Demon's Souls PS3

[Jashin]

Got the Asian version of this through today, reading about this and being fan of From games piqued my interest. The game is basically a 3rd person dungeon crawl type affair. The first level is a huge castle which you have to explore, overcoming traps and enemies. The levek design is really good, with secret acreas to look for, and balconies etc which look onto other areas of the castle which give a real sense of 'place'. There's a Rouge element as well - there are no saves mid level, and when you die, you go back to the beginning, albeit with the same equipment you died with.

The twist is that your character has two states, real and soul. When you die, you enter your soul state, and HP is diminished by about 1/3. You can't leave soul state unless you defeat a demon (a boss essentially), are revived by another player or use a special item,(which I haven't come across yet).

You can see other people running aorund the level playing the game, but other than gestures, you can't interact with them or affect their game unless you revive from their soul state so that they can assist you (not sure how this works yet).

There's a nice heavy feeling to the combat, and button mashing will get you nowhere. The graphics are nice enough, but the ragdoll physics are terrible - you can get your feet caught up with corpses and drag them around). The sound is great, very minimal music, meaty combat sound. The atmosphere, certainly for the first level, has an Ico quality about it, which is refreshing.

Really impressed with this so far, hopefully this will be given a Western release. The Asian version is all English apart from the manul, which comes with one of the usual short guide sheets.

[Phar]

Cheers for the impressions, hopefully I should have mine some time this week, apart from bits of info thats been translated haven't heard much in regards to the quests, how does that work? is there a main story and loads of side quests, if so have you done any of the side ones, just wondering what type of quests you've done.

[Jashin]

The impression I get from the first level is that you should forget anything about side quests and the like. It really is a dungeon crawler, and doesn't in the slightest resemble Oblivion etc.

Giving the first level as an example, you essentially have to defeat a boss to revert to your real state. So you wander the level, checking everything out. You see a couple of huge dragons on a hillock in the distance, but get roasted when they see you, so that's obviously an area you can return to when you've levelled up. You unlock shortcuts as you go along, which remain open when you die, so your journey to your point of death when you ressurrect won't be as long.

It's actually a very pretty game in places, with a really good sense of scale. Seeing dragons resting in the distance from a parapet in the castle is a good example. On the other hand, characters don't cast shadown, which looks a bit odd, and there is the usual inexplicable torch light effect going on even though your character doens't carry a torch.

Currency is measured in souls collected, dropped when you kill enemies. When you die, you drop all your souls, but can pick them up by revisiting your point of death from the last round.

Another nice feature is that other players can leave messages for eveyone to see on the floor, which can be helpful. On the other hand, someone has also left what looks like a plot spolier, which is pretty irritating.

[Number45]

I ho no idea this had any kind of online component, I assumed it was purely a single player third person affair. Sounds interesting anyway, I really hope we see an English language release.

[Jashin]

Pretty sure we will - as I said, the Asian version is all English, it's only the manual which is in Chinese.

[Phar]

Cheers, sounds exactly like Kings Field then if theres no side quests.

I really hope we see an English language release.

Probably Ubisoft will publish it, they've pretty much published all From's stuff this gen.

[SuperBeatBoy]

Sounds and looks great. Don't know if i can justify importing it now though, not with RE5 next week.

[Jashin]

I think that Sony published the Asian and JPN versions, so I guess they may do the same in the West.

[Briareos]

I had a look at some online videos and the combat looked a little clunky, is it still the case in the final release?

[Jashin]

Depends what you mean by clunky really. Button mashing will get you killed quickly, so it's all about timing and blocking. There are moves to push your opponent away, heavy and quick attacks, two handed whielding for more powerful attack, blocking and parrying, so there's quite a few options to use. Moves feel slow but powerful, and you can knock an opponents guard away to expose them to follow up attacks. There's a stamina bar which every move takes away from (the bar recharges), so you have to think about what you're doing - you can't attack with no stamina. Attacks against guards also take away stamina. Defensively, you can also roll away from attacks, or forwads, to the side etc. So yeah, it's no DMC or whatever, but it feels satisfying, far more so than something like Oblivion.

[Phar]

Just had 40 minutes on this, combat is far better than the videos, it's no Ninja Gaiden or anything but it does require a decent level of skill against certain enemies to not get hit, also like the option to weld the swords with both hands for faster combat.

Enemies actually seem to want to attack you rather than waiting for you to approach them, some even seem to have a more tactical approach, one of the Knights I fought was looking for an opening to hit me rather than just swinging his sword randomly, had to parry his attacks to beat him.

Seems a decent game so far but very tough, died loads of times.

[Jashin]

It really is tough. I'm just trying to level up a bit so that I can run the gauntlet of a fire breathing dragon on some battlements.

You on the Asian server Phargfetchd? I can add your tag if you like -mines Monoccoto. What area are you playing in?

[Phar]

Haven't had a chance to play it online yet, there was a 45mb update when I first started it up but it was really slow so decided to start offline.

Only on the first bit at the minute, only put about an hour in at most though, I'll try updating it again tonight then add you.

Also someones started a pretty decent wiki for this, tips, maps etc.

http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/intro

[Number45]

That Wiki says there's no pause in this game.

[Phar]

No there isn't, the start button just brings up a menu, for items, equip etc, the games still running though.