A new PS3 exclusive action RPG by the developers of the cult classic King's Field was recently released called Demon's Souls.  It's an action RPG where you play as a nameless "hero" who has to save a kingdom from an evil king summoning monsters.  I say "hero" because once you start the game you can do whatever the hell you want.  Save the world, loot the place, rule the world, kill other players, who cares it's your choice.

screenshots here

What has me most excited is the attention to detail.  Objects interact with the world on a physics based system.  Cover crumbles, weapons bounce against the terrain (meaning you can't use a spear in a tight hallway), monsters roam the levels never staying in one spot (a dragon perches on a pulpit, launches fireballs, flies out of range, comes dive bombing in, etc.) and so on.

While the game is single player, there's a unique procedural multiplayer that affects you if you're online.  Basically, there's multiple universes and your character is a soul in every universe but your own.  Periodically you can see other "souls" (other players in their own game) fighting stuff.  You can't interact with them as they're essentially ghosts.  The different universes will often merge so players can leave messages in the dirt to be read by anybody, you can find bloodstains of dead players, discarded equipment, and sometimes a player's soul will appear as an antagonist.

Currently the game is Japan only but for whatever reason it was translated fully in English (except the manual).  Sony has no plans to release it internationally which is criminal.  It sold out in Japan the first week!  I imported the game from Australia and god dammit I can't wait to play it.

on multiplayer

It seems like they wanted to integrate multiplayer into the game without hampering the single-player experience. They integrate it in such a way that it never breaks the atmosphere and conventions created by the single-player. Well, there really is only a “single-player” mode; the multiplayer features are just integrated into it if your console is online.

1. I believe the story has you being a person who is resurrected by a sorceress to go fight the evil. Since this is the story for everyone playing, I guess she has an army of souls. When you play, you can see some other players as they play their game. You can't see what they're fighting or anything; you just see their character as they do fighting animations or jumping or whatever. You can't interact with them; all you're seeing is their ghost (soul?).

2. You can leave messages on the ground which other players can read. You can leave hints or comments or trick them or whatever.

3. Sometimes you will come across a big bloodstain on the ground. When you check it, it will spawn a ghost of another player and you can see how they died there.

4. Another gameplay point seems to be that when you die, you come back as a soul, meaning you only have half your max HP. You can't get your body back until you defeat a boss. However, if a living player has a certain item, they can use it to summon souls to his side (sort of like pokemon). You can go to his game and have multiplayer this way, and when you defeat a boss you'll get your body back, which should be a lot easier with a team. The catches are that when the summoner dies, you're transported back to your world. Also, there isn't any voice chat; only animated gestures.

5. Alternatively, if you don't feel like teaming up with someone or fighting a boss, you can instead teleport to someone else's game and attempt to kill him. If you do, you'll get resurrected. If not, there's some penalty I don't know.

6. I guess this is spoilers for one of the bosses but it's really cool. Supposedly one boss can pick you up and throw you into another room, which is filled with other players (how the game sets this up I don't know). You then have to duke it out in a giant battle royale, because only the last one standing may leave the room and the defeat the boss.

and

You aren't usually fighting alongside other players, but at the same time you constantly run into evidence of other people playing. Either you'll see a ghost image of another player in the same area you're in in their game (you can't interact, just observe them playing), or read messages, or whatever. It makes this epic crusade all these knights are on feel very real, as there are players all over this game world working toward the same goal.

The messages work really well. For example you can't really jump horizontally, but there are several places where you need to leap down, and people leave really useful info on where you can get down to secret areas. The developers are being pretty clever about it too. there are several areas where enemies ambush you, or arrow traps spring up quickly, that were obviously made so that people could help each other out of them. There was this particular boss that kept destroying us again and again, until we noticed this stray message someone had written in the arena. It read something like "Here. Don't move" and it turns out someone had found a safe spot in the room where the boss couldn't get to you. So cool to find.

And speaking of bosses, this game is rather difficult. Even with as much life energy as possible, with the best armor one could reasonably have, at any given point, you won't be able to take more than 4 or 5 hits at best. And a lot of bosses will kill you in two. This isn't Dynasty Warriors. You have to become pretty adept at using your shield, and rolling out of the way intelligently based on the sounds/attack animations that bad guys make.

I'm almost 99% positive that you do lose souls when you die. That's the incentive for not charging in swinging, and generally proceeding with caution. They don't take away souls you have spent leveling up or upgrading equipment, but any loose souls are void if you die as a ghost.

There were some things that we couldn't quite figure out though. Apparently you could enter other people's games in an antagonistic role, and appear as an evil looking black shadow thing, but we never really figured out the mechanics of it. Also, is there anyway to "sell" old weapons/pieces of equipment? The game isn't terribly loot heavy, and you will want to hold on to stuff, as even early equipment can be upgraded into usefulness by spending souls on it...but there will eventually come equipment that you no longer have any use for. And it seemed odd that you could do nothing with it.

