Demon's Souls (1 more month of online, people!)

[The_Real_Crunk]

Really reminds me of Devil May Cry 4, but alot slower. Dude, in armor, go exploring, fight big monsters! Looks cool.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/43989.html

[Kefka Jr.]

Re: Demons Souls

I like that the hero's just a dude in some armor. No mugging for the camera or trying to be cool. Just takin' care of business.

In that way, it's... really nothing like Devil May Cry.

[Toaster]

Re: Demons Souls

The game is getting positive feedback in Japan and has sold a lot of copies, but some people are saying that they don't think it's going to hit U.S. shores. So far I've heard that it's like a "Kings Field / Monster Hunter / God Hand / Diablo 2 mash-up" and while I don't know how much I believe that, such a combination would surely kick ass.

You can buy the Asian version complete with English is you're so inclined. Considering that they've already got English support at this point... I have a feeling that it will come to America sooner than never.

[John Mora]

Re: Demons Souls

Isn't there region locking?

[Valkysas]

Re: Demons Souls

Kings Field / Monster Hunter / God Hand / Diablo 2 mash-up. I don't know how much I believe that, but such a combination would be effing amazing.

Well, it does contain the Moonlight Sword from King's Field.

Isn't there region locking?

Regional lockout doesnt exist for PS3 games.

[Valkysas]

Re: Demons Souls

BY A WHOLE MINUTE. IN YOUR FACE, CANADA.

[Chrono]

Re: Demons Souls

It's got that forgettable, generic fantasy thing going for it.

[Jeroak Nelave]

Re: Demons Souls

It has me intrigued, but i'm going to wait until i hear from some of my friends who are importing before i decide to jump on that bandwagon.

I'm concerned that if i start importing games i may never stop, hehe.

[marcus]

I just imported the game after ranting on 4chan about how much I hate the casual direction Nintendo is taking Legend of Zelda and someone said "Dude, buy Demon's Souls it's pretty much what you're looking for."

Faceless hero you make up that has to save a generic kingdom with hardcore balls-to-the-wall gameplay and strict attention to detail (dragons flying at you from the distance, weapons bumping into objects, real time lighting, environmental and physics based puzzles)??? YES PLEASE

I loved Kings Field and hated it at the same time. It's still one of the spookiest and most atmospheric games I played (a few years ago I posted a topic here about how I could progress because that scary ass squid in the first area). I'm crossing my fingers for an english release and I think Sony would be stupid not to do it. The PS3 is hurting for good exclusives.

EDIT: And the game is already 100% in english (except the manual) so it's not like they have to do much work.

EDIT 2: And the monster design... god damn. BIG MONSTERS have always been something action games and RPG's seem to skimp on but enemies in this game are huge and can attack you anywhere. One of the videos has dragons fighting in the background like 500 feet away and one launches a fireball in your direction while another swoops in at top speed and attacks.

EDIT 3: and the game sold out in Japan in the first week. They don't mention the print run (could be small) but still Sony can hype this up for a US release!

"Original hardcore action RPG fable 2 killer lolol" and hundreds of thousands of people would buy it.

[Toaster]

Re: Demons Souls

This game seems to have become somewhat of an underground success, and I'm starting to look forward to it with the more and more I hear about it.

Here are a few exerpts to give you more of an idea of what the game has to offer in terms of the multiplayer aspect:

It seems like they wanted to integrate multiplayer into the game without hampering the single-player experience. They integrate it in such a way that it never breaks the atmosphere and conventions created by the single-player. Well, there really is only a “single-player” mode; the multiplayer features are just integrated into it if your console is online.

1. I believe the story has you being a person who is resurrected by a sorceress to go fight the evil. Since this is the story for everyone playing, I guess she has an army of souls. When you play, you can see some other players as they play their game. You can't see what they're fighting or anything; you just see their character as they do fighting animations or jumping or whatever. You can't interact with them; all you're seeing is their ghost (soul?).

2. You can leave messages on the ground which other players can read. You can leave hints or comments or trick them or whatever.

3. Sometimes you will come across a big bloodstain on the ground. When you check it, it will spawn a ghost of another player and you can see how they died there.

