Demon’s Souls: Retrospective
Wo-o-aaa-ahm I'm still alive - yeahhh wo-oh..
Demon?s Souls conjures up a level of ambivalence within me that I haven?t felt since I was thirteen and mad at my parents.? On one hand, they probably just finished beating me; on the other hand I loved them because they?re my parents.? In some odd twisted way, it?s almost comical that it took a fantasy role playing game to make me feel like that again. At heart, Demon?s Souls is an old school dungeon crawler that?s been varnished to veneer sheen through the power of current generation technology.? And as an added sparkle, the developers thought it would be appropriate to shoehorn in some story about an old God taking over the world by releasing a fog populated by demons that consume
human souls (I get it, Demon?s Souls ahhhhh).? An endless wave of heroes venture into the fog and none come out, almost like the tag line to some clich? horror title.? If you?re like me, the clich? is usually enough to get my attention, but in the world of Demon?s Souls the story is never revisited in any meaningful way.? Friends who used to tell me I was better suited to reading books instead of playing games were probably right.
The words that have been used to describe the gameplay in Demon?s Souls range from difficult to brutal to soul crushing.? And after playing about ten hours I felt that immersive and brutal was a fairly happy medium.? The game could be addictively un-fun, if such an adjective existed.? It didn?t help that I started off as one of the more difficult classes to use, the disparity between thief and soldier was just so vast it made option of even choosing classes in the first place to be completely superfluous even though the customization options were overwhelming.? In the end, From Software could have just given me two choices: useless or useful, and without the ability to make my thief oh so pretty, after all her face was beaten in incessantly within the first hour.
Critics and players alike have repeatedly praised the way multiplayer works, with the ability for players to leave each other pre determined messages that warn you of the dangers ahead, while their blood stains treat you to their grisly demise, also warning you of the dangers ahead.? I probably came across hundreds of blood stains only to realize that it meant you should walk into a room then walk out, train out whatever?s inside, and hope that you still didn?t bite off more than you can chew.? It?s a system that punishes you for being reckless, and punishes you less for being careful, not the most fun of decisions to make.? Other multiplayer aspects involve other players joining your game to either kill you or help you.? And it lends itself to two new issues, having a bunch of high levels showing up to help you kill a boss literally sucks the difficulty right out of the game; a few blue guys show up, fireworks ensue, collect treasure.? Having players join in order to kill you on the other hand even less fun than the former, you kind of sit there and think, ?Well shit, like I didn?t have enough to worry about before.?
If you search for Demon's Souls images, you'll find this, I'm not kidding!
Personally, I find the game a grind, its non-stop trial and error that has you walking two steps, dying, coming back, beating death back by the hair on your chin, only to turn the corner and die again.? The last time I tried to have any meaningful conversation about the game ended with me being lambasted and accused of not being a real ?gamer.? As far as I?m concerned now, trial and error gameplay is a grind, because it is repetitive.? Demon?s Souls has only cemented that into my mind more than any other game, and I liked Ragnarok Online.? Too many have told me that the reward of overcoming the challenges in Demon?s Souls is the same reward for a job well done: self-satisfaction.? For me, it simply isn?t enough, I need some kind of payoff that doesn?t involve me patting myself on the back and then realizing I look stupid.? Be it a cool story or awesome treasure, Demon?s Souls was light on both leaving me wondering if I had faltered as a gamer, or simply got old.? In the end I didn?t blame myself.? Instead, I decided ?gamer? was some minority of over-educated twenty something virgins living in their mother?s basement lamenting reality?s inability to cater to their every whim.? It?s a demographic that I?d gladly bow out of.
Ratings
- The King of Fighters ’95 4Gag Battle
(5.00 out of 5)
- The King of Fighters ’95 4Gag Battle
About Oyaji
Well then, my hats off to him. I’m quite sure his experience is in the minority though.
Either way, I’m glad people enjoyed it. It’s a unique experience that I don’t think people should have missed out on. After all, I feel like it’s a masochists game, and I’ve probably just moved on from video game masochism to other kinds.
He used scimitar and then eventually katana, very rarely used a bow
Then he must be pretty darn good. I died in the tutorial countless times, but I went melee, I heard you’re supposed to stick to range as thief.
I watched my friend play through as thief, and he had no trouble getting through the game O.o
Well… aside from the flamelurker demon, but that was due to lack of preparation.
Kyphrin, I watched my friend play through as Royalty, I would say try being a thief, your experience will vary greatly.
That being said, I’m glad you enjoyed the game, it seems like a lot of people did. I’m still going to harp on the lack of story progression.
