View Full Version : Demons Souls
I think I want to play this though I'll admit I'm really not so sure I like the idea of such an extreme level of frustration.
Do I want this? Keep in mind I'm really not familiar with / keen on the dual shock.
Assuming the answers are all Yes I do want it does it matter whether I get the US or Asian version? I notice the Asian import version is cheaper but I swear I've read something about getting the US version as an English speaker. Which leads me onto my next (and last question), is it a single player experience or will I spend a lot of my time online?
NokkonWud
15-03-2010, 09:05
A friend has just posted this off to me to play and I'm really looking forward to it, I will let you know what my thoughts are when I've had a real good chance to play through it.
I've heard some people say it's ridiculously hard, others that it's really not as bad as it's been made out to be (including Davey.)
leowyatt
15-03-2010, 10:18
I had a crack at it when I saw Davey the other week and it was good fun!
Davey_Pitch
16-03-2010, 13:06
I certainly don't think there are extreme levels of frustration to be had. I've seen people complain about dying hundreds of times during a playthrough, and this sounds like an exaggeration from some people. I reckon I legitimately died no more than 30 times throughout my entire first playthrough, and some of them were because of mistakes I made. I will say however, that I am usually exceptionally good at this type of game, thanks to the massive amount of time I put into Ninja Gaiden (which I personally think is harder). If you're a patient gamer, willing to bide your time against an enemy, learning his weaknesses instead of rushing in flailing away wildly, then you'll do fine. There are a few bosses which are difficult, but to be honest I wouldn't say it was any more frustrating than something like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry.
As for which version to get, as long as you get an English language version than you'll be fine. The differences between the versions are simply that the online is locked to whichever region you buy the game from, so if you get the US version (like I did), then you'll be playing online with other US players.
As for the online itself, I actually didn't bother with it after a while. There is a limited amount of interactivity between players, and the main part of it seems to be from other players invading your game to kill you. If you're good enough to kill them, everything is fine, but it was incredibly annoying to be right by the end of a level, only to have someone invade my game and kill me, making me do it all again. In the end I simply stopped myself from signing in to the PSN so I could play it offline. While it meant I couldn't ask anyone to help me, it also meant I couldn't be invaded by anyone else, so the trade off was worth it IMO.
If you want to know anything else about it, fire away. I've spent about 80 hours on it in total and I've nearly finished my 2nd playthrough, so there's not much I don't know about it now :)
Edit: I can also only think of 3 times during my first playthrough where dying cost me the souls I had. Every other time I was able to make it back to my bloodstain and claim the souls I had lost. Out of the 3 times it happened, only once cost me a decent amount of souls, the rest were just nominal amounts.
Bah.
I can see what all the fuss is about but I'm really not sure I can be arsed with this.
It wasn't as hard as I'd assumed going into it, until I came accross some knight 15 mins into the first world who killed me whilst I was still faffing getting from bow to axe. Then faced with getting back to my body; with all the enemies in between respawning I realised I actually fancied a little narrative and that this wasn't really my idea of fun so I went back to the Nexus.
Going to sleep on it but this could well be a very fast trade in...
Not had a good week as Heavy Rain is totally underwhelming too... :(
NokkonWud
18-03-2010, 22:03
Where did you get it from? Didn't seem to take long for you to get it!
Davey_Pitch
18-03-2010, 22:43
Abooie, if the Knight that killed you had red eyes (he'd be on the far side of a long bridge when you first see him) then you need to stay away from him to start with. He'll be way too hard for you unto you're Soul Level 30 or so. Even after that he's still really hard, so don't worry if he was the one who killed you :)
Abooie, if the Knight that killed you had red eyes (he'd be on the far side of a long bridge when you first see him) then you need to stay away from him to start with. He'll be way too hard for you unto you're Soul Level 30 or so. Even after that he's still really hard, so don't worry if he was the one who killed you :)
Yeah he was the one. I saw him from a distance and fired an arrow at him...
Nokkon, off a guy on eBay. I'd not used it for a while so I had a 10% voucher so it didn't cost me too much and I was lucky and picked a very good vendor.
Okies.
Put quite a bit more time in this morning.
Retreived my body but died shortly after; some guy threw a firebomb at the barrels that were next to him and me. 100% to 0% health instatly.
Ok. Got back to my body then got all the way to a heavily armed bridge, was killing my way across when some dragon came from nowhere and flamed me.
I'm done. I've put in 3 hours. All the enemies have respawned, I have no xp, no arrows (can't find any) and my body is probably irretreivable even if I can get all the way to it without dying again.
It's hasn't been especially hard and has been fun but having to replay whole areas again and again to get to points you couldn't have known would be insta death just isn't fun and I really don't want to play with a guide open.
It's also reminding me a bit too much of highend EQ corpe runs... and I don't want to go down that route again :P
Think I'll sell it and grab FFXIII. If anyones interested give us a shout.