4. Another gameplay point seems to be that when you die, you come back as a soul, meaning you only have half your max HP. You can't get your body back until you defeat a boss. However, if a living player has a certain item, they can use it to summon souls to his side (sort of like pokemon). You can go to his game and have multiplayer this way, and when you defeat a boss you'll get your body back, which should be a lot easier with a team. The catches are that when the summoner dies, you're transported back to your world. Also, there isn't any voice chat; only animated gestures.

5. Alternatively, if you don't feel like teaming up with someone or fighting a boss, you can instead teleport to someone else's game and attempt to kill him. If you do, you'll get resurrected. If not, there's some penalty I don't know.

6. I guess this is spoilers for one of the bosses but it's really cool. Supposedly one boss can pick you up and throw you into another room, which is filled with other players (how the game sets this up I don't know). You then have to duke it out in a giant battle royale, because only the last one standing may leave the room and the defeat the boss.

You aren't usually fighting alongside other players, but at the same time you constantly run into evidence of other people playing. Either you'll see a ghost image of another player in the same area you're in in their game (you can't interact, just observe them playing), or read messages, or whatever. It makes this epic crusade all these knights are on feel very real, as there are players all over this game world working toward the same goal.

The messages work really well. For example you can't really jump horizontally, but there are several places where you need to leap down, and people leave really useful info on where you can get down to secret areas. The developers are being pretty clever about it too. there are several areas where enemies ambush you, or arrow traps spring up quickly, that were obviously made so that people could help each other out of them. There was this particular boss that kept destroying us again and again, until we noticed this stray message someone had written in the arena. It read something like "Here. Don't move" and it turns out someone had found a safe spot in the room where the boss couldn't get to you. So cool to find.

And speaking of bosses, this game is rather difficult. Even with as much life energy as possible, with the best armor one could reasonably have, at any given point, you won't be able to take more than 4 or 5 hits at best. And a lot of bosses will kill you in two. This isn't Dynasty Warriors. You have to become pretty adept at using your shield, and rolling out of the way intelligently based on the sounds/attack animations that bad guys make.

I'm almost 99% positive that you do lose souls when you die. That's the incentive for not charging in swinging, and generally proceeding with caution. They don't take away souls you have spent leveling up or upgrading equipment, but any loose souls are void if you die as a ghost.

There were some things that we couldn't quite figure out though. Apparently you could enter other people's games in an antagonistic role, and appear as an evil looking black shadow thing, but we never really figured out the mechanics of it. Also, is there anyway to "sell" old weapons/pieces of equipment? The game isn't terribly loot heavy, and you will want to hold on to stuff, as even early equipment can be upgraded into usefulness by spending souls on it...but there will eventually come equipment that you no longer have any use for. And it seemed odd that you could do nothing with it.

For anyone worried about importing, the game seemed extremely English friendly from my perspective. Though since it isn't an English release, finding pertinent information is difficult, so finding a community of player like the something Awful boards seems like a good idea.

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: Demons Souls

I'm interested as of now.

[marcus]

Re: Demons Souls

All this game needs is procedural generation and it pretty much becomes a modern NetHack or other roguelike.

From what I heard, ranged attacks make the game tons easier and magic is overpowered. Basically, people suggest everyone (even warriors) to carry bows because a lot of enemies can pound the crap out of you from afar.

Still, the multiplayer "lite" elements sound awesome. I always felt that multiplayer is a polar thing; you either do it right or don't do it at all because it detracts from developing a strong single player (for example, multiplayer on Baldur's Gate let you play cooperatively in the main story or you could play solo create your entire team).

Yeah, this sounds pretty great. Having other players warp in as villains... so excited!

[marcus]

Re: Demons Souls

a forum post by a buddy who has the game

I have this game, and it is good... But in several ways it is horribly retarded. Well, in one major way actually.
This game is kind of like a Roguelike, in that initially you will die, a lot. However, dying is SEVERELY punished.

Firstly, you should understand the difficulty of this game. Most normal enemies aren't much of a threat, they are fairly weak, and die relatively easily. However, a group of 2-3 of them can be much more of a threat, and 4+ can quickly kill you.
Additionally, each level usually has bigger, more powerful enemies. These take a major beating, and in some cases can kill you in one hit, and this hit in some cases cannot be defended against.
Also, it is not uncommon for stages to have environmental hazards. The first stage has dragons that will swoop down and breath fire on you. This can take off 80% of your maximum Hp and cannot be defended against.

