[PS3] Demon Souls

[deathindustrial]

Not to sound overly argumentative but it sounds like you folks are playing a different game than me some times.

=)

In the Nexus (for example), I have found no way to skip the intro or outro dialogue components of the guy that holds your stuff, the weapons dealer, the lady with the wax on her eyes, etc. x did not work for me nor o or any other key press. I'll give it another try next time I play in case I am suffering amnesia or something but I did try pretty hard to skip the dialogue as it got stale.

With respects to saving, I do not consider "exit game" equivalent to convenient save points. I am talking about the kind of saving you have in say, Fallout 3 where you can save your spot (in a new or the same slot) and trivially go back to it if anytime without ending your game.

In Demon's Souls if you just want to hedge your bets against an potentially dangerous action with unknown consequences coming up (like whether you can run past the dragon on the bridge in one of the earlier levels), it doesn't seem like that is supported.

If I am wrong there, please explain how you save your state before an action and then revert back if things go wrong (without exiting the game altogether).

Cheers

 

[Carl B]

If I am wrong there, please explain how you save your state before an action and then revert back if things go wrong (without exiting the game altogether).

Cheers

There is no reversion, but that is the point; the game is auto-saving all the time - it saves before you fall, and then it saves immediately afterwards as well. You can't undo mistakes in this game if that's the issue we're talking about, I agree with you there. But that's what makes it hardcore.

My friends and I growing up even through the original Nintendo era had a term we used for saving before disaster struck and going back to that save game because the results were unpleasant. I won't repeat it here because it was crafted from the minds of adolescent boys, but suffice to say that in that context through which I still view game saves, the inability to do so in this game I found a bit exciting.

I understand I'm just describing a situation that particularly suits my craving for challenge in these sorts of games (to date I think I've lost ~500K souls in the game... or more... to deaths - souls I never recovered), but there should at least be one good game out there that echos these precepts, and for better or worse, Demon's Souls is it.

 

[patsu]

Yes, and you have 4 character slots if you want to experiment with different character setup and story lines.

And yes, you can't cheat the system by turning off the PS3 when you die. That's why I repeatedly said you are committed once you choose an action. ^_^

It adds an additional emotion level to the experience, and you really learn to live with and live by your choices.

EDIT:
xbd, where does Yurt linger ?

Spoiler

I saved him in 3-2 and then went back to the Nexus right away. Can't find him. I thought he's on the huge second floor area. When does he appear in the Nexus ?

EDIT 2:
I re-read deathindustrial's post.

The multiplayer aspect is also not always all that great. A good portion of the messages you read are either unnecessary spoilers (i.e. not helpful) or useless. The mechanism for getting them off of your screen is also broken (you have to move away which is dangerous in some cases).

Press X to dismiss the current player message. The message dialog disappears and the character stays in the same position. You don't move at all to get the messages off the screen. I suspect you may have pressed O accidentally. O is "leap backwards" (assuming the analog sticks are neutral).

While you're at it, press [select] to recommend the message if you think it's worthy.

It does sound like you're playing a different game from the rest of us. ^_^
Might want to double-check whether your controller is broken, especially the X key. You press X to interrupt the NPCs' dialog too. If you press it too late, the NPC may finish his/her sentence regardless. If you hit X early enough, he/she will skip the current line.

 

[oramay]

So the only positive thing about this game is, that it is beyond difficult ...

It's not that difficult! This game is unforgiving in that any mistakes you make, like wasting items to create useless equipments, turning useful NPC's hostile etc. can't be undone. You can't backup your save.

However, in terms of fighting your way through the game, it's not that hard. I don't have good reflex myself but have not been dying as much as you seem to imagine. All through the game, I've only genuinely felt frustrated in one particular area, where the enemies and area design make life very hard for my combination of equipments and playing style. That area isn't hard for others from what I gather.

It's not so very hard if you're willing to progress cautiously and spend time to get a few very useful equipments (may be with the help of a guide or wiki).

... EDIT:
xbd, where does Yurt linger ?

Spoiler

I saved him in 3-2 and then went back to the Nexus right away. Can't find him. I thought he's on the huge second floor area. When does he appear in the Nexus ?

...

He should show up after one boss fight or so.

 

[Carl B]

Y
EDIT:
xbd, where does Yurt linger ?

Spoiler

Yeah it's on the second floor - he's tucked into one of the grooves against the stair-side of the wall, on the right if you are looking up towards the stairs from the Nexus center.

 

[betan]

Carl, without a guide how long did it take you to finish it?

