Less than a year late for this party but glad to finally come on board, I actually unwrapped my copy of Demon's Souls today and gave it a whirl in the old PS3 for about an hour. The word on this game is that it is very difficult but very rewarding as you dig your way through the story. It was awarded the Game of the Year award by Gamespot in 2009 - an incredible achievement for a new UP, and a hard core RPG at that, that was released on a single platform on a limited budget in a year when the competition included huge hits like Modern Warfare 2 and Uncharted 2.
As I mentioned, I'm only about an hour into the game and while it is difficult at times I'm finding that the difficulty stems from the fact that "dying" in the game brings you straight back to the start of a level - meaning that you have to churn through familiar territory time after time in an attempt to make it through without suffering a fatal blow. The game comes across as pretty standard hack and slash fare, however the genius in the game is the innovative game mechanic that allows previous players of the game and players currently playing the game to assist each other, at least indirectly.
The game is a single player game - however From Software came up with this mechanic, which is absolute genius, in which you can see and read hints from other players that have played the game in your game world. If there's a trap ahead - some helpful soul that played the game before you likely marked the territory up ahead with a warning about the pending trap. As you move forward - now aware of the imminent danger, you might see some blood splattered on the ground. Click on the blood - and you can see the last few seconds of life from the player that died and what led to his death. Through this indirect form of communication, the chaos that is this very difficult game is stemmed through this in game assistance. You can leave your own tips for other players while a ranking mechanism (you can "like" a tip) assures you that the tip in question is well tested. Finally, as you play you can see ghost images of other players playing through on your particular level at the same time. While you can't communicate with them - this is another interesting twist that is completely in line with the story line and theme of the game - to capture enough souls to return back from the dead.
From Software was established in 1986 and had a few hits on the original PlayStation with the Armored Core series but it has struggled to hit the big time in North America with some moderate hits such as Chromehounds on the X360 and 3D Dot Heroes for the PS3. With innovation like this From is on the cusp of a real breakthrough game and I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime, I'm going to plug away on this over the next few months and see where it takes me.