PS.. Don't get me wrong after I retreived my body, got a couple of rings, rescued a knight and fought my way to the bridge I felt a great deal of accomplishment. I felt I understood the system, could kill the enemies without too much difficulty and was enjoying myself it's just I really really really don't fancy the 40 odd minutes to get to the bridge again where I'll probably die again.
Stick a save points before the bridge and I'd be straight back on it.
NokkonWud
19-03-2010, 14:00
Having splashed out so much in such little time I'm sadly not in a financial position to do so, which is a shame as I'd have had it off you in a shot and had it been next month it wouldn't have been an issue. I've even had to cancel FFXIII too and just stick with Battlefield: Bad Company 2. :(
Davey_Pitch
19-03-2010, 18:35
It's a shame you died there, you were right by the end of the level and had you made it across the bridge (which you literally need to sprint across, ignoring enemies for now), you would have been able to open up a shortcut to the beginning of the level. I do understand your frustration though, things like that can be really annoying.
:o
Kind of woke up thinking about this game...
Got back to the bridge...
Got my body back...
Beat the boss (puddy cat)...
Might have the bug...
Movealongplease... movealong...
So Davey, where would you recommend I go first?
Davey_Pitch
20-03-2010, 15:53
My personal recommendation would be to do world 2-1 next (Stonefang Tunnel). There's a nice variation of enemies there and plenty of items to grab. I think I did the first area of each world before moving onto the 2nd part of each world, though it really is up to you. I tended to try a world and if I found it too hard, went back and went somewhere else.
What did you do with the Demon Soul you picked up from the boss of level 1-1?
My personal recommendation would be to do world 2-1 next (Stonefang Tunnel). There's a nice variation of enemies there and plenty of items to grab. I think I did the first area of each world before moving onto the 2nd part of each world, though it really is up to you. I tended to try a world and if I found it too hard, went back and went somewhere else.
What did you do with the Demon Soul you picked up from the boss of level 1-1?
I've not done anything with it yet... what should I do with it? :)
I had some revenge on the red knight. I fired a lot of arrows at him before realising that was a really bad idea(tm) at soul level 13. He chased me all the way to start of 1-1 before getting snagged in some fire. Nice bonus 2k souls :)
Was doing 1-2 (saved the knight dude again) but got scared and ran back to nexus... Might try 2-1!
Davey_Pitch
20-03-2010, 19:13
I'd keep all the boss Demon Souls that you get, as all can be used to turn into either weapons or magic. Some are more useful than others depending on your playstyle, and some have some pretty steep requirements before they can actually be turned into a weapon, but they're pretty much all useful :)
Really getting into this now. I took your advice, I've beaten 2-1, I'm now soul level 20 and I'm working on what to do next.
I did read something about a compound bow on 4-1 so I'm thinking this would be a good bet as I picked a Hunter and the bow is my primary weapon (well, would be but arrows are still relatively quite expensive).
I'm still baffled by most the stuff going on though and have no idea what half the items I've got do. I'm also worried about upgrading things and don't want to make build mistakes now I'll regret later.
Also for a casual play do I need to worry about tendancy? I took someones advice and I've been commiting suicide in the nexus before each new level so I complete them in soul form (to maintain white tendancy) though I'm not sure why I'm doing this tbh :) lol
I'm still wearing leather armour for the lightness; my main weapons are a long bow (+1) and a winged spear (+2).
Any advice re. items or anything else I've rambled about appreciated.
---
I'm really glad I stuck with it. 2-1 was a joy. Most of the times I die now it's because I've done something stupid and I can easily get my body back (I've not, not got my body back yet) and the way in which you open shortcuts rather than get save points in inspired. This game gets in your head..
Davey_Pitch
21-03-2010, 16:59
Regarding the class you've picked and using a bow as your main weapon, don't really worry about that. All your starting class does it pick your starting stats for you, but as you've no doubt seen, where you choose to go from there is up to you. You could turn a Barbarian into a pure magic user if you wanted to just by upgrading the right stats.
If you want cheap arrows, there is a vendor in 4-1 where Arrows cost 10 gold each, they're the cheapest you can get them for.
I never worried about Tendency during my playthrough at all, except over Christmas where they had a special event so that all worlds had Pure White Tendency. All it does is cause a few special characters to appear if you have Pure Black or Pure White Tendency. You won't really miss much if you never see them.
With regards to upgrading, your best bet is to experiment with a few weapons and find the ones you like best, then concentrate on upgrading them. Different weapons will require different types of stones to upgrade (such as Sharpstone, Hardstone, etc). If you have some Meltstone however, you can always turn an upgraded weapon back to normal, but you'll lose whatever upgrade materials you used to start with.
I can give you some recommendations about what weapons I preferred if you like, but it's just as good to play about with them yourself and find what you like :)
As for the game getting in your head, just talking about it is making me want to go back and finish it for a 2nd time :D
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