Wow, Idonteven know where to start when looking at Demon's Souls, so I will give you a warning. This game is one of the hardest if not the hardest gameihave ever played. Iveplayed the game about 6-7 hours over the course of 2 days and I was barely able to get by the first boss of many and into the second level. I must say that I was on the verge of rage quitting many times.

The main concept of the game is to warp to these various worlds and slay the 3 or 4 major demons that are trying to throw off the world balance. There are roughly 6 worlds in total with at least 3 parts of each. Once the first bossis beatenit opens a new path to the next boss in the level. There has been not much story so far which is unusual for an RPG, but in my opinion the game creates a newrpggenre mixing different elements to create a first time experience.

The game plays as a third person action RPG. The action however has to be very planned and the player must use tremendous patience in attacking and blocking. Yourcharacterhas a very limited stamina bar and using attacks and blocking drains the bar quicklyforcingyou to step back for a second and recover the stamina. Therefore if you go in with your axe swinging you will fail and fail again. Honestly even if you are patient you will fail. There are various weapons that can be upgraded and many shields as well. You can equip weapons to each hand or use a weapon with both hands to make it more powerful. In order to besuccessfulyou must play the game slowly and really think about eachcharactermovement, and enemies will often ambush you or jump out from nowhere.

The main purpose of the gameplay is to collect souls by killing enemies and using these souls to upgrade weapons, charecter stats such as strength dexterity ect, and to purchase items. The difficulty comes in here as everytime you die you loose all of the souls you have collected. They stay at the spot where you died, and you must start the level over and reach the souls you lost before you die again or else they are gone for good and your pretty much screwed. Everytime you die you lose everything except for items, and are forced to play the entire level over until you get to the end of it. This is where the frustration comes in and I spent about 5 hours trying to get past the first level where if in a regular game it would have taken an hour tops. Demon Soul's really isnt that long but the replaying of levels when you die can easily add 50+ hours to the game with a lot of frustration.

The uniqueness of Demon Souls comes from its online component. As you are playing the game in your world you see the outline of other players that are currently playing the game. You can see every move other players make. You can also interact with other players by leaving messages on the ground that indicate traps ect. Messages can also be rated, and when a message you left is rated you gain all of your HP back. Whenever a player dies you can see their bloodstain on the ground, and thisallowsyou to interact and you can watch exactly how the player died leaving you with some hints as how to kill enemies ect. When you die you enter soul form as I mentioned with having lost all of your souls and playing the level over. As you advance past the first stage of the game the option is allowed that you can join some one elses world and help them in coop beat a stage. This will give you your souls back and allow you to regain your body without having to go find your bloodstain and recover the souls. If you want to be summoned to another players game much like player messages there is a blue indicator on the ground that is placed for you and people who stumble apon it can summon you into the game. Likewise as you are traveling you can summon people in your game to help you with stages. The other aspect to this is that you can become an evil soul and invade other players games, and if yousuccessfullykill the human player you get your body and souls back. Therefore you can play the game as friendly orabsolutelyevil. I havent done either of these yet, but as I play more I will no doubt explore those options. In your world you can also kill NPCcharactersto gain an evil soul or you can remain on the good side. The game world itself can also shift from good to evil, and when the world is evil the enemies are even harder but you gain greater treasures from killing them. Another aspect that adds to the difficulty is that the game pretty much saves with every step you take so if you really messed up there is no way to reverse what happened.

Technically Demon Souls looks fine and the graphical ****really creates a mysterious and dark world to play in. There have been notechnicalglitches or bugs so far. The graphics and audio in the game are not outstanding but they are done well to fit the theme of the game. Some of the enemies and bosses are just creepy looking and each type of enemy has its own ****

Honestly if this game was a little less difficult and more forgiving and had a more developed plotline it could be one of the best rpgs ever made. I have mentioned how infuriating and frustrating the game is, but there issomethingthat makes you keep playing and playing even though you arnt making any progress. I could see myself pouring hours into the game without ever accomplishing much at all, and I applaud Atlus for making such a unique and pleasing game even though they are putting gamers through torture with the difficulty. This is also my first Atlus game Ive ever played and I am really impressed. My early score of Demons Souls is an 8.5/10 and without the numbing difficulty this game would be getting close to a 9.5/10 but right now I cant score it much higher due to the frustration. I will keep you all updated to my progress in the game. If you really like rpgs or are looking for a challenge there is no doubt a ps3 is worth owning just for Demon Souls!