First off, Merry Christmas too you all, hope you had a good one. I was unlucky enough to receive the game I’m about to review (Sadly enough I asked for it after being convinced it had improved, I was sadly deceived though), bear in mind I’ve only played so far into the game, I’ve already come up with an impression, although you can argue it is subject to change, it is after a Ubisoft game, play it for the first hour, expect a repeat for the next 12, anyway, let’s get on with this.

Bad Points:

• Story is relatively boring and plot elements are predictable

• None of the characters are interesting; all feel like cardboard cut outs with cliché’s attached

• Graphics although good in some areas, show up horrible in some cases (particularly on the blonde woman from the start, she had fish eyes and lips, a rather deformed being)

• Fighting combat is too simple and just a button masher, you walk into a group of guys who want to kill you JUST because, mash square, they all fall down

• Platforming is rather the same as AC1 (a shame), doesn’t feel smooth and easy to make mistakes like jumping off just because your thumb slipped whilst holding X down for ages to climb faster. Also, one issue that really annoyed me, the fastest way to move around is holding R1 and X (uncomfortable, but probably just on the PS3), since your thumb is occupied holding down X it is made difficult to use the right anolog stick to move your camera to see where you’re going or where you want to go

• Looting enemies is pretty pointless as they rarely offer any good money all though certain enemies drop equipment, however it’s easier to just buy a treasure map and go loot some treasure chests for a much larger reward

The Good:

• Many features added such as vendors and doctors to heal you, adds much needed variety

• More varied side quests so repetition doesn’t kick in (so far)

• The information provided about characters/real life people, historic land marks and various other things is a nice touch, and is actually interesting to read and adds depth to the game (which is much needed)

• Animation during fighting is solid and is attractive, but falls short on the poor fighting

• (From what I’ve heard) has a satisfying conclusion instead of the appalling one last time

So far I am rather disappointed with the game, going in with promises that it was VASTLY improved over the original (which I hated), but I feel I’m treading over the same grounds, if only Ubisoft made a deal to improve more than just side missions and focused on other core gameplay elements such as the combat and platforming this game could potentially be far greater.

So after a good solid day of playing Borderlands, I’ve come up with a list of good and bad points about the game. Bear in mind this is just my initial thoughts but most points I doubt will be changed.

Good Points:

*Great gunplay, it’s very satisfying to blow a Raiders head off and watch bits fly
*Co-Op is tonnes of fun, Splitscreen and online works perfect
*Graphics are very good, the art style is interesting, textures are very nice
*RPG Elements work very well
*4 Different characters too chose, each with different skills and powers
*Seems to be of good length, replay ability is good and you’ll most likely want to after completion
*Very addictive and immersive
*LOTS of weapons, big variety with many special’s having unique bonuses
*Occasional good humour
*Great draw distance

Bad :

*Frame rate drops a lot during big shoot outs, can almost be unbearable at times
*Too similar too Fallout 3
*Story is weak and not really there, you just happen to be in a wasteland for no reason but to find some treasure?
*Lack of many friendly NPC’s, and barely dialogue and instead replaced with just scrolls of text
*Load times are a bitch, even for a 3 minute install first time running
*Not a true open world, it’s segregated into parts, when you want to get to another point, you have to face a lengthy load time
*Lack of customisation (You pick one of 4 characters, and can change about three parts of his/her armour to a colour you like)
*Seems they went flat out on making so many different weapons that they totally ignored giving you different armour sets, so you stick to what you wear as soon as you start the game
*No meele weapons, another sign they just focused on too many guns
*Textures can take a few seconds when you get passed a load screen
*Driving controls are like Halo’s and can’t be changed, shooting and driving a car at the same time is made very awkward
*Lackluster loot sharing system
*Horrible climax

Now with all the bad points I noted, you’d think I don’t like the game, in actual fact, I love it so far, and find it great and hopefully take up many more hours of my time, my expectations were low for this game but it proved me wrong in many places.

First off, Demon’s Souls is quite easily a game that determines who you are as a gamer. Many who try this and put it down for good after an hour or so show you lack the skills to play a real “hardcore” game. But to those estranged few who soldier on through show they are the true hardcore crew who will amount up to any challenge.

It’s a given fact the game is notorious for being hard, many will conclude it’s simply because you can die in 1-2 hits at any given time, whilst this is true, it’s truly hard and a real challenge because of what it takes to be able to over come such obstacles, and whilst this game is thankfully never at any time cheap (You’ll never experience a moment where it was a cheap kill, you’ll always die purely out of not being strong enough character or for lack of gaming skill), you will still feel the wrath of the game when it makes you it’s bitch time after time. Anyway, lets get going.

Gameplay

The game is broken down into 5 main worlds and the Nexus. The Nexus is essentially a safe haven from the games hardship. You’re brought here after you complete the Tutorial, and then from then on it acts like a warp world to get to World 1 to 5. It also holds the important NPC’s here, that, for a price of souls, will sell you equipment, upgrade weapons, learn magic, learn miracles and upgrade your character.

Souls are everything in this game, they act as your XP points, your gold or money for buying equipment and all the other things mentioned. You earn souls by killing enemies, and defeating the bosses (Demon’s).  At first you’ll get a few souls for each enemy slain, but then later on in the harder worlds you’ll get a couple of hundred per enemy.  