The game plays in a similar way to Monster Hunter games. Each weapon has a very limited selection of attacks (one weak which might have a 2-3 hit combo, and one strong, which might have a 2 hit combo). Each type of weapon has advantages and disadvantages, examples include spears, there advantage is their range and they have a thrusting action, but they are easily blocked by shields. In comparison a large sword has a decent range and a wide sweeping action, they are good at staggering people who block, but their wide sweeping action means they cannot be effectively used in small areas because they hit walls and obstacles (which can reduce damage they deal, or even make attacking with them impossible).
Each weapon you equip will literally change the way you play the game.
On top of this, you have to familiarize yourself with the controls of the game, as well as what is best to use and when. You have to learn when to block and when to evade, because it could make the difference between living and dying.

Anyway, you gain "souls" for killing stuff. Souls are like currency and experience. You use them to buy items, upgrade equipment, buy new magic spells, but also you need them to gain levels and raise stats.
If you die, you lose all of your souls and there is no way of storing them for safe keeping. You can regain them, at the spot you die is a bloodstain which you can recollect lost souls. But if you die before getting back to it, or change stages, the bloodstain is gone and so are the souls, forever.
Also, you have two forms. A living form, and a phantom form. When you die, you turn into the phantom form, this cuts down your maximum Hp by HALF (or by 25% with a piece of equipment). Returning to living form requires either a rare item, or killing a boss. In phantom form, you tend to die a lot quicker.
If you die while in phantom form, the area shifts towards a "black tendancy". This means certain events may change and some things in the stage will be different. However, it also means enemies get stronger and more powerful enemies appear more commonly, but the rewards for killing enemies is much higher. But... The difference in enemy strength while in a black tendancy area is insane. A normal enemies, that is not very aggressive, dies in 3 hits and could probably kill you in 20 hits in a black tendancy world will be very aggressive, die in 6-8 hits and kill you in 2-3 hits.
The powerful enemies are called black phantoms and are like minibosses (but can also be controlled by other players). They can be stupidly strong, to the point where I have in the past spent 20 minutes fighting one and still lost.
The opposite of black tendancy is white tendancy, which means enemies are weaker but give less rewards. However, getting a black tendancy in an area is easy. Getting a white tendancy in an area is very hard (if you die in an area 10 times, it will be totally black, but getting it to neutral involves killing 10 bosses... But you can only fight a boss once, which means you need to complete the entire game 10 times to get it back to neutral, provided you do not die once).

In short. The game is good, gameplay is excellent, storyline is hardly existant because it is suppose to be about ball breakingly hard gameplay. Buttt... The game gets harder each and every time you die. If you do not get good at the game fast, it can become literally impossible to play and will almost guaranteed require you restart with a new character. An example is on stage 2 (an EASY stage), if it is in black tendancy you have to fight not one, not two, but THREE black phantoms. I cannot kill one on it's own in a 20 minute long fight... You have absolutely no chance at all of killing 3. (And all 3 could actually be other players, which makes it impossibly harder)
The majority of the game however is relatively easy, provided you understand that charging in blindly will get you killed quickly. The major threats come from the big, powerful miniboss enemies, bosses and other players. Which will count for 99% of your deaths. You have to learn what each enemy is, how they pose a threat and how best to deal with them inorder to kill them.

This is not a game everyone will enjoy. But provided you like hardcore action RPGs with extreme difficulty, you may very well enjoy it!

Also, the Asian (more specifically Chinese) version of this game is entirely in English. All the text and voice actors are in English, if it was not for the case and the manual in the game, you wouldn't be able to tell it was the Asian version of the game. And it can be played on any PS3. If you want the game, and don't want to wait, order it from somewhere like Play-Asia.

basically, they took the linear rpg formula and added some roguelike elements. the world stays relatively the same, but objects and events are changed based on how you play.

dying sucks. it's better to restart than to play over as a phantom. it rewards patience over button mashing.

I WANT THIS GAME

EDIT: he says it plays like monster hunter as well. inb4 gloom rushing out to buy a ps3

[Kefka Jr.]

Re: Demons Souls

Wow. Cool.

[Perversion]

Re: Demons Souls

Yeah, this sounds pretty bad ass. Want.