Demon's Souls, by From Software, rings so many good references from my gaming experience that I have no choice but to love this game. It is a punishing game, in an "old school" way --- it will force you to redo good bits of a level when you die; there are no hand-rails or barriers in high-hanging places, allowing you to fall (or be thrown) off cliffs or stairwells if you're not paying attention; you restart a level, all enemies are back there where you found them the first time; and when you die, you leave all your game currency ("Souls") right there at the spot where it happened --- i.e., right where you'll find the baddie that killed you when you come back for it, and marked by a pool of your own blood. Any one "level" of the game has areas, easily accessible from the start, where wading into as a beginner will expose your character to high-level enemies who will kill you within seconds of contact. Careful exploration is key.
Anyone can make a difficult game, but this isn't the only quality of Demon's Souls. The maps I have explored are interesting and sections integrate together very well. The first world you have access to, a large, battle scarred keep, constantly impressed by the spacial integration of the many areas; looking through a window and seeing a walled pathway in the distance probably means you can get there. Details like these are great contributors to the feeling of immersion I get out of this game. Ghosts of other players walking around also add to the immersion.
Yes, there are ghosts. In fact, you'll start the game proper as a ghost. The game kills you early on (really minor spoiler), so you'll walk the early levels as a phantom. When you die, you get transported to a place called the Nexus. Frankly, the story doesn't really make that much sense to me. As a ghost you can still be killed by the foes you encounter through the level, and leave a blood stain when you die. And you're able to physically interact with the world around you. Really the only side effect that I can see is that in ghost form your hit points are halved. Its logic aside, this ghost premise allows for some very interesting game mechanics.
As you walk around you will frequently notice white specters, which are other players moving through the same area in their own ghost forms --- you can't interact with those forms. You'll also see other player's blood stains, where they have been slain. You can activate those stains, and observe a reenactment of the last seconds of that player's life, allowing you perhaps to prepare for what's ahead. Another interesting aspect of the game is the ability for players to scribe messages on the floor (that appear as ghostly looking characters to you as you walk by). Those messages may warn you about what's ahead, give hints, or just be idle chatter. They may also be downright misleading. Messages are left by selecting phrases or combinations of phrases from a menu, so you won't be encountering immersion breaking graffiti (neither high-quality in-character chatter).
The mechanism to reacquire one's physical form is to perform an heroic deed, like helping a hero to slay a monster. If you die while fighting a monster, you'll be able to leave a message to other players indicating that you're "haunting" that place, waiting for another chance at the foe. Another player in possession of their own physical body is then able to summon you to help them in their own fight. Up to three players are able to cooperate in this manner. Success makes the specters corporeal again, and sends them back to their own worlds.
Alternatively, instead of offering to help other living players, you may choose to follow a darker path, and infiltrate a living player's world to hunt them down and cause their demise, which also returns you to life. This can be initiated by a ghost player and it is completely outside your control as long as you choose to enable on-line interactions. While it may be easier to kill another player this way than to fight against a demon (especially because it gives you the element of surprise against the other player), for the spirits that follow this path there is an inconvenient side-effect: they become more vulnerable to other dark foes, including demons, that they will need to fight in their progress through the game.
Demon's Souls is an original, beautiful game, with a sense of immersion that is difficult to match by other RPGs. Its form of uncommitted on-line mechanics takes what's essentially a single-player game and adds to it a richness of interaction that only on-line games can provide. The result is one of the most unique games I've played in years.
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