First Impressions: Demon’s Souls

Upon returning from the gym Tuesday evening, I was greeted by the sight of a small package on my front porch.  Inside was a copy of Sony and From Software’s Demon’s Souls.  I spent the rest of the night playing it, and here’s what I think so far.

Demon’s Souls, the byproduct of an (un)holy partnership between Sony Computer Entertainment Japan and Armored Core developers From Software, was designed as a spiritual successor to the King’s Field series of action RPGs on the PlayStation and PlayStation 2.  The King’s Field games were extremely hardcore first person action RPGs, often noted for their vast, monster-filled dungeons, strange enemy designs, and unforgiving difficulty.  In fact, the King’s Field series has quite a bit more in common with Western RPGs like Diablo, Oblivion, and the like than it does with its Japanese brethren.  Demon’s Souls is no different, but it takes the gameplay into the third person.

The first thing you’re greeted to when you boot up Demon’s Souls (aside from a quick 10-second install that grants the game Trophy support) is a character creation screen.  From here you can choose a name, a gender, a character class, and design a face for your avatar in the game.  Like Oblivion, your character class is important for the beginning of the game because it determines your baseline stats and equipment.  I picked Thief, as I always like playing agile characters in RPGs.  After creating my character, I was quickly placed in a short, but informative tutorial dungeon full of zombies and errant knights just waiting to be stabbed in the face.  I worked my way through the dungeon, dispatching every enemy that got in my way.  After a few minutes of quick duels with weak enemies, though, I was gifted with the misfortune of meeting this guy.

He killed me in two hits.  However, unlike typical RPGs, death is just the beginning in Demon’s Souls.  My character soon awoke in a strange tower-like structure called the Nexus, where he was greeted by a blind girl who notified him that he was dead, but by using the souls of the demons inhabiting the nearby city of Boletaria, he could regain his human form.  That’s right, you die five minutes into Demon’s Souls and there’s no way around it.  Anyway, the Nexus serves as the hub world for Demon’s Souls, providing access to shops, NPCs, and portals to the game’s six massive worlds.

The only portal that was usable upon entering the main game was the one to Boletaria, so I quickly hopped in and found myself on the front steps of an absolutely massive castle.  I took a few steps forward and was immediately greeted by a massive red dragon, which swooped down from the castle’s parapets, roared loudly, then made off with a mouthful of corpses.  Not exactly a king’s welcome.  Continuing up the steps, I was ambushed by several sword-wielding creatures that looked, well, part-way human.  One on one battles with these creatures were absolutely no contest, as their swings were slow enough to allow me to parry them and instantly kill them with a rather satisfying riposte.  Things get a little more complicated when fighting multiple enemies, especially with the Thief’s starting dagger, which has the attack range of…right in front of him.  I quickly set out to find myself a better weapon, which meant getting money to talk to the blacksmith.  As might be guessed from the title, the currency in Demon’s Souls is…well, the souls of demons.  Every enemy you kill is worth a certain amount of souls, which function jointly as money and experience points.  This makes every decision a costly one, as it takes time to gather souls, and if you die in battle, you lose all the unspent souls you had in your inventory to that point unless you can find and retrieve your body, similar to Diablo.  However, during the first dungeon, using souls to level one’s character up is disabled, so the decision was slightly easier.

As I mentioned before, Demon’s Souls is divided into six worlds; the cursed city of Boletaria is only the first, and the first dungeon in Boletaria is the castle itself.  Boletaria Castle is a rather typical dungeon, with long corridors, vast catwalks, and plenty of zombies, insane knights, and slimes to deal with.  It’s also got its own fair share of secrets to find as well, including plenty of loot to gear your character up with.  After a good, solid two, maybe three hours of hacking and slashing the clearly disturbed denizens of the Castle, I found myself face to face with the game’s first real boss; a massive pile of black slime, covered in discarded knights’ shields and lances, appropriately named Phalanx.  Phalanx, much like the boss of the Ice Palace in Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, is rather harmless on his own; but he comes to the battlefield with his own personal bodyguard; a legion of miniature black slimes, each with their own shields and spears, which they do so love to throw at the player.  However, any self-respecting fantasy fan knows that slimes don’t like fire, so I used an item I picked up off of one of the berserk knights and set my sword ablaze, making short work of Phalanx’…phalanx.  Once his servants were all but decimated, it was simply a matter of carving my name into the boss’ pudding-like skin and ending the battle as quickly as possible.

Upon popping the festering black zit that was Phalanx, my character absorbed the Demon’s soul and soon found himself fully corporeal once again.  From there I was given a healthy dose of backstory, explaining the events that transpired to throw Boletaria into darkness and eventually bring me to the Nexus; in essence, Phalanx wasn’t the only Demon that needed to be killed, meaning that Boletaria Castle was only the prologue…

Overall, I’m quite enjoying the game so far.  The atmosphere is excellent, the graphics are certainly quite good (though playing the game immediately after Killzone 2 doesn’t help it), and the battle system is fun and well-developed.  There’s lots more to say about Demon’s Souls, so keep an eye out later this week for my impressions on the game’s rather interesting take on online play, and a full review coming before the end of the month!