4/5 ★ – Shidan's review of Demon's Souls.

After playing all the newer FromSoftware games I finally was able to play Demon's Souls (PS3), and it was a great experience. I always heard that Demon's Souls is basically the same as Dark Souls, but that isn't quite true, and the best example is probably the element that initially caught my attention, the world and lore, these are unique and give you a different feeling in comparison with the following games. The setting of both Demon's and Dark Souls is medieval fantasy, but I think the world in Demon's Souls is darker and hopeless, here the soul is both the spiritual essence and the sanity of the mind (this is exactly the same as Dark Souls), but if you die, you'll appear in soul form and because of this your HP will be halved and I like this, because even though the mechanic of half HP could be annoying, it is completely justified by the lore of the game, so I accept it. In Demon’s Souls, souls are also the source of power, so, both humans and demons benefit from it. Now a general explanation of the story (without spoilers), long ago the research of soul power awakened an old demon (The Old One) and he spread a fog along with demons, demons got stronger the more souls they acquired and also these demons gave power to The Old One, but a group called the Monumentals put The Old One to rest and erased all the knowledge the world had about soul power, but at this point half of the world was already lost. A few years ago (maybe 10 years) King Allant from Boletaria started to research soul power again and The Old One was awakened and spread the fog and demons once more, this time the Monumentals can't help, because there's only one of them left. A warrior called Vallarfax of the Twin Fangs escaped the fog and warned the world of the situation in Boletaria, since then some warriors went to Boletaria manly in search of power (at least some dialogue of the game says that’s the main reason), and here is when the game starts. I really like this premise, you have a feeling of urgency, because the fog will eventually consume the whole world, so you need to stop it. On the other hand, Dark souls also tells you that you have to cure the undead curse, but first this isn't necessarily true (because of the other ending) and also many undead have already failed to do this, I like this because the game let you know that you're not important and you're not different from any other undead, but Dark Souls doesn't give you the feeling of urgency, because if no undead is able to get to the first flame, it will fade and the cycle will presumably start again. Now, you can probably see that the world of Demon's Souls is fantastic. I know I haven't talked about the game itself and why it is good, but I felt the need of talking about the world and lore. Now I'll be talking about all the elements I think are worth pointing out. The immersion is amazing and I think it is thanks to the level design and soundtrack (and of course the world and lore), the levels are some of the best FromSoftware has ever done (up there with Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne), in this game you have only 1 checkpoint in most of the levels (and usually, only after defeating a boss you'll get a second checkpoint, that will be the only checkpoint for the next area), and this didn't bothered me at all, because the levels have extremely well thought shortcuts that connected the checkpoint to different parts of the level, and I think the shortcuts of Demon's Souls are even better than the ones in Dark Souls 1, because making a level with one checkpoint without making the experience frustrating is incredible. Until now it may seem the game is good in every aspect, but sadly that isn't true, the main issue I have with the game are the bosses, visually all of them are great and memorable and it’s very hard to make good designs for all bosses, but the fights themselves are just too easy, they're not bad, but I don’t think any of the bosses pushed the combat to the limit (something at least one of the bosses in the other games did), maybe the closest was King Allant and the Flamelurker, but the others weren't very interesting as a fight. There're other mechanics that aren't that well made, for example the World Tendency, I like the concept, but I don't think it's well executed in the game, it can go from pure white to pure black, if you die in human form it will go towards black tendency, so I decided to play all the game in soul form, and if I was in human form (after defeating a boss you become human again) I killed myself in the nexus since you don't get black tendency dying there. And since I was playing in soul form most of the time I had only one slot for rings available, because I had permanently equipped the Cling Ring (this ring increases your maximum health in soul form, so instead of half HP you have 3/4). The healing system could also be better, here you don't recharge the healing items in any way, you have to take them from the enemies, this is similar to Bloodborne, but in that game you only had one type of healing and it is very abundant, even in my many playthroughs of Bloodborne I have farmed vials only a few times, the problem in Demon's Souls is that there're too many types of grass and it's annoying having to farm them. The problems mentioned previously aren't a big deal, they were mostly minor inconveniences and they didn't compromise my overall enjoyment. But there's one last problem that made the game completely frustrating, luckily you won't experience it in your first playthrough, since this problem is the NG+, when I finished the game, I was eager to play it again immediately after, so I started playing NG+, but I stopped after defeating the first boss and instead decided to create a new character. In NG+ you’ll have less than half HP in soul form, and even with the Cling Ring equipped you'll have a little more than half HP, also the damage of the enemies is absurd (specially the red dragon), in my first playthrough the dragon didn't one shot me even in soul form, but in NG+ this enemy (from the first area) one shots me, even in human form (will full HP) this makes the game unnecessarily hard and frustrating. I've played multiple game cycles in the other FromSoftware games and the NG+ in those games is very well balanced. The good thing is that this problem won't appear your first time playing the game. Even though I finished with a bitter note, I genuinely think Demon's Souls is a great way to start playing these games, because it is the shortest and easiest of all of them, also the slow-paced combat could be easy to learn for beginners, and with the exception of the NG+ the problems were few and little, Demon's Souls is a must play specially if you like Action RPGs, FromSoftware or Soulslike games.