It's finally happened. I have been enticed to buy a PS3.. Reccomendations?

[lestatdark]

Metallicube said:

makingmusic476 said:

Congratz on getting a ps3. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

As far as games go, LBP, Demon's Souls, and Uncharted 2 are the highlights for me, in that order.

To learn more about Demon's Souls, I'd suggest reading this write up by Gamasutra. It's easily the best piece I've seen on the game, and it describes why I couldn't put the game down to a T.

Edit:

Ok, I'll give my thoughts on Demon's Souls.

The game's design is really more Zelda-esque than anything RPG-ish, notably the level design.  The level design is not simply a bunch of similar dungeons made up of repeating and randomly placed tunnels and whatnot.  It is wholely unlike Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Oblivion in this regard.  Instead, each dungeon has a very unique style, with every place being distinct from every other.  Much like the dungeons in Zelda, you can always tell exactly where you are when playing Demon's Souls.  This not only makes it easier to find your way around, but it makes for a much more memorable experience than most RPGs.

On top of that, the combat is more hack n' slash than RPG, but rather than flashy Ninja Gaiden-esque combos, they give you a few simple attacks, and it's all about using the thrusts and parries effectively to combat your enemies. In all honesty, getting to know your enemy is probably more important than the items you're carrying (though they're an integral part of the equation too).

However, the game is most definitely an RPG, given that you do gain experience, and given that you have a plethora of weapons, armor, spells, and other items that you can find, buy, and craft, thus giving you great control over what type of being your character becomes.

My favorite part of the game is how it handles death.  In this game, there are no game over screens or anything of the sort.  When you die, you don't have to start anything over.  Instead, when you do die you are stripped of your body, and forced to roam around the land as a phantom.  You do go back to the beginning of the immediate level you were playing, but any items you found prior to death remain on you, any events you triggered remain triggered, and the only thing you've lost are any souls you had on you at the time you died (souls are used for currency and for increasing your stats).  Yet even then, any souls you had can be found on the bloodstain residing at the location of your death.  Make it to your bloodstain intact, and you get all those souls back!  But be wary, as if you are slain again, a NEW bloodstain is created at the new point of death, so everything at your previous bloodstain is lost.   Considering you'll likely have to fight your way back to your bloodstain, you'll probably gain quite a few souls on the trip there, thus essentially doubling your total souls if you do manage to get to your bloodstain.  It's a gamble you may or may not wish to take, but it can be well worth it.

The reason I am fond of this system is that even in death, the game feels like it's still progressing.  You feel like you're getting somewhere, even if you died.

I highly recommend the title.  It's the most unique RPG I've yet had the pleasure of playing, and it's my favorite third person adventure game behind the 3D Zeldas.  It's right up there with LBP as my favorite ps3 game, and easily in my top ten games of all time.  It's probably 6th, actually, right behind the 3D Zeldas and LBP.

Hmm, this game sounds more and more interesting the more I hear about it. I'm a fan of the dungeon crawler style RPG. The way in which you describe this game sounds sort of similar to something like Diablo, or even Gaunlet Legends, where the objective is more to get to the end and fend off enemies thrown at you than anything else. I definitly like the "phantom" concept too, reminds me of Everquest or WoW, where you become a spirit who has to find your body in order to retrieve your equipment.

One thing I'm confused about though. When you die and lose your demon souls, does this mean you also lose any stats or upgrades that you tacked on your character WITH the demon souls? In other words, once you spend them on stats/upgrades, are they locked in to your character's stats for good? One of the reviews I was watching made it sound like once you die, you lose the souls themselves AND the stats associated with them. I might have just interpruted that wrong..

The bolded: 

When you die, you lose the current amount of souls that you're carrying. For example, imagine that you're carrying 20K souls. When you die, those souls will be reset to 0 on the counter, but in the spot where you died (or near it) a bloodstain will appear. If you're able to touch that bloodstain before you die again, you'll get back the same amount of souls that you lost before.

The problem comes when you're not able to touch that first bloodstain before you die again. In that scenario, the first bloodstain will dissapear and is replaced by another bloodstain in the last place you died, meaning that you just lost 20K souls.

As for losing stats, that only happens in three specific scenarios:

- When you're fighting the last boss of the worlds (in story terms only, because you can do any bosses in any order that you want), he has a move that's called Soulsucker. If he hits you with it, your character will die, and you'll lose one Soul Level, which will take down a random stat by a single point. The same can happen if a player in PvP hits you with the same move.

- When you're invading another player world online, you enter that player world as a black phantom. If when you're invading, you die by a scenario death (dropping down a high place or being crushed by something) or the defending player uses the spell Banish, you'll also lose a Soul Level, which will do the same thing for your stats

- When using a Red Eye Stone, you can set 1 vs 1 player duels. In those duels, the player who wins gains a Soul Level and the player who loses, loses a Soul Level as well.

So you don't have to worry about losing Soul Levels when playing PvE, unless you're in that boss battle that I mentioned. What can happen is you having a high amount of Souls gathered, not spending them to gain Soul Levels and then die twice in a row without recovering those souls. That happened to me when I had 3 M Souls, which could boost me up by 15 Soul Levels. It was much more frustrating that losing a Soul Level in any of those scenarios.