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| Source // PlayStation |
I don't like hard games. There, I said it. Now we can make this post about Demon's Souls go by a whole lot easier. Masochism disguised as an RPG, this game, and more definitively its sequel, brings the brutality of needlessly difficult video games of the past to the graphics of the future, wrapping everything together into a game that will push you to your limits, break you, almost taunt you to try again, over and over until you bloody well get it right, yeah?
But then 'needlessly' is a word that brings quite a lot of debate, as does the game of Demon's Souls itself. Is it needlessly hard, or worryingly realistic? Must it be hard to sell its ideas of overcoming incredible odds and rewarding the patient and the persistent? Is it just trying to do something nobody else seems to have bothered to do, and hope it pays off?
Whatever the reasons behind Demon's Souls, it sure rooted itself into video game history, and won't budge from it, though it is overshadowed by Dark Souls. Let's see what's what - and no, I didn't get very far at all.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
Fun Times
A CGI intro sets the scene of a miserable world home to a valiant few. Nothing about it alerts you to the notion that you're about to play a game whose difficulty for many makes Demon's Souls a game that only a handful of players could ever directly enjoy. Instead, it's a familiar tale: heroic knight fighting scary dudes and giant monsters.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Seeing the knight from the intro movie is a class, I pick it, hoping to emulate his success. I will inevitably fail, by the way.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
I've played Demon's Souls twice, once when alerted to the fact that its servers were shutting down soon, and once just recently to refresh my memory. In both cases, I went straight into the tutorial section, which takes you through a simple section of ruined stonework filled with zombie-like opponents that you attack, defend against, backstab, parry and riposte your way through, all while picking up various items with funny names.
The controls feel a little floaty, a little light, but only really when running and moving the camera. When swinging a sword or rolling out of the way, everything is suddenly chunkier, more cumbersome. I suspect this has a great deal to do with my stats and character class, but it can be a little jarring to switch between being lithe and nimble, and suddenly not so much.
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| Source // MobyGames |
In one swing of his weapon, I was down. Better luck next time?
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| Source // MobyGames |
Only there won't be a next time, in this particular instance, at least. That was your lot. You died in the tutorial, thanks for playing Demon's Souls, which has now brought you to the inescapable nexus, a hub world of sorts full of mystery.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
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| Source // MobyGames |
The ghostly inhabitants make little sense. I've actually watched playthroughs of Demon's Souls, long ago, and they don't make much sense watching them there, either. This is a game where you have to unravel the story for yourself through endless investigation and piecing together whatever scraps of information you have.
On the one hand, that's great. The world of Demon's Souls isn't my cup of tea, per se, but it's quite close. I like the bleak, hopeless outlook everyone seems to have, and yet all hope is not lost, despite being in an inescapable underworld of some description.
I just don't have a bloody clue what's going on and how I fit into the story. I don't even know what the story is. I think I'm being guided by someone to do something, so I guess we should follow the prompts and warp ourselves into Boletaria.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
There's a man-eating dragon thing here, can I warp back?
Welcome to Demon's Souls, adventurer. I hope you know what you're in for, and I mean that both in terms of the game and this post because I'm running out of screenshots.
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| Source // MobyGames |
To combat this, you've got combat, of course, which is a much slower, more methodical affair than in any game you've played up to this point.
Every swing of your sword drains your stamina a little, and you can only manage a quick combo before you need to rest and catch your breath. Every successful block or dodge also drains your stamina a little, so you've got to balance what you want to do with how much exertion you can afford to make use of. Is now the right time to swing, or should I back off first? If I back off too far, will I open myself to another one of their leaping attacks? Can I parry against that? What's the timing window for such an option?
All these thoughts go through your mind as you slowly work out just how capable you are in any given situation, and with enemies that can be killed in a couple of hits, it's a nice open environment to get some practice in before Demon's Souls starts throwing you into trickier situations.
It is, in effect, a massive game of trial and error, another thing I generally hate in video games. These cannon fodder are easy enough to learn, but soon enough you'll be introduced to guys with crossbows, or who fling fireballs at you, or hide in the darkness waiting to ambush you, or trapping you in tight confines so that you've no choice but to tackle them there and then...
As you work your way up this structure, they'll even roll boulders down the stairs to try and knock you down, or worse, and everything that would normally be done at a run in other RPGs is instead done closer to a walk. Can you really afford to run into the next section, blind?