 

[Carl B]

It took me a little under 70 hours, though I'm sure I could have done it much more quickly if that was my goal. I was committed to trying to explore as much as I could though, for the aforementioned 'lack of guide' situation.

I'm not sure if that will seem like a long amount of time or not to folk; for myself though it's about where I like an RPG experience to be.

I should note that I've put another ~20 hours or so into the game since completion.

 

[patsu]

70 hours is a good number.

I think I'm about 50 hours in. I'm only half done and am already approaching soul level 90 because I love farming and fighting with the small guys over their loot.

The boss fights scared the sh*t out of me, so I guess I needed more time to muster up my courage to even cheese them.

All through the game, I've only genuinely felt frustrated in one particular area, where the enemies and area design make life very hard for my combination of equipments and playing style. That area isn't hard for others from what I gather.

5-* ? That's the world I have not explored yet.

 

[patsu]

For the Deluxe Edition folks...
http://atlus.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5072

Dearest Customers,

Over the last couple weeks, we’ve received reports from owners of the Deluxe Edition of Demon’s Souls that some copies of the Official Strategy Guide were experiencing unusual cover ink wear/fading.

While it seems that not every copy of the guide is affected, and the specific cause of the issue remains unclear, Atlus always strives for nothing less than the full satisfaction of our customers. Therefore, we will soon launch a program to replace defective strategy guides.

Stay tuned for details on when the program will begin and specific steps on how to submit your replacement request. We can say at this time that we will ask customers to mail in their cover and the first page of their guide as proof of purchase, leaving them with a usable book while we process their replacement claim. Full instructions will be posted in this thread next week.

Thank you for supporting us and making Demon’s Souls such a big hit. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue has caused, but fear not: we’ve got you covered (pun intended).

 

[oramay]

...

5-* ? That's the world I have not explored yet.

5-* is unpleasant in the visual look of the environment, and I have to bring enough items to handle the poison and plague as well. I surely don't like that world, but I didn't die much in it. The area I died most was 4-2, usually near the last 2 reapers. It's really a combination of my character setup, playing style, and the design of that area. In the end, after many failures, I found a pretty safe routine that works for me. I've watched videos of others going through that part since and it really shouldn't be so hard.

 

[deathindustrial]

Press X to dismiss the current player message. The message dialog disappears and the character stays in the same position. You don't move at all to get the messages off the screen. . . . .Might want to double-check whether your controller is broken, especially the X key. You press X to interrupt the NPCs' dialog too. If you press it too late, the NPC may finish his/her sentence regardless. If you hit X early enough, he/she will skip the current line.

Feeling sheepish on this one but it looks like a mix of a crappy controller but mostly impatience. My original DS3 now has a glitchy left shoulder button which I have to hold outward with one of my fingers if I want to make sure it will not trigger by accident. I bought a new red DS3 since I had last played Demon's Souls and yup, dialogue is interruptible and yup I can skip the messages.

=(

I should note that with messages if I hit "x" too quickly, the tap is ignored so I think I assumed that it was my movement that was making the menu disappear and not the x button.

As an aside, is it a Wiki reference when you folks use "1-2" or "4-3" to denote levels or is that somewhere in the game?

One thing that caught me twice today was not knowing when fog leads to a boss and dying immediately because of it. This game is mean.

Cheers

 

[patsu]

This page explains the world numbering system:
http://demonssouls.wikidot.com/concepts

The other thing to worry about is getting overburdened. If your total equipped weight is more than half your max. equipment load, you will become clumsy in battle. The character may fall when rolling, and generally takes longer to recover his/her posture. Got myself killed in 3-3 boss battle because I equipped the heavier Purple Flame Shield before I went through the fog door (D'oh...)

5-* is unpleasant in the visual look of the environment, and I have to bring enough items to handle the poison and plague as well. I surely don't like that world, but I didn't die much in it. The area I died most was 4-2, usually near the last 2 reapers. It's really a combination of my character setup, playing style, and the design of that area. In the end, after many failures, I found a pretty safe routine that works for me. I've watched videos of others going through that part since and it really shouldn't be so hard.

Yes,

Spoiler

the first and third Reaper were easy. You can shoot them since they are in plain sight (or in the latter case, you can force it to spawn in plain sight). The second Reaper is tougher to get to. During the Halloween event, 4-2 added 3 Golden Skeleton Black Phantoms to the same location. I died quite a few times fighting them. The last Golden Skeleton BPs gives 12,000 souls, so I can't complain.

I only have 5-2, 5-3, 1-3 and 1-4 left now.

