Thread: Ntruder's Demon's Souls review

Too hard, but not fun hard, just plain old cheap. Like, play by their rules for an hour then get hit once and die and start all over cheap.

Don't buy it.

No but seriously, lets talk about hard video games


Rambo on NES. That game was hard. So was fighting Mike Tyson in Tyson's Punch Out! But I beat him. Ninja Gaiden on Xbox was probably the hardest game of our generation, and I beat it on Normal and Hard. I love a challenge. So naturally, when I heard Demon's Souls was insanely difficult, I looked forward to the challenge of Demon's Souls.

Let's examine Ninja Gaiden for a moment. (the original Xbox Ninja Gaiden, not Ninja Gaiden Sigma or Ninja Gaiden 2 or even Ninja Gaiden Black; all wimped out versions of Ninja Gaiden designed for wimps who couldn't handle the orignal) Anyway, Ninja Gaiden beats you down, stabs you, then spits on your corpse over and over until you are truly a master ninja. It requires razor sharp whits and ninja like reflexes and insane timing. You have to anticipate your enemy's moves and apply the appropriate counter at the exact right moment. This is especially true of boss fights. I remember fighting Alma at least 35 times in a row before I beat her for the first time... What a battle. I broke many controllers playing that game, but when you finally did win, it was so incredibly triumphant that it made it all worth while.

Not the case with Demon's Souls. Demon's Souls is more like a strict Catholic teacher. Open your mouth in class and get slapped with a ruler. Face forward, be quiet, and do your homework or you're going straight to hell. The combat isn't difficult. In fact, its rather easy. The enemies hulk in your direction and throw predictable blows and snail speeds. They don't fight you in large numbers and they're not very clever at all. They have no idea how to break your defenses... There's basically no enemy AI other than to swing at you when you get close.

So why is it hard? Its hard because you teleport to a level that takes roughly 20-30 minutes to get through, filled with bad guys you have to fight through, filled with traps, and if you die (and you will, a lot), you teleport BACK TO THE BEGINNING AND ALL THE BAD GUYS HAVE RESPAWNED. That means you have to do the same shit over and over and over and over and over until you GET IT PERFECT. Its like training a fucking Olympic gymnast! The only reason you lose a battle is because of clunky, unprecise controls, loose aiming and poor walking mechanics, etc. You accidentally fall off the edge of a staircase and die because the developers haven't mastered the WALKING function. You hack at the bosses for 5 minutes avoiding their retarded attacks (which demolish your health) until they are dead.

This game doesn't require skill, whit, or guile. It requires slow, steady, tedious progress along a very narrow path of acceptable actions. You have to fight each person one at a time. You can't rush into any battles and expect to make it all the way to the end, because sooner or later, somebody is going to land a deadly blow on you and you'll be back to the beginning.

It reminds me of the game Labyrinth, where you have to slowly guide the ball through the maze of holes. If you go to fast, you start over. If you make one tiny mistake, you start over. The only way to play it is slow and steady. Regardless of how amazing you are with your hands, you're going to fail simply because of the nature of the game. Its designed for you to fail often.

Next, YOU CANNOT PAUSE DEMON'S SOULS, EVER. This is just fucking stupid (pardon my french). They think that somehow not allowing you to pause the game makes it more difficult in a clever way? No, it doesn't, and do you know why? Because the game has no AI, which means after you've cleared out a tiny section of the room you're in, NOBODY COMES LOOKING FOR YOU EVER. You can kill everyone in a 12 x 12 room and stand still for the next WEEK, and the guy in the room next door will NEVER attack you. So having no ability to pause is just plan stupid. All it does is make the game so damn inconvenient that you have to kill everyone in the immediate vicinity before you can go take a shit. Just retarded.

Demon's Souls is an RPG, and you level up using Souls. When you kill people, you get Souls. But when you die, you lose them all, and come back in Spirit form, where you have the chance of recollecting those souls, if you can make it back to that exact spot you died. If you don't make it, you lose them for good. So you could play the game for 2 hours repeating the same level and come away with nothing (which I did before I finally beat the first major level). And when I was finished, I didn't have that sense of accomplishment that the IGN reviewers promised. I didn't jump out of my seat and taunt my TV for 5 minutes like I did when I beat Alma on Master Ninja difficulty. I didn't break a sweat playing the game. Instead, I was just like "Oh... That was pointless and lame. Thanks for wasting two hours of my life."

I played this game for two nights straight, beat the first level, and shelved it. Its reasonably fun to play; I mean, the combat is decent. But when you factor in the strictness and retardation of the gameplay rules, it squanders anything good that you might have. I'd love to go hack up some demon's, but I don't really want to run through the same 30 minutes of fighting boring soldiers for 3 hours first. The graphics are good, but who cares. The levels get boring when you've seen them a million times.

I don't recommend this game to anyone. There's just no point to playing it. The requirements are too steep and the rewards are too slim. If you want a challenge, pick up Ninja Gaiden

I see you marveling at my literary mastery Sobay.

I have this game here still unopened.. I heard this game was crazy hard last year around Holloween time. I guess when you signed online to play there was some DL content that programmed the game to be insane.. I was reading about every tossing their controllers and breaking them because the game was epic hard..

Nice review..

What's on the horizon??

Originally Posted by Ntruder

I see you marveling at my literary mastery Sobay.

Hell I didn't even know Sobay could read.

I believe I'll pass on this one . Ty truder.

Originally Posted by House72

I have this game here still unopened.. I heard this game was crazy hard last year around Holloween time. I guess when you signed online to play there was some DL content that programmed the game to be insane.. I was reading about every tossing their controllers and breaking them because the game was epic hard..

Nice review..

What's on the horizon??

On the horizon for me? Well I've been a Halo junkie since 2001 and Reach is probably the most fun game I've ever played, so I'm eagerly awaiting September 14th. I was a diehard Halo 2 online fan... played it consistently for 3 years. Halo 3 lost my interest after a short time for various reasons, but I think Reach could keep us going for years much like Halo 2 did. I'm also looking forward to Fallout Vegas and Dead Rising 2.

Originally Posted by SOBAY310

I actually was, LOL!!!

It was cool to read your review and then go and read IGN who basically all over the game saying the challenge was refreshing and gave it a 9.5. I find games hard enough as they are, so I will definitely take your review to heart.

Well I bought the game strictly because I love hard games, but its not the fun type of hard; the precise games that require mastery of the controls and game mechanics. Its like NES hard; where you die after 2 hits and start the whole game over. Its hard the same way that mowing your lawn with a beard trimmer is hard. Its more pointless than challenging in my opinion.

IGN raved about how great it was to finally be triumphant, but I found the opposite to be true. When I finally beat the level, I was just like "Jesus, finally I can save my progress and quit playing this game," kinda like the crappy movies that are taking up space on your DVR's. Finally you just watch them so you can feel good about deleting them to free up hard drive space for more important stuff.

I'm going to keep pumping out the analogies as they come to me.

Demon's Souls is challenging the same way Killzone 2 would be challenging with the aiming sensitivity set to zero and the Y-axis NOT inverted.

Its challenging in the same way that Halo 3 campaign is difficult to play with the TV turned off.

Similar challenge as playing Guitar Hero with the regular non-guitar Xbox controller