Nerdy And Loving It

Demons Souls is a game developed by From Software, the same studio that makes my favorite mecha series of games, Armored Core.  The game is published in the US by Atlas.

The premise of the game is that some king figures out a way to harness souls to become more powerful.  Everything is going great and his entire kingdom is prospering until he unwittingly wakes up the biggest baddest demon around called The Old One.  After The Old One is awakened a darkness covers the entire kingdom and it becomes overrun with demons. After a while, some guy escapes from the kingdom and lets the rest of the world know what’s going on.  You are one of the many warriors that have chosen to come to the demon infested kingdom to save it from The Old One.  Once you get to the demon filled kingdom you pretty much die almost immediately.  You are resurrected by The Lady In Black.  She tells you that she can resurrect you in soul form and you have a chance to get your body back (which gives you a full life bar instead of half life bar).  She also tells you that if The Old One is not forced to go back to sleep, presumably by killing lots of demon bosses, then the black fog that covers the current kingdom will slowly cover the entire world and everyone will be screwed.

I started the game as a soldier class because I wanted to mainly focus on melee combat and didn’t care too much about spells.  It turns out that your starting class doesn’t matter that much.  It just gives you different equipment to start with and slightly different stats.  Having more armor like a soldier or knight can make the beginning of the game more easy compared to starting with no armor like the barbarian.  Obviously some of the starting classes are intended to be used for magic type characters, but besides that, classes don’t really matter. Just so you know, the Royal class is the best for starting a magic based character because they start with a mana regen item.

So I started the game with my soldier, who I named Guts in honor of the Berserk Manga/Anime.  You learn all the basic stuff in the tutorial like how to move around, block, roll, and attack.  The button layout is a little different than most third person action/rpgs.  You attack with your right hand using R1 for normal attack and R2 for strong attack. L1 and L2 do the same if you have a weapon in your left hand.  If you have a shield then it will do a shield bash, which is pretty useless unless you time it for the exact moment that someone strikes you. The D-pad selects secondary weapons or shields with left and right for each hand.  You can have one extra weapon to switch to in each hand. Up is for magic and down is for items. O is run, roll, and leap back. Triangle is for switching to holding your weapon with both hands for more damage. X is for talking to people, hitting switches, and generally selecting stuff. Square is for using your currently selected item.  The button layout makes sense but I couldn’t help myself from accidentally hitting square to attack like most other games and wasted many healing items because of it.  The other thing I would do by accident is hit X when I wanted to use an item because on the screen it is the bottom selection in the four way display.  Again other games sometimes use the O, X, Square, and Triangle buttons to select powers and stuff like this.  It messed me up but it might not be as much of a problem for other people.  So anyway, I get to the end of the tutorial and am almost instantly killed by a giant demon.  It turns out that you aren’t supposed to beat him.  It’s a part of the story for you to die.

Then the real game starts.  You have to beat the whole first level (1-1) with half health.  If you search around in the level, however, you can find a ring that will allow you to have 75% health when is soul form.  This is a must for when you are in the beginning of the game.  One thing you may have heard about this game, it’s hard.  Really hard. Even the lowliest easiest enemies in the game are somewhat tough.  The dredglings will throw firebombs at you and leap at you. They will also sometimes lash out with their daggers a bunch of times in a row and can do some damage if you’re not careful. Also, don’t let them gang up on you because they can mess you up, even if you’re better equipped.  Besides the enemies being tough, the whole structure of the game makes it hard.  If you die you lose all of your souls.  If you get back to the spot where you died and hit X on your bloodstain, you can get them back, but if you died before you reach it you lose that bloodstain and start a new one with whatever you had up to that point.  Souls, by the way are the currency of the game and they are used for everything.  You need souls to buy weapons, upgrade weapons, repair weapons, buy spells, buy miracles, and buy stat points, which in turn level  you up.  So it sucks when you lose all your souls.  The other thing that makes the game hard is that when you die or leave the level to go back to town (The Nexus) all of the enemies respawn.

I started the game with my broadsword and shield.  I was having a tough time with them until I learned that if you use a spear you can hold up your shield to block, while you are attacking.  Now I have an upgraded shield and spear and the game’s a little easier.  Just expect to die a lot when you play.

I recently tried starting a magic based character instead of melee to see how they do and oh my god.  They make the game so much easier.  Enemies that would normally take a bunch of hits, and would block a lot of my attacks, followed up by healing themselves could now be killed in two hits with soul arrow.  Magic is so cheap.  You just stand from a distance and pick off everyone.  It doesn’t even matter that you’re just wearing cloth for armor.  You have to be sure to lock onto guys in order to shoot them, but you get used to it pretty quick.  The first boss was cake compared to when I fought him with my melee guy.  So, if you want the game to be much easier your first playthrough, my advice is to make a royal.  I haven’t gotten very far in the game yet, so magic being overpowered may change as you progress, but so far it rocks.

Update:

I’ve decided to play through the game with my melee guy and my magic character at the same time, alternating on levels.  I’ve been playing through the first level in each world and am currently at level 4-1.  I’m finally starting to see my melee character catch up to and surpass my magic user, so perhaps magic users aren’t as cheap as I thought.  Now that my melee guy has tons of strength and an upgraded shield, his endurance doesn’t go down very fast when blocking.  This allows him to negate all damage as long as he’s attacked from the front and has endurance left.  He has so much strength that he can kill the skeletons in the beginning of the level with one hit with his spikey club.  My magic user has more trouble.  The large shield that she carries blocks all damage like my melee guy, but her endurance drops like a rock when she’s hit, so the skeletons have an easier time getting a hit in.

I’ve found that the magic user has started to become a play-style where you keep shooting while backing up the whole time.  A melee character, on the other hand, can just hold their shield up, negate all damage for a while, and then attack when they see opportunities.  Now that my melee guy can hit pretty hard relative to the current enemies, I’ll start upgrading his endurance more so he can take even more attacks with his shield and can attack for longer with the added endurance.  It’s too bad that you don’t get the really cool spells until the end of the game.  I want moving soul arrow (3 spinning orbs spin around you and attack automatically) and firestorm (AOE fire damage).  I think I’ll be stuck with boring projectiles for a while.

I’ve been thinking about melee characters a bit and I think the best starting class for a melee character is either the knight or the temple knight.  I picked soldier, but now that I have the flutet armor and a good shield I can deal with enemies much more easily.  The knight and temple knight get this armor or it’s equivalent at the very start of the game.  This would be a huge help.  Also, you can’t use miracles until you get the talisman of god for most characters, so if you want heal and evacuate, which is very useful (instant teleport to the nexus and you keep all your souls), you could choose the temple knight just for that.  You would also only need 3 more points in Faith to get two miracle slots.  You won’t have much mana to use heal, but you’ll get tons of fresh spice in 3-1 from the scary prison guards.  I think those guys are scarier prison guards than dementors.

More updates to come later.