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| Source // MobyGames |
Frustrations
Tens of minutes went by on my travels, inching my way through this space, getting to grips with how it all works, all to be undone in an instant. If my mental geography is correct, somewhere above this character's head is a kind of bridge or open corridor to the next section. At least I hope it's the next section because if it's an optional area I'll be pissed.
Anyway, somewhere up there, after what could easily be twenty or so enemies is a bad looking bloke with a spear, glowing red eyes, dressed head to toe in black who really, really doesn't want you making any progress.
Do you know what happens when he stops your progress? You die. Do you know what happens in Demon's Souls when you die? You go back to the last place where you were safe. Where's the last place you were safe? The start of the level. Do you know who respawns? Everyone.
Demon's Souls has a currency system in the form of souls. Harvest them from your enemies and use them to upgrade your character and equipment at select points of the game. If you die, you lose them all, but your soul and collection of souls sit in the world at the spot you died, which for me, was always twenty minutes away in front of an angry dude who always killed me.
You could run through the level again, avoiding enemies instead of killing them, but that might be too much of a risk. Then again, if you die before reaching your soul... well, you know what, I don't even remember how bad that'd be.
The point is, Demon's Souls has taken the 'if at first you don't succeed' approach and ramped it up considerably. Everything is at stake and failure will ruin you, and if you don't know what the mechanisms to succeed are, you're going to be ruined very often.
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
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| Source // Giant Bomb |
I want to see cool shit like this because Demon's Souls can be spectacular. But in my hands, with my patience, Demon's Souls is one of the worst things I could do with my time.
When the servers were online, players could help (and hinder) others by leaving messages on the floor to point you towards secrets or gives you a heads up before an ambush. With a limited list of words to choose from, these messages were often a little weird and almost inhuman, but there was generally a sense of community about it.
Here's a message from someone who has come before you and will always be ahead of you. They're anonymous, but their plight is the same as yours, and the troll posts are outnumbered by the useful offerings.
But seeing messages didn't help me defeat a scary-looking dude with a spear. It would be nice if a ghostly figure of another player came into my world to give me a hand in my time of need, pulling focus so that I could slip behind, or simply ganging up on a target to make things easier.
Unfortunately for me, nobody was around to help. I think it may only have happened in boss fights anyway, and who knows how far I was from one of those. And, yeah, I'm sure you can screw players over like this as well.
On my first attempt at Demon's Souls, I might have called it quits at the third death. On the second attempt more recently, I knew I was done after two. I wasn't in the mood to try again. The reward for getting past this enemy wasn't a sense of satisfaction strong enough to overcome the knowledge that there'd be another 20, 30, 40 hours of this shit to deal with.
And that's a little sad.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Final Word
Many arguments have been made about Demon's Souls and Dark Souls not being inclusive enough for those who want to immerse themselves into the world of the games, but not have to put up with the soul-crushing difficulty. On the one hand, I completely agree. Opening up your games to those who aren't as skilled, patient, or simply able to play as intended in the first place can surely only be a good thing, right?
But to introduce a super easy alternative to Demon's Souls would be to miss the point about overcoming such incredibly stacked odds to save the world, wouldn't it? I mean, we're literally dead at the start of this game. That's quite a hurdle, isn't it? Would you want to brush that aside for the sake of welcoming more players?
It's a tricky argument to have, and the fact of the matter is that enough people have bought into the staggering difficulty of the series because no other video game was daring to do it that it is now the very definition of difficulty. You are 'the Dark Souls of X' if you are difficult, or aimed towards a certain group of players who want to be thrown into punishing extremes of action gaming.
In much the same way that many Demon's Souls fans probably don't care so much about sports games, players don't have to care so much about Demon's Souls - but we do have to admit that it has done something remarkable.
I have absolutely no idea about how it controls over multiple hours, or if the classes are balanced, or if the difficulty curve is actually gentle, or even if the damn story makes sense or is worth following along with. All I know is that Demon's Souls isn't a game I want to play. It's a game I want to watch.
I've tried to play it, I've failed to play it, I will not be trying to play it again, but so much time has passed since its release and me finally giving it a go that I could now watch the experts play a PlayStation 5 remake of it - and I do want to want to see more Souls.
Was it good that I tried and failed? Yes, definitely. I just don't want to do it again.
Fun Facts
The game's difficulty was kept hush-hush while in talks with Sony, but the developers only intended it to be challenging for the sake of a rewarding experience, not impenetrable to many.
Demon's Souls, developed by From Software, first released in 2009.
Version played: PlayStation 3, 2010.
Version watched: PlayStation 3, 2009 (Super Best Friends Play)