.
Because I saw this game, at somebody, and read some other reviews. I was intrigued, to buy this game. But I needed a new PS3, so specially for this game, I purchased a PS3 Slime 320 GB Version.
Story
You would expect much of a story in any Role-playing game, but disappointingly enough, the story of Demons Souls is weak. You are a hero, from the real world, and were send by some kind of king to fight the arch demons. Like many hero's / soldier that were send before you, the all died and were send to a place called the nexus. After you played the tutorial, you are send to this place, and the real game starts.
You're main objective is to kill all the bosses, you can do this as a evil or good guy. The good guys have as side quest to rescue different NPC. When you do this the world will get easier, and you get less souls but the monsters / bosses are weaker too. The bad guys, need to kill the NPC, when they do this, the world gets hard. But the get more gear and souls.
Classes
You start the game as one of the 10 characters you can choice from:
Knight
Priest
Thief
Magician
Temple Knight
Soldier
Wanderer
Barbarian
Royalty
Hunter
The only difference, between all the classes, is your starting gear and starting states(Soul Level is not important / no function). They can all be a fighter / rogue / mage and anything in between.
Multiplayer
Like most games, this also has a multiplayer, but a strange and difficult one. After you killed the first boss, you get 3 stones. A Black, White and Party Stone.
The Black One: is for entering other peoples world, (the need to be living, not in soul form). After you defeat a boss, you get the power to be a black phantom. This means you can free roam in a other players world, without getting attack by the NPCS, you can be killed by fire breaths, and other kinds of traps. When the killed someone, the get there souls
Party Stone: like it says, it is used to play with other people. But only living players can use these stones to get someone to their world. A person that is in Soul Form /Phantom can put this Party Stones down, and need to wait for a living one they accept them in their world. You can also use a party stone, to get help in fighting Black Phantoms. The invited people don't get any gear, and don't get the updates for completing a mission. But do get souls, and at the end, when the killed the boss, they would get good points. They also get large amount of souls, to take with them to their own world. They also are alive again, when the return to their own world.
White One: is only a return to your own world.
Start of the Game / Personal experience
My first play through was horrible, I choice a magician(this is one of the 10 classes you can choice from) and he was just terrible. I died multiple times in the first world, but when I got to the first boss, a large blob monster named phalanx, I toke him down easily. But it cost me plenty of heal / mana potions.
I put every single soul I had, in magic and intelligent, but my damage did not go up that much, and I still died plenty of times. After 13 hours of playtime, I only killed the first 2 bosses of world 1, and all the first bosses of the other 4 worlds. So this was not a great success, so I choice another character
My second Character was a hunter, I almost finished world 1 without dying. But at the end, when all the gates were open, I jumped down somewhere and I fall to my dead. This time, I did not focused on one thing with my souls, but distributed them on all skills, but mostly HP and endurance. After 4 hours I was at the same point as my mage. And after some dying and frustrating parts, I finished the game in 20 hours.
After I finished my first play though, as good, I started a new game +. After I finished the 1-1 and killed the boss, I was a bit disappointed that the gear, was the same as the first play through. The enemies were only more frustrating and harder to beat, but you could use the same tactics as before. And the all stood at the same place, and did the same things.
Conclusion
Demon Souls had a good start, and was promising. But the lack of: new units, items and different tactics in the new game + mode. Was very disappointing, and lacked any experience from the makers.
If you played the Diablo saga, that has similarities with Demon Souls. You could see that when you started a new game + you had: different weapons, different enemies and they were also stronger. But Demon Souls lacked this all, the enemies only got more frustrating and they could easily one shot you.
The makers of Demon Souls, lacked the understanding, of the difference between difficulty and frustration. So you die multiple times in the game, not because you are bad, but because you did not have the right luck when fighting different bosses / units. And because the makers made multiple points, were you need to fight annoying monsters, on small paths were you could fall to your died on your left and right side.
So overall Demon Souls had a great start, but needed more experienced developers to be a excellent game. Maybe they would get it right, in their upcoming part 2 of Demon Souls, but I highly doubt it. If I need to give Demon Souls a score I would say the following on a scale of 1-10:
Story : 5 (50%)
Like I said before, the story is not RPG worthy, and one of the weakest in the game industry.
Gameplay: 7 (40%)
The fighting, different animations and different cast able spels were plentiful. But the replay ability of the game is, is not worthwhile. Because of the lack of new content, in the New Game + modes.
Graphics: 10 (10%)
I am not a Graphic freak, and the game looked good enough for me.