Since it's the new year, I thought I'd start blogging about some of my best experiences in 2012.
As you may (or may not) know, Slow Rin takes forever to finish video games. According to records, I started playing
Demon's Souls around June, 2010, and it wasn't until July 11, 2010 that I actually managed to defeat the first boss, the Phalanx. If I remember right, it took 8 in-game hours before I actually managed to beat world 1-1. That's how slow Rin is. I finally managed to defeat the final boss, King Allant, on January, 2013. So maybe two and a half years? According to the game save, it took me around 36 hours to finish.
Here are some things I like about Demon's Souls.
Fair Difficulty
One of the reasons for taking so long is because Demon's Souls is unforgiving. There are a lot of games (Dragonball Z: Budokai, Dead or Alive, I'm looking at you) that make the game harder simply by making the computer opponent have more advantage. Health regeneration, increased attack/block, speed, etc. Demon's Souls is by its nature a rather slow game. You don't need lightning reflexes (SFxT's 1/10th of the second accurate inputs comes to mind) to do well in the game.
Demon's Souls does none of those. If you rush in and try to do everything, you will die. If you're not careful, you'll die. If you don't plan ahead, you'll die. When you die, you lose souls, which is the currency you need to buy things or level. You can get it back if can reach your death spot and touch it, but if you die again, you'll lose everything you had before. It only keeps track of your most recent death.
When I first started, I was really frustrated. It took me 8 hours to finish world 1-1, and I kept dying and losing souls, which made leveling a lot harder. When you die, you get kicked back to the beginning of the level with everything respawned. After a while though, I realized if I just kept a cool head, not rush in, take my time and so on, I got a lot farther.
A bad game makes the game impossible. A good game makes you feel like you could do better if only you tried a bit harder, and on that note, Demon's Souls is a good game. At the very least, it's fair.
Gender Representation
I really liked the way gender was represented in Demon's Souls. You can take a look at a sample of character creation (Miss Boletaria 2011) and (Demon's Souls Female Guide) ... or take a look at the armour sets that Demon's Souls offers. It doesn't try to give the girls anything drastically different than what the guys would've worn. There are strong female characters that you rely on (The Maiden in Black, for example), and there are female bosses that you'll have to face (no spoilers here). It looks like actual armour people may have worn back in the day. There aren't any buxom bar maids or succubi, just seriously regular people trying to survive.
Depth
There's the main story line and the side quests are simple. But the amount of hidden content and the way it's presented is quite amazing. Aside from World Tendancies (White and Black, depending on the good/evil things you do that affect the world), there are also Personal Tendancies (White and Black, depending on the good/evil things you do that affect yourself), and the combination of both that may or may not change things like item drop rates, map layout, etc. With the New Game+ option, where you can replay the game with all your equipment from the previous try, the replay value is quite high. It's almost impossible to finish the game completely on your first try.
So I'm quite happy that I was able to play Demon's Souls to the end, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a challenging but fair game. I think that's really hard to find nowadays.
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