Demon’s Souls. This game is hard as shit, and will kick you every chance it gets. But that’s what makes it great. Honestly, I could NOT play this game at first. I wanted to run in screaming, killing everything like in AC2 (review coming soon). I soon learned that combat works in a much more dodgy manner. You have more success baiting and stabbing then running around all crazy. You CAN do that method, but only if ya have the gear/experience to do it.

You start off in the Nexus (home base) and go to 5 different worlds, each with a different theme. I’ve gone through this game at least a dozen times on five different character. When you beat the game, you restart with all your equips and items in a setting called New Game+ (NG+). Usually, having all your awesome stuff makes a game easier. It doesn’t help unless you know what you’re doing. The game bumps up the difficulty slightly and keeps throwing sucker punches. Let’s just say NG++++ isn’t exactly a cake walk in 5-2.

The game has an interesting multiplayer feature in the form of stones. It works like this: if you’re in body form (haven’t been squished and run through yet), you can see blue and deep red markings on the ground. Blue is for summoning other players, red is for pvp. You can also leave messages for others with pre-made words and lines. These are also red, but let’s not touch on that. While in body form, you have more health, but you make more noise which alerts enemies. You can also be invaded by BLACK phantoms, which are other players who’s lone mission in life is to kill you, and make the game harder. (Side note- when you are KILLED in body, the world gets darker, thus harder. So much for a helping hand.) If you defeat them, kudos. If not, better have some Ephemeral Eyes or do some blue phantoming (help other players). There’s way too many details to get into with this game, so I’ll stop here with the small ones.

The combat system is basic, but I suck at describing it. It’s rollan, dodgan, blockan, slashan gaems. Parrying sucks, and it’s kinda gimmicky so don’t use outside regular play. You have a variety of weapons, which include Longswords, fists, hammers, maces, bows, etc. You can use these to find different ways to get through the worlds. For example, instead of rushing the blue knight with a broadsword, you can snipe him off from a safe distance. Lots of possibilities, some better than others. There’s also special weapons that can be made from the souls of bosses; these usually shine above others.

Final assessment- DS is a damn good game. The main drawbacks to it are it’s kinda short, the online can be hella laggy, replay can get stale (unless you’re creative), just lack of things to do at times. Atlus did a great thing by bringing this game to the U.S. and Europe, and I really look forward to a sequel. If you like a challenge, this is the game for you. If not, NSMB is right up ya alley.

8.9/10

(Play 3-1 with headphones on in the dark. Glorious)