I'm a little pissed at my (previously favorite) local gameshop. Still no word from them regarding my deluxe edition I had ordered through them. Every other store in the area (and most in Canada/US) got theirs Oct 6th or Oct 7th.

I'm normally not a big believer in conspriacy theories, but I'm fairly certain one of the employees yoinked my deluxe edition I had ordered, accidently sold it or it's simply not avaialble via their game providers. I was the only one on the pre-order list, that I confirmed twice with two different employees. They'd actually laugh at me, "Yeah man, you're the only one on the list for the deluxe edition, we'll call you first! Don't worry!".

Also, they've already received their shelf copies of the standard edition, and I see little reason why their provider would separate the two. At first, I thought that not having to pay them in advance for pre-orders was a good thing, now I'm disliking their system simply because it saves them from the accountability; I haven't payed them yet, so they can do whatever they want. They can say, "Yeah, it never came in, and now it's no longer available. Sorry!" and move on.

Nervous that I might miss my chance to get a new deluxe edition (hey, it is an Atlus product), I purchased one from an online Canadian store. I'm not usually this obsessive about getting a new game, but I know that the deluxe isn't being mass produced and I really want the guide that comes with the game.

I was hoping to have the NA version of the game for the weekend since I'll have tons of gaming time (rare these days) but alas, this is certainly not going to happen now. The earliest I'll get the game is late next week, since Monday is a holiday and Canada Post doesn't work during weekends. Hell I may even rent it if I can, that way I can at least get started on building up my new character.

In other news, I just ordered a game called Baroque for the PS2 on ebay. Looking forward to that one too.

I don't think that's going to ever happen again. What am I talking about? Well, anticipating a game that a) I already own and b) I've already played for 200+ hours. It doesn't make any sense, but yet it's still happening. I'm actually looking forward to creating yet another character, albeit a different build, and focus on different weapons, and playing on the new and fresh (and exploit-free) North American server.

This isn't the sort of game where you see cookie cutter players in the same gear, using the same weapons. Your build really relies on your skill, as a player, to back it up. For example, I keep hearing how pole weapons are amazing. Well, I tried the mirdan hammer, 2 handed and yes, while it does have nice range, I still don't like being without my trusty shield. Guarding with a two handed weapon will block out some damage but absolutely nothing compared to a Purple Flame Shield +10. That's when I realized that this game has excellent balance between it's armors and weapons. You want to wear full brushwood armor? Well, better get your endurance up, use a ring of great strength and expect to pay a hefty "penalty regeneration" hit. Want to specialize in magic? Fine, but realize that in PVP, it can be completely blocked by anti-magic field, but only within a certain radius.

In short, the game is just brilliant; and I can't even imagine how much thought and time went into the many aspects that make this game so great.

I think on my next playthrough I'm going to pick one of the better 1h weapons and spend a lot of time farming for materials to craft a +5 moon weapon. That way, my scaling magic stat that I plan on beefing up will help add damage to the weapon as well.

Anyhow, looking forward to playing online with a new crowd! I should get my copy tomorrow, hopefully.

Seeing as I am unable to post a review in the game until it's North American release, I thought I'd share it here.

Tagline: Being both unique and punishing, it may require patience and persistence, but I promise you the sense of accomplishment is unparalleled.

Introduction, graphics and audio

First and foremost, you need to understand what kind of game this is. Obviously, it's unique and as you've probably already heard, it isn't cakewalk. The best description I can conjure up is that Demon's souls is a hybrid of several genres. It's a 3rd person action/RPG/strategy/adventure/horror game. There is plenty of emphasis on the action, RPG and strategy elements, along with a good dose of adventure and horror. Combine that with a hefty learning curve / difficulty, gorgeous visuals, fantastic enemies, great animation and what we have here is quite possibly the most unique RPG to come this generation, bar none.

As a previous fan of From Software's works, primarily the King's Field series, I was quite excited to learn (later than I would have liked) that they had developed an exclusive for the PS3. The right thing to do of course is to purchase a PS3 and import the Korean version of the game, which I promptly did.

Graphically, this game is not only gorgeous, but very foreboding, sinister, brutal... Think Diablo, but even more twisted, evil and original. The game is separated into five worlds, each with their own theme, enemies and bosses, and they're all a wonder to look at. Your own character and enemies in particular are so well detailed and animated, and bosses are in a league of their own.