 

[patsu]

Demon's Souls: The Most Boring Game of the Year ^_^
http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/the-most-boring-game-year

Sure, I could praise the aesthetics: the game has atmosphere to spare and deftly uses it to rachet up the tension. The voice acting would chill Dickens. The walls would scare off mold. And the sound design is hollow, haunted and mostly music free, because music would make you feel safe. But that’s just garnish for the gameplay. By demanding your twitches and your tactics, by keeping you alert in even the most familiar passages, and by demanding and rewarding your total focus, it lures you into a state of serene concentration and sustains it for hours at a stretch. It’s not “flow”, because flow implies progress; it’s more like tantric sex with a slide rule. I don’t know how else to put it.
The hell with saving the world. I’ll take navel-gazing this sublime any day.

I think he kinda gets it right, although it's not boring to watch per se. I watched someone else streamed their gameplay over justin.tv near launch.




... and Director Interview ! I was wondering if they are ever going to let me know who designed the game. ^_^
http://gameinformer.com/games/demon...or-discusses-difficulty-sequels-and-more.aspx

GI: Not including the Nexus, there are a total of five worlds in the game. How many "leftover" or abandoned world ideas did you have at the end?

HM: I had a lot of ideas during the early design stage. The world ideas that came the closest to making it into the final product were the Library stage and the Outside area around the Nexus.

GI: There's a lot of variety in the bosses, with some battles like Old Hero or Flamelurker requiring serious, intense combat skills, while others like Dragon God are more like big puzzles that you need to figure out. How did you decide the balance for that?

HM: When designing the bosses, I made sure that they would be varied and exciting. I prepared different gameplay and strategies for each one so that players didn’t get tired of the same fight every time. We wanted to surprise players and encourage them to figure out different tactics, to think on their feet.

Each boss has a concept that can be described very simply. The Maneater, for instance, can be summed up by saying “there’s another enemy.”

The interviewer is wrong. ^_^
The Old Hero does not require intense battle. In fact,

Spoiler

you don't have to swing your sword once.

It's also a puzzle, but you can melee him if you want (or can't figure out the puzzle).

The Flamelurker fight is more intense, and yet also manageable if you know its weakness. People who tackle it head-on will generally have a harder time.

 

[obonicus]

I'm not sure if this was posted before, but Leigh Alexander wrote an article for Kotaku on DS:
http://kotaku.com/5392920/in-praise-of-hard-games

There's quotes from Takeshi Kajii, the game's producer:

"I do not think that games must be accessible to be appealing," Demon's Souls producer Takeshi Kajii told me in an interview. "If you make a game accessible it will expand the audience. However, if we were to make all games accessible, wouldn't you eventually get tired of the same thing?"

On the multiplayer:

Enriched by its multiplayer element, the game allows players to see the bloodstains of other fallen heroes, and touch them to view how they died. Players can leave notes and messages for one another warning of tough spots up ahead, and can also recruit the phantoms of players that have died to help them handle challenges. Kajii says this system of strangers helping strangers came from a real-life experience of his, a time when his car was stuck on a snowy mountainside.

Numerous stranded drivers all banded together to push each of the cars in turn, but Kajji couldn't stay behind to thank his benefactors, lest he end up stranded again. "I wondered about things like whether the last person made it home, whether I'd ever meet the people who helped me again... Maybe if I'd met them somewhere else, I would've made friends with them... Many thoughts crossed my mind," he said. "This occurrence of helping complete strangers was strangely very memorable, and I kept thinking about it for a very long time.

 

[patsu]

Nice quotes !

That is exactly the feeling I have when playing Demon's Souls: I wanted to thank those anonymous someone who helped me when I needed it most. Yet we had to part ways quickly because the place was too dangerous to stay, and we had our own quests ahead of us. It's a strangely lonely feeling.

It's also fun to share Demon's Souls experiences with fellow "heroes".

I also like this part:

The key to effective difficulty, as opposed to frustration that's just frustrating, is all in the implementation. "Doing something hard isn't fun in and of itself," said Yu. " It's not fun to sit in an empty room and try to balance a ball on your head for 10 hours straight. To make challenge effective, you have to provide an interesting game world and create deep mechanics that are entertaining to play with and very satisfying to master."

I think the new controller also needs deep mechanics to hold people's attention over a long period (e.g., swinging with a real golf technique, or tennis strokes, etc.). Deep and yet familiar or easy-to-try mechanics.

 

[PARANOiA]

I don't necessarily agree with any of the above. I think the concept of Demon's Souls is really intereting and unique, but its implementations is at best average.

