How good this game is will depend on the player. For me, it is absolutely untouchable. It reignites the joy, the adventure, the sense of wanting to know, wanting to look, wanting to discover. wanting to succeed when I'm weaker, and not prepared to face my opponents. that an RPG should bring.

In a world of games that hold your hand and push you across the finish line, Demon's Souls is an absolute joy. You will have to work for every step you take. Going around corners could mean the end of hours and hours of work, but if you take your time, keep your shield high, you will find an experience that is simply unmatched.

The problem with most RPGs, especially RPGs like Fable II (Which is an amazing game!) is that the immersion and sense of purpose is lost because the game actually plays itself.

Games like Fallout 3 do the same thing, there's no challenge, the best immersion is ruined by no sense of value.

Demon's Souls thrashes that. Everything is valuable. making it to the end of a door is simply glee.

I want to explain an experience I had my first day.

I had made it to the end of this corridor, blood everywhere, i was exhausted. So i stopped and waited for my stamina to recover, patched up my wounds and peaked out of the dark gloomy castle into a bright open landscape.

Ahead I see a bridge, on the bridge are hordes of undead who seem to not want me to pass. I turn around, look for another exit. I just cannot bare those odds, it's surely a death I cannot afford. (litterally. If you die, you drop all your money (souls) which is also EXP. so you drop everything of value.) I head down to the other end and i see light piercing the darkness on the other side of an open room. I tread over the corpses of my previously slain enemies and peak outside. Looks safe.. but that sense of safety quickly leaves as I find that the only path leads onto a hill, where two gigantic dragons are resting.

This is not a game like gears of war, or resistance, or fallout. These enemies mean death. Instant death. You are a bug under their feet (at least now.) and you should be. There are thousands of corpses infront of them. A blood stain on the floor reaks of the death of a fellow knight.. I kneel and examine the stains. A flash of energy surges through me and I watch the past. A warrior just like me, running for an escape of this retched castle attempts to sneak passed the dragons. His life ends in the way expected, roasted.

I turn back in, and realize there is no going back.. I have to progress deeper into this hell to finish my goal. I head back to the bridge covered in undead. I walk up and there is a message there, from some other traveller. It tells me to beware the skies. Yet another says I will find passage if I think.

I head up into the light and pause, I survey the odds.. I really cannot take on that many undead.. and i hear it. The flaps, the screaching of a dragon. Suddenly.. a dragon flys in from above and swoops down over the bridge, breathing searing flames onto the undead, killing most. but not all of them. As the dragon swoops over my hiding spot, i raise up and know this is my chance. I run with all my strength. My heavy armor making my stamina drop quickly, i run passed the remaining undead, shield up, as fast as I can. I hear it. the dragon is coming back. I don't have much time. I keep running.

I will not give up.

I just make it down off the bridge as the dragon swoops in again, picking off a few more undead.

But i'm not safe. Some have followed me.  A particularilly agile undead foe with a massive halbred strikes at me, I roll out of the way, inches from another fatal wound. I raise my shield, stamina low. I make a quick dodge to the left and use the last of my stamina to lung deep into his corpse, ending his miserable existance. I breath a sigh of releaf, patch up my wounds and continue back onward.. to far more exciting moments.


This is the first level. and only one part of it.