I found this game pretty intense and it had the ability to draw me in very easily… I really enjoyed the multiplayer in it, I played as royalty and was going almost straight mage, though I had created a really nice Falchion, and I am proud to say that I have yet to die from another player invading my world ^^ nothing better than blasting someone and then picking up 100,000 souls…
Anyway, I think in the beginning you’re right, the game is a lot of trial and error. But by the time you get to the second dungeon you should have a pretty good handle on what’s safe and what’s dangerous. I died maybe once a day, playing for a few hours a day. Running away and pot shots aren’t really necessary once you got a good handle on the controls, my mage tended to circle single enemies and take a dodge and stab tactic with her sword, and for groups I just stuck with fireball or soul ray most of the time.
I don’t recall ever saying the game was a hack and slash. I tried to finesse my way through the game, I mean, we’re on a fighting game site for crying out loud, we’re practically comprised of people who specialize in precise gaming movements.
While your experience with the game is different, and I think that merely speaks to your skill than anything else. You say that everyone complains and that it’s a grind, so it must be a grind to a lot of people. Everyone said they died on the first stage repeatedly, well, everyone is a lot of people right? So Demon’s Souls was pretty easy for you, that’s great, but you can’t use your perspective as a generalization on how everyone else will experience the game.
Though I neglected to mention that when I played through as a soldier and royalty I also passed the intro stage dying once or twice, but it really wasn’t any more fun than when I was dying a boatload as the thief.
I get tired of people calling Demon’s Souls a grind and a hack n’ slash. If you try to hack n’ slash you will die over and over and over and over again. If you roll and block with precision, attacking with efficiency it’s possible to beat entire levels without dying more than a couple times. I beat the first level a while back, which everyone said they died on many times, and I only died once.
It is not a grind most of the time, I’ve replayed stages several times, but it’s usually because I want to explore some area that I missed the first time. There is quite a bit of hidden stuff that you won’t find unless you take risks.
There really are almost no puzzles though; the closest to puzzles I’ve seen is a couple cannon ball rolling traps and some environmental obstacles that you can use against vastly tough demon crowds, such as a mine cart that explodes on stuff. Usually the few puzzles that there are deal with explosions or heavy weights crushing random noobs.
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I never ran into any puzzles, it’s pretty much a straight forward hack and slash. Demon’s Souls kind of takes skills out of the equation, because let’s say you are a pretty skilled gamer. You can do a complicated technique or sequence 90% of the time. That means if you were taking the creative and skilled route through Demon’s Soul’s you’d die 10% of the time. Considering the amount of mobs/enemies you encounter dying to 10% of the mobs would be perhaps, every 10-15 mins. But when you start all over again, it means you’ll probably die somewhere near where you did. Demon’s Souls leaves you no room for error, you have to be perfect or pretty damn close.
So DS is proper old school hard. I wonder if it was planned to target that particular niche market in the first place. The fact that is a trial and error game slightly bugs me because I like to be creative when I play. Sure, there is satisfaction from being a skilled elitist, and the sense of “death around the corner” is probably a good thing for noobs to feel, only problem is they would have got rid of the game immediately. So we’re back to the skilled elitist market.
Well I played Prince of Persia on the BBC Micro and the C64. I thought it was bloody hard, and after I got to a certain point, I simply could not get any further. I was pleased to tell other people I got that far but… I prefer to tell people I’ve finished a game. I’m not sure I can call myself an elitist, as the players I know today, aged around 30, would simply be bored by trial and error games, so there’s not much point gloating to them, they would simply think I’m a sad little nerd.
Another thing, it’s just a hack and slash game in the end, right? No puzzles like Silent Hill? No story? If that’s really the case, I’m really not that interested. Although… the boss fights look really amazing. As an old git, I do want the whole package these days: graphics, story, voice acting, boobs, combos and accurate sprite collision.
If Foxhole finds it hard, that’s disturbing as he does have decent skills. How far did you get, Gojira?
Demon’s Souls isn’t a grinder in the traditional RPG sense of a grind. You don’t have to run around one area to gain exp over and over again in hopes of powering through the next dungeon, though I suppose there is that option. It’s grinding is more about trial and error, you fight through section, die, go back and try it again and hope you don’t die. The problem is that it does capture that old school tradition of dead, back to the start. I find that getting back to where you died can be a terribly tedious experience, and sometimes in the rush of getting back to where you were you generally die. After it happens a few dozen times you realize that hours have past and you’re not sure whether it was worth the time investment.
