Demon’s Souls starts off as almost any fantasy story. Prosperous kingdom which used the power of souls to gain it’s well being that accidentally awakens an old evil demon that unleashes a fog that envelops the land that none can escape from. Within this fog Demons feed on the souls of all trapped within and… ok, so it’s not exactly like almost any fantasy story, but boils down to a simple theme of power corrupting and a single hero who must rid the land of the evil. This is the world of Demon’s Souls, a world corrupted by evil and tainted by sins. Your character is one of many adventurers seeking fame and fortune by braving the fog and in doing so becomes one of the captive souls.

Let’s start from the beginning. You pick your class, change your appearance and then are thrust into a tutorial mission that teaches you how to play them game before killing you. This is the first game I can recall where the tutorial kills the player in order to advance into the rest of the game. Once dead, more of the story is told to the player and then it’s off to fight and collect souls. Souls act as currency in this game and they are collected by killing things (think Onimusha). The objective is to amass souls to buy or upgrade equipment and eventually advance levels through buying stat boosts. Each level has three defined areas which have a boss. By defeating these Boss demons you regain your living form as well as a Demon Soul and access to the next area.

The game, in essence, is a battle of patience as everything costs a lot of souls (upgrading costs souls and special upgrade items which are dropped by enemies) and if you die, all the souls you’ve collected remain at the place you’ve died. After respawning, all the enemies killed up to that point respawn too and dying before reaching your lost soul means it’s now gone for good. Rushing through this game is impossible, despite the very action oriented setup that it provides. If you hate grinding, you can stop reading right now.

Those of you that remember games like Diablo should feel right at home within the levels as there are various monsters, hidden areas, and characters that will aid or hinder the quest. Exploring areas can easily leave one lost and confused as there is no map and at no point does the game direct you as to what you should be doing. At any point you could easily get in over your head and die at a location you could never survive in only to learn you didn’t even need to be there in the first place. In many other cases you might over look something useful and not find it until later when it may no longer be as useful. As I said before, patience is key, and this game requires you to look everywhere and take time to understand your abilities and disabilities as well as the immediate surroundings. This game will at no time hold your hand.

While the game is not forgiving in the least, it is not a very hard game. There are many ways to exploit the game without cheating that will reap bonuses early. Of course many who play the game are impatient and have found huge exploits and cheats that ruin the game entirely which poses a problem since the game is all played online… sort of. By sort of, I mean that players can choose to join your game while you are living and kill you to regain their own body or help you defeat bosses to regain their body. You can expect there are a lot of people that have been killed very unfairly.

At any point in the game you may encounter a blood stain which will allow you to view the last moments of another player’s life in that area. usually it’s them walking into fire, fighting a mob of enemies without a weapon, or falling off a cliff. While mostly hilarious, these can also give hints as to what may lay ahead. Better hints are found in the form of messages that players can leave by assembling pre-made messages to convey an idea. Most of these are very straight forward, but more complex ideas can be easily lost. The majority of messages tend to be useless though, so it’s hard to tell if people are being genuine or not.

I want to dig into one of the more intricate aspects of the game right now, which is the Soul Tendency of a given level. By defeating bosses you can increase the tendency toward White, but dying in human form will push it toward Black. While there are ways to ensure getting both for each level, most players may only get one of the tendencies per area, or perhaps none. Once a level is complete, the tendency is locked. Depending on the tendency of a stage, new events will occur which might make the game tougher, lead to greater treasures, and in many cases elusive boss fights. It’s a good thing there is New Game + or most players would have to start from the beginning to get to see a lot of this content, and with a game like this I don’t think anyone would want that.

So, there you have it. This game requires patience or cheating. If you don’t like to be patient and don’t want to cheat, then pass on this game. If however you love grinding or power leveling then you will love this game, heck if you are a fan of Diablo you might even love this. It’s by no means a bad game, just not for everyone. Me, I’m going to go back to leaving messages at the edge of cliffs in hopes people accidentally fall off trying to read them.