I will often stop and stare at the sinister decor, enemies or backdrops and wonder what kind of minds designed this stuff up. The art direction is nothing short of amazing. It's freaky as hell; this is the stuff nightmares are made of. On top of the amazing textures, lighting and details, the game rarely dips in frame rate. Plenty of ambience and several little touches like blowing sand or dust in the wind, crows flying about, a torn flag flapping frantically in the wind. The whole experience is extremely immersive, and in most cases the lack of music actually helps make you feel like you're really there. And believe me; you wouldn't want to be there for real.

Audio is decent, and as I mentioned the lack of music except for key moments (such as boss fights) are more than welcome. I didn't even ask myself "Where is the music?", I was simply too busy trying not to die or absorbing the details.

Combat

Combat is entirely in 3rd person, save for when you're aiming with a bow for precision, or using the looking glass. It's definitely not hack and slash, and while it does take some getting used to, the added strategy and challenge helps keep things from getting stale and predictable. I never tire of the combat, even though I'd be going through a given section for the 20th time. Oh, have I mentioned that this game is difficult? The game will kill you in many ways, but mostly while fighting.

During combat, you can choose to lock on enemies if you wish, or simply face them manually with your left controller. If your weapon hits two or more enemies, then it will hurt them all. Different enemies will have different moves, and each one requires some observation in order to properly defeat. Locking on and off quickly on the fly is very helpful when dealing with more than one opponent, and will become your best friend. My only gripe is when you lock on, you can no longer control the camera with your right stick; instead, it now switches targets. And of course, being trained by countless other games that preceded this one, my mind keeps wanting to use the right stick to change the camera angle when locked on, but instead I end up switching targets which sometimes ends up getting me killed.

Delving further in the combat (hey, it's what you'll be doing most of), for melee, you will block by raising your shield. You can keep it raised until a hit connects if you like, but while it's raised you will not regenerate stamina as fast as if you let your guard down. When an enemy hit connects, your shield will absorb it (% depends on shield stats) and take away from your stamina. If you have no stamina left, you will take damage. If for example you get hit with a massive two-hander and it breaches your shield capacity, you'll stagger back and be wide open for subsequent hits. Rest assured that there are many elements in combat, and at first it may seem daunting, but once you get the hang of it, you will absolutely LOVE it. Think combat in Oblivion, if it were much more strategic and challenging. You will have to modify your tactics based on the enemies you fight; you can't block and slash for everything.

Dodging and rolling are other ways to avoid hits, which also takes stamina of course. If you have the right type of shield, you can even do a parry/riposte move but the timing has to be very precise. If you pull it off, you will get a critical hit causing massive damage and the game also slows down time and shows you a grisly mini-scene of your hit which is really satisfying to watch. The bigger shields, such as tower shields and the sort cannot parry, but instead the same control will perform a shield bash.

You can also backstab an unsuspecting enemy if you creep up to them and get close enough. With the help of proper equipment, walking slowly and being in soul form (more on that later) are some of the things you'll want to do when creeping up. If you pull it off, you'll get guaranteed critical hit and nice little animation, accompanied by juicy sights and sounds your blade digging deep in flesh, bone and sinew, followed by a jet of spurting blood. Sounds cool, yeah? Well it's absolutely delicious. This game has its fair share of blood and gore, but it's mostly tasteful; rarely will there be any dismemberment or extremes such as the like.

Apart from melee you also have ranged attacks, such as bows, crossbows and of course, magic. Bows are the long range weapon, and have the ability to zoom in (1st person) and aim, which gives them a nice edge. Crossbows and magic are very powerful but need to lock on, and can only be used closer range.

General Gameplay

Apart from combat, the rest of the gameplay consists of going through the various worlds and their sub-areas, each with their own boss. Although there are only 5 worlds, they are massive in size and segmented into portions, each big portion has a teleport stone. Each area will have traps, surprises, secrets and small puzzles. Killing enemies will grant you souls, which serve as the game's currency. In order to level up, buy, upgrade or repair equipment, you will need them.