Most of the issues I have with the game are in its controls. Having to click the camera-stick to lock onto a target instantly takes my hands off of action buttons. This is not an ok-implementation of controls where a death can mean hours or more of retracing my steps to get me back to where I was, not to mention the time wasted in terms of trying to actually progress. Add to this the feeling of frustration you feel by the trial-and-error level design - which would be ok if the game was more forgiving - teads to a feeling that depth here has been replaced by difficultly.

Having to read an FAQ to get through a game is pretty much poor design, IMO.

Overall, it's a really interesting experience, and worth my time. I can't wait for a fun game in the same design, but Demon's Souls is definitely not fun, in most senses of the word.

 

[obonicus]

Most of the issues I have with the game are in its controls. Having to click the camera-stick to lock onto a target instantly takes my hands off of action buttons.

I'm not sure I understand. You don't have to remove your fingers from the shoulder buttons. You mean being unable to roll or cast?

 

[patsu]

Most of the issues I have with the game are in its controls. Having to click the camera-stick to lock onto a target instantly takes my hands off of action buttons.

This is how I play:

My left fingers are still available to shield up (L1). I can also switch weapons on-the-fly with the left hand face buttons while toying with R3 lock-on/off.

Since the lock-on is sticky, I can follow up immediately with R1 to swing my weapon. Or O to roll.

By the time I reached the archdemon in 4-4, I was toggling the lock-on, rolling and shooting in continuous flow. All the flying mantas were dead in a matter of minutes.

Stage 5 is problematic though. The swamp prevented me from rolling. All I could do was sprint. Now that's a hard level.

This is not an ok-implementation of controls where a death can mean hours or more of retracing my steps to get me back to where I was, not to mention the time wasted in terms of trying to actually progress. Add to this the feeling of frustration you feel by the trial-and-error level design - which would be ok if the game was more forgiving - teads to a feeling that depth here has been replaced by difficultly.

That's why I focus on the screen, scanning for signs of danger, and clicking R3 to check for hidden enemies from time to time. I never run in a new level. Only run when I am on familiar ground.

Check blood stains and messages when something doesn't seem right.

Having to read an FAQ to get through a game is pretty much poor design, IMO.

The wiki is useful to speed up the game. After some initial deaths, most of the time I only die twice at most for the entire stage. In some cases, I didn't die at all. I got killed by invading Black Phantoms though.

Most RPGs would require player interaction to see what weapons are worthwhile, what skills are useful anyway. Also most levels have shortcuts you can unlock to shorten the path. However, replaying the same stage to recover your body is a blessing in disguise. Killing the enemies along the way would leave useful health items, weapons, antidotes, upgrade ingredients, etc. to help strengthen your position by the time you got back to the enemy that killed you previously.

The enemies are usually easier to kill on second or third try.

Overall, it's a really interesting experience, and worth my time. I can't wait for a fun game in the same design, but Demon's Souls is definitely not fun, in most senses of the word.

To each his own !

 

[PARANOiA]

Well, rolling is an issue since it's basically a situation of lock on once I'm close enough (since most enemies charge me once I'm in range to lock on) or more importantly move out of the way! Since I'm trying to pan the camera and lock on (and I can't cast without locking on) the AI generally attacks me before I get a chance to escape. Then I either choose to lock on (and take a hit) or roll away and not be able to lock on/fight back.

The classic case for me was acutally 1-1. Try going up the castle as a caster. I can't actually access my shortcut while trying to lock-on to the guys just after the staircase on the left without getting well within their range. I can't lock-on comfortable and back away without walking out of range (and un-locking them to cast), so I have to try and lead them out, stick-click (meaning no actions and minimal camera movement, which is all character-centric) and trying to not lose precious life.

Either way, I sure someone will tell me I should tap a combination of R3, then O then L2 or something... but either way it's all fairly clunky. People can tell me I should be playing it differently, but at the end of the day it's not an intuitive control scheme, and it's off-putting.

Like I said, I enjoy the concept, but the execution I find to be sorely lacking. I'll stick with it for what it is, but I think a game in a similar vein - world-view, knowledge sharing, character levelling, etc - with functional controls and a more intuititive design would easily be my game of the generation. For now it's a good try, and I can't wait for someone to improve on it.

 

[PARANOiA]

This is how I play:

My left fingers are still available to shield up (L1). I can also switch weapons on-the-fly with the left hand face buttons while toying with R3 lock-on/off.

Since the lock-on is toggle/sticky, I can also follow up immediately with R1 to swing my weapon. Or O to roll.

Don't you think having to repeatedly click R3 just to try and attack an enemy is a bit of a poor control scheme? And by nature, you'll lock on, and then unlock an enemy because you're clicking all the time.

Auto-lock on - at least as an option - would be far more preferable. Actually, a PC with mouse would beat all other contenders!