If the loot was good, and the story was actually touched upon after the intro movie, I’d gladly grind Demon’s Souls trial and error or not because I’d have motivation to do so. But like Gojira said, the satisfaction from Demon’s Souls is the satisfaction of survival, and I can’t stomach that. It might be one of the reasons why I find retro gaming to be distasteful. People have said that the newest generation of gamers are having it far too easy, being hand held through the experience of gaming. I on the other hand thought that the experience of gaming back on the NES was hard because the way stories could be delineated were limited by technology, and hence you had to make up for it by making the game difficult. It was difficult for difficult sake, or else there’s be no replay value. The way I see it, unless you wanted to read a boatload of text, story was scrapped for challenging gameplay. Demon’s Souls was a brilliant opportunity to do both, have a challenging game and to tell a fantastic story, but they didn’t, and the only reason to play ended up being the challenge and for me, that’s simply not good enough.
I remember when games used to be HARD, like, fall off the platform, you restart the level.
I note how some gamers take pride in an achievement that is not hard to do but rather takes time. Grinding is not hard.
Why play games? Escapism? To have fun? Is grinding fun? Grinding feels more like work, and the achievement gained from completing that work can be as satisfying as the real thing. But then…. am I playing a game or is it more a simulator for work?
The whole “it’s too difficult, therefore it’s a game for skilled gamers only” hype is actually drawing me in, because I quite enjoy the idea of making people with no skill recognise that and that I have some, even if it’s actually just grinding.
So is DS a grinder or actually hard?
Ah no, it wasn’t that, I ended up locking on the wrong one and my character decided to launch herself off the stairs and to her death instead of locking onto the zombie in front of me. I won’t dismiss that the earlier stages become easier with more soul levels and gear, but every new situation is as dangerous as when you first started. I don’t mind difficulty, but I do believe that as you get further, there should be a sense of owning the game, instead of the opposite. It clearly isn’t the case for Demon’s Souls. Perhaps it’s just not my cup of tea, but I wonder if all its praises are sung my a small minority of gamers who just want to sound elite touting an experience I find to be dated.
Of course it’s all dangerous, but some things are just more dangerous than others.
If you’re dying from missing one little grunt zombie though, you need better equipment badly.
lol — I had to read it a bunch of times, but I got the point :p
Quite honestly, I don’t think there wasn’t any situation in the game wasn’t dangerous. Even the most harmless of situations could go south, and fast. Some of it I could blame on poor controls. I know I died to a few base zombies I was tearing through fairly quickly because my auto target button decided to lock on to one further down the stairs than the one right in front of me. It’s strange that I still forgave the game for such a transgression where many would be crying foul at. Perhaps it’s because the game could be so absorbing in spite of generating such frustration.
Though, if satisfaction is meant to come from just surviving, I might as well not play games, because that’s what my life is.
If being thoughtful and careful involves running away and taking potshots then I don’t think you’re getting the point.
Demon’s Souls is an exercise in restraint. Your desire to explore every nook of every map is tested, and if you give in to it too much, if you stick even one small toe into a dangerous situation, you will end up in over your head and die. It’s a game where the best strategy is to discard your confidence and learn how to build yourself up in familiar situations by gathering souls and improving your equipment before moving on. The satisfaction is meant to come from just surviving, and if you understand well enough you can do that for a pretty long time.
You can be as thoughtful and careful throughout the entire thing and still be pummeled relentlessly. And there really isn’t any rewards for it, as mentioned in the original article. Unless, self-satisfaction is your cup of tea.
But Demon’s Souls isn’t even an RPG to begin with…it’s a stat-heavy action game.
Anyway, being defensive minded is one half of the same coin – the game rewards thoughtful, considered play rather than all-out offense. Maybe that’s just not your cup of tea?
Good stuff! This will tie right into that article about RPGs!!!! The monotonous grinding of certain JRPGs has started to put me right off.
Did you really just compare a fighting game to Demon’s Souls?
Just kidding.
For a dungeon crawler, Demon’s Souls is very defensive-minded. Most of the time you’ll be running away while taking pot shots at your enemy. And when that fails you try to run better and take more pot shots. The experience is very static, even as a caster the key is to generally run away and shoot more shit.
At least in a fighting game, someone is always the aggressor. And if you’re always caught in the corner fending someone off, you’re doing it wrong. Demon’s Souls puts you in the corner, tells you to stay there, then tells you you’re doing it right. Quite frankly, it’s unsatisfactory game play. The worst thing is half the time you won’t know what you did wrong, because you got one-shotted. At least fighters give you a chance to evaluate and calculate. There’s absolutely no luxury of time in Demon’s Souls, no pause button, no menu pause, absolutely nothing, I hope you went to the washroom.
I don’t know – trial and error to me is a part of getting better at video games. It’s kind of like when you’re learning a new fighting game and some guy does a pressure string on you that you can’t defend against or counter for some reason. Through a process of trial and error you eventually figure out how to counter it and move on to the next thing you need to learn.
It’s the same thing here, really, except that you’re competing against a computer.