The game auto-saves constantly, and you cannot reload a save game if you die; you must redo the portion of the level over again. All souls collected will be lost, and enemy spawns reset. You have one chance to go back to your area of death and reclaim your souls, but die again and they are lost for good. This means that there is a fair amount of repetition involved, but luckily as you go through a section, shortcuts are unlocked that allow you get through easily should you die, and once these are unlocked, they last for the rest of your current game.

Souls previously spent on levels or equipment are safe and sound if you die, so it's not as bad as some make it out to be. So long as you put some thought into it, you can minimize loss, and getting upset over lost souls is wasted energy because as you grow stronger, they become easier to gather. And of course, nothing prevents you from visiting certain soul-rich areas and re-doing them to "farm" souls in order to get more powerful if a given section is too tough or you can simply try another area. The game gives you freedom in choosing which worlds to visit, so if a particular world is to strong, it's probably because you're missing equipment that can be found in another world. It sort of reminds me of Megaman and its bosses; Metalman's weapon will tear through Woodman.

Also note that there is no in-game map at all, ever, and you will encounter some confusing maze-like areas. Luckily there are in game items called Augite of Guidance that you can drop on the ground like a flare to give you a visual marker. Of course for tough areas you can always make your own makeshift map but that's entirely up to you.

Character classes and RPG mechanics

Getting into character classes, In Demon's Souls they aren't exactly a pre-determined mold. It's recommended that you choose a starting class that comes close to the style you want and level it up accordingly. Each class starts with different starting equipment and stats but each class, providing you meet the minimum stat requirements, can use ANY equipment in the game. The royal for example, starts with a ring that slowly regenerates mana and a projectile-based spell. Suffice to say that it's a really versatile system that doesn't pigeonhole you into a particular path. Of course, even if your magic-based character meets the minimum requirements to wield a two-handed beast of a sword, you'll have to have upgraded your endurance to do it efficiently, and of course, have armor to accept the hits you'll surely receive do the slowness of the weapon.

As another example, you can create a thief-style character that can wield magic because both mage and thief will want light armor and be able to have the mobility to run around quickly and of course, dodge and roll as opposed to absorbing most hits with heavy armor and a shield. It's a logical system and it works very well.

Moving on to equipment, the game has a wide variety of armors, weapons, rings and consumables. Some weapons will be magical or can be forged appropriately to have magical effects with demon's souls (defeated bosses) and/or certain materials you'll find in the game. To cast spells, you'll need to find a wand-like item called a catalyst. To cast miracles (priest-like spells), you'll need a talisman. Some classes start with these. I recommend reading the demonssouls.wikidot.com website for a plethora of information on this and any aspect of the game.

Rings in the game will allow you to strategize for certain scenarios or fights. They're very important, just as important as weaponry and armor. Rings do a multitude of things, such as mana and HP regen, lowing your detected range, or offering different resistances (e.g. fire) or boosts that also have negative side effects (such as raising magic power but lowing magic defense). In any case, there are plenty of them to choose from.

Equipment can be found scattered throughout the game worlds, crafted by NPCs or sold, some easy to find, others much more difficult. Some enemies have a rare drop rate on some very nice equipment, for example a 1 in 100 chance. Your luck stat will influence these numbers, as well as the numbers for common drops such as herbs and spices (recovers lost HP and mana respective).

There are of course requirements for equipment – your statistics that you will level up with souls. The basics are straightforward; a heavy shield will of course require more strength to wield, and will be heavier to equip. In the game you have two weight statistics. One that governs your total carrying weight (all items equipped and non-equipped) as well as your actual equipped weaponry and armor. Equipment weight capacity can be upgraded via the Endurance stat, and if you can manage to have HALF of your equipped weight limit, you will move a lot faster, and your rolls will be silky smooth. Surpass that amount and you will be slow and clunky, which is fine if you're covered in heavy armor of course. It may sound complex and there are plenty other statistics that I won't go into, but it's all stuff you'll slowly learn as you progress through the game.

Leveling up your character is done in the nexus, a sort of in-between world that is your rest area. Here you will access all the other five worlds and also find vendors, spell trainers and a place to store excess equipment (very handy). As you rescue people throughout the world, they will end up here. Some of them, once rescued, will offer additional services, so keep an eye out for them.