Upgrading your character as well as buying better equipment naturally costs more souls, so you progress the more souls you need to upgrade, so the difficulty never switches at any point in the game. To make matters worse, if you die in the game, you will lose all souls, and with there being no way to store them, can ruin any one’s day. However to avoid the game being ridiculously hard and cheap, you can redeem yourself and retrieve the lost souls in a pool of blood of where you died. Doing this normally results in you learning a lesson for why you died. If you die two consecutive times however without retrieving your souls, they are lost for ever.

When it comes to defeating your enemies, you must be extremely careful in most cases.  Every dash, every evasive move, every swing of your sword takes stamina, which needs time to recover. Block for too long and your guard will be shattered, at which point you will likely get impaled and killed. When you die in human form, you come back as a spirit with only half of your max HP. (Can equip the Cling Ring to raise your health to 75%).

Dying in a game normally evidences that something was too difficult for you, and this game responds by making things MORE difficult. All saving is done automatically by the game (To stop the inevitable time in the game when you want to reset and try again without losing your souls) and portals back to the Nexus. are few and far between.

With such a hard difficulty the learning curve comes naturally just as hard and rather steep. In time you may become better able to fend off higher level enemies without having to rely on overpowering stats, when that time comes you’ll be greatly relieved and feel redeemed for all the hard work you’ve put in to get to that stage.

Online

Demon’s Souls features an unique online where you are always technically playing online. The game signs you into Demon’s Souls online automatically when you start the game up (Not by choice though, although you can just pull your Ethernet cable out then insert it back in after if you so desire).

From here Demon’s Souls offers a few features online, there’s the option to be able to write messages in real time to other players who will also be playing through the level, the messages however are pre-made and you have to select through a sentence then insert a second word, (Example, “Watch out for the enemies _____ ahead”). This feature is hit and miss in game as numerous people will actually submit life saving messages whilst others will just be jerks and warn you for no real danger or just downright tell you to step off a cliff. To combat this players may also rate the last message they read to help promote the people who are trying to help others over douches just being… well, douches. The advantage for helping others is if they rate your message you’ll get a HP boost which will keep you a live longer.

There’s then the option to either be summoned to another person’s game whilst in Soul form and then assisting the player in passing through the level as a Blue Phantom and defeating the Demon boss. This feature can be crucial to some non able combatants or just a fun way to experience the game from a different perspective. Bad points however is you cannot communicate with the other players but mearly do selective emotions such as salute or point in a direction. You cannot either sadly invite friends from your PSN list either, so chances are if you have a mate playing too he’s never going to be able to play with you unless by pure chance.

The last feature for online is one for the douches, instead of being summoned into a players game whilst in Soul Form the player may “break-in” to a players world as Black Phantom. From this perspective you can hunt down and kill the other player, doing so will give you the chance to steal his collected souls, and regain your human body. Evidently players who like to bully others will chose this option, to prevent douches from being considerable bastards however players may only break-in to other worlds if both players Soul Levels (That’s just Level for most RPG’s) are within 10 levels to prevent downright cruelty.

Graphics

Demon’s Souls is a decent looking RPG. Environments and character models are well done, although face textures on some characters look almost flat which is pretty disappointing. The Demon bosses however all look great and unique and equally terrifying (Ok, some of them don’t). There’s not a lot to criticise here but there’s not a lot of praise either, all in all a sound effort on the graphics.

Sound

Typical sound affects for an RPG, you got all the battle grunts and slashes mixed in with mythological beats (A few huge dragons), with adequate voice dialogue by characters. Demon’s Souls doesn’t have that many lines and strays from typical RPG’s as all characters just have a few lines each, and are all straight to the point. Most of the male voice actors for the English version tend to have a wee bit of a Scottish accent going on (It’s Scottish in the eyes of this Welshman anyway) and they all hold down their believability well enough to enjoy their few lines. Musical score is pretty weak however, there’s barely any music beside Boss battles and the opening credits, there’s a few parts with just atmospheric music playing in the background, but nothing to make you want to listen to the soundtrack on it’s own.

Story

The story in Demon’s Souls also strays from a typical RPG, in that there’s barely any story. To cut it short the overview is this, King Allanti XII, in seeking power and wealth for his kingdom, accidentally awoke ‘The Old One’ from his slumber and a great fog has spread across the land of Boletaria. Demons have infested the kingdom and soon, the fog shall cover the entire world unless brave souls are able to slay the demons and lull ‘The Old One’ back to sleep. There are few to little cutscenes so there’s little of breaking up the action or fun, but it makes me wish there was a little bit of story involved just to spread out the gruelling battles you go through.

Conclusion

Demon’s Souls is a great game, a relic hidden behind the Asian Region (Soon to be American though). The game will never hold you hand in hand, but it’ll never abandon you to resorting into reading a guide on GameFAQs to figure what to do next. The difficulty will naturally put a lot of players off (Most likely the tools who play nothing but CoD all day and don’t even know what RPG stands for), but for any real hardcore gamer this will be a perfect game to play. I should also note after you completed the game, you can either start fresh with a new character, or replay again using the same character, the second time you play it will be known as “New Game+” and what that “+” really means is a + on the difficulty rating, and every time you play through, another + will be added bring along even more unbearable difficulty, but if you brave through you will truly feel like a real Warrior worthy of playing such a brilliant game.

Final Score? 9.7