Other elements

Also important to touch on, are soul form and human form, multiplayer aspects as well world tendency. This is where it gets a little complicated, but once again, these concepts will sink in over time. Reading on it on the aforementioned wiki site will surely help as well. Soul form / human form: When you beat a boss, help a co-op partner kill one, or use a particular item (stone of Ephemeral Eyes) you regain your human form, giving you your full HP bar. In soul form you only have half of it, or 75% if you wear the cling ring (found at World 1-1). In soul form, you make less sound, so it's easier to sneak around. In human form, dying will shift world tendency towards dark, this can be both bad and good depending on your goals.

Multiplayer in Demon's souls is rather unique. Players can leave messages anywhere in the game world, you'll find them on the ground written in red, like those included in the tutorial. The game-included ones and the player ones are identical, but playing offline will obviously only show the ones that came with the game. Also, a player can choose to aid another, or invade another's game in an attempt to claim some souls.

For my first playthrough, I've decided to play the game offline, as I found that some of the messages give away many of the puzzles or surprises I'd rather encounter on my own, and I wasn't in the mood to get invaded and killed randomly. That is of course, a personal choice. Note that there is no text or voice chat in the game; the only means of communication are via e-motes like cheers or waves (hold X button).

I think I've touched on a lot of the key elements of the game, hopefully giving you an idea of the depth and complexity of this title. It definitely goes against the grain of today's RPGs that hold your hand and offer little to no penalty for failure. It may not be for everyone, but for someone willing to invest the time and effort, it's well worth it.

Conclusion

For those willing to go through the ropes, a rewarding, dark, stimulating and very different RPG experience awaits you in Demon's souls. All five worlds are very different in style and the game's visuals are some of my favorites of any console experience. An incalculable amount of hours can be clocked in this game before truly experiencing everything it offers, but completing a single playthrough will probably take most gamers 40-60 hours. As you can see, I highly recommend it, but with a condition attached: get ready to replay some of the game's parts over and over again; defeat will come often, but the rewards and sense of accomplishment are well worth it.

- Jorlen

So many good games coming out in October. Borderlands, Dragon Age: Origins, and Fallout 3 GOTY edition. I'm particularly excited about Fallout 3 GOTY because I have managed to not play a single DLC yet. I'm not quite sure how I did it, because Fallout 3 is still my favorite game of all time. I've had my friends comment on each DLC so I have a faint idea of what to expect, but one thing is for sure: Replaying the game for the 4th time with ALL DLC installed will be awesome, almost like a fragmented expansion.

RPGs are just about the only games that can suck me in these days. Whereas before, years past, I used to be able to play just about anything, now as I age, my tastes are refining and I can't just pick up anything anymore. However, I've noticed I'm more forgiving when it comes to RPGs; take for example Sacred 2. I've spent at least 200 hours in that game and spetn a lot of time on several forums, so I've seen some of the complaints. Many are justified, but for me I just don't care; those issues mentioned don't seem to take away enough of it for me to consider putting the game down.

After Sacred 2 I picked up Too Human, which I played for about 50 hours or so. I think the one reason that I haven't put more time into it is that the character classes don't feel that much different from one to another, with the exception of the commando. Problem is, I just can't get into the commando; I often get frustrated with the targetting mechanics. I really enjoyed the champion, so much that I can't seem to get into the defender, berserker or bio-engineer either. It was a tough learning curve but I really enjoyed the game, problem is most of the game after you beat the 10 or so hour campaign is grinding and equipment hunting.

So now I find myself without any RPGs to play, seeing as I only enjoy western-style RPGS (JRPGs aren't my thing at all). I've recently played a few WW2 shooters, one being Battlefield: Bad Company and now Brothers in Arms: HEll's Highway. I'm enjoying those games but the problem with these is after I beat the game (usually 10-20 hours tops), there's no real reason for me to pick it up again. I mean sure, these games have multiplayer but that never interested me, so their main replay value is lost on me. This is why I love RPGs; they have plenty of depth and usually the game can be replayed with the different character classes and not feel too repetitive.

Once I complete BIA: Hell's Highway I have no clue what game I'll fire up next. One thing I love about the 360 is that there are so many games that I haven't played, it's relatively easy for me to just do some research on past games and pop in my local used gamestore and pick up a great 1-year old game for like $20.

October can simply not come soon enough; I really hope the RPGs announced don't get delayed; borderlands escpecially looks promising, considering it has several elements I loved about Hellgate: London (RPG meets first person shooter).