For anyone worried about importing, the game seemed extremely English friendly from my perspective. Though since it isn't an English release, finding pertinent information is difficult, so finding a community of player like the something Awful boards seems like a good idea.

oh yeah, this is a hardcore rpg in that it's unforgiving in its difficulty.  apparently there are no shops (you have to forge new items from previously obtained items) and minimal grinding involved.  basically, your success relies purely on skill.  other players say that the best strategy is to always have a ranged weapon or magic handy because enemies will attack you from afar and only a few hits, even with the best armor, will kill you.  of course, the game isn't a traditional hack and slash.  people are describing it as a roguelike (minus the procedural generation) in that you have to weigh your decisions carefully.  if you go in hacking and slashing, you will be overpowered and die.

weapons have various speeds and ranges as well.  a spear gives you a range advantage but can blocked by walls while a two handed sword can tear through enemy defenses but you're left without a shield and it's slow.

and the enemies are pretty wicked.  at the start of the game you'll be fighting dragons and 20ft tall demons but early on the best strategy is to trick/run/get enemies to fight each other.

Yeah, this sounds pretty awesome.  PS3 is region free, right?

Yeah, this sounds pretty awesome.  PS3 is region free, right?

yep and there's no region locking on multiplayer so US guys can play JP guys etc.

i'm assuming they designed this game to be as universally accepted as possible.  there's very little text and dialog and all chat comes through animated emotions your character does.  sony better release this shit!

this sounds like an rpg which should NOT be undertaken lightly

I have  this game, and it is good... But in several ways it is horribly retarded. Well, in one major way actually.
This game is kind of like a Roguelike, in that initially you will die, a lot. However, dying is SEVERELY punished.

Firstly, you should understand the difficulty of this game. Most normal enemies aren't much of a threat, they are fairly weak, and die relatively easily. However, a group of 2-3 of them can be much more of a threat, and 4+ can quickly kill you.
Additionally, each level usually has bigger, more powerful enemies. These take a major beating, and in some cases can kill you in one hit, and this hit in some cases cannot be defended against.
Also, it is not uncommon for stages to have environmental hazards. The first stage has dragons that will swoop down and breath fire on you. This can take off 80% of your maximum Hp and cannot be defended against.

The game plays in a similar way to Monster Hunter games. Each weapon has a very limited selection of attacks (one weak which might have a 2-3 hit combo, and one strong, which might have a 2 hit combo). Each type of weapon has advantages and disadvantages, examples include spears, there advantage is their range and they have a thrusting action, but they are easily blocked by shields. In comparison a large sword has a decent range and a wide sweeping action, they are good at staggering people who block, but their wide sweeping action means they cannot be effectively used in small areas because they hit walls and obstacles (which can reduce damage they deal, or even make attacking with them impossible).
Each weapon you equip will literally change the way you play the game.
On top of this, you have to familiarize yourself with the controls of the game, as well as what is best to use and when. You have to learn when to block and when to evade, because it could make the difference between living and dying.

Anyway, you gain "souls" for killing stuff. Souls are like currency and experience. You use them to buy items, upgrade equipment, buy new magic spells, but also you need them to gain levels and raise stats.
If you die, you lose all of your souls and there is no way of storing them for safe keeping. You can regain them, at the spot you die is a bloodstain which you can recollect lost souls. But if you die before getting back to it, or change stages, the bloodstain is gone and so are the souls, forever.
Also, you have two forms. A living form, and a phantom form. When you die, you turn into the phantom form, this cuts down your maximum Hp by HALF (or by 25% with a piece of equipment). Returning to living form requires either a rare item, or killing a boss. In phantom form, you tend to die a lot quicker.
If you die while in phantom form, the area shifts towards a "black tendancy". This means certain events may change and some things in the stage will be different. However, it also means enemies get stronger and more powerful enemies appear more commonly, but the rewards for killing enemies is much higher. But... The difference in enemy strength while in a black tendancy area is insane. A normal enemies, that is not very aggressive, dies in 3 hits and could probably kill you in 20 hits in a black tendancy world will be very aggressive, die in 6-8 hits and kill you in 2-3 hits.
The powerful enemies are called black phantoms and are like minibosses (but can also be controlled by other players). They can be stupidly strong, to the point where I have in the past spent 20 minutes fighting one and still lost.
The opposite of black tendancy is white tendancy, which means enemies are weaker but give less rewards. However, getting a black tendancy in an area is easy. Getting a white tendancy in an area is very hard (if you die in an area 10 times, it will be totally black, but getting it to neutral involves killing 10 bosses... But you can only fight a boss once, which means you need to complete the entire game 10 times to get it back to neutral, provided you do not die once).

In short. The game is good, gameplay is excellent, storyline is hardly existant because it is suppose to be about ball breakingly hard gameplay. Buttt... The game gets harder each and every time you die. If you do not get good at the game fast, it can become literally impossible to play and will almost guaranteed require you restart with a new character. An example is on stage 2 (an EASY stage), if it is in black tendancy you have to fight not one, not two, but THREE black phantoms. I cannot kill one on it's own in a 20 minute long fight... You have absolutely no chance at all of killing 3. (And all 3 could actually be other players, which makes it impossibly harder)
The majority of the game however is relatively easy, provided you understand that charging in blindly will get you killed quickly. The major threats come from the big, powerful miniboss enemies, bosses and other players. Which will count for 99% of your deaths. You have to learn what each enemy is, how they pose a threat and how best to deal with them inorder to kill them.

This is not a game everyone will enjoy. But provided you like hardcore action RPGs with extreme difficulty, you may very well enjoy it!

Also, the Asian (more specifically Chinese) version of this game is entirely in English. All the text and voice actors are in English, if it was not for the case and the manual in the game, you wouldn't be able to tell it was the Asian version of the game. And it can be played on any PS3. If you want the game, and don't want to wait, order it from somewhere like Play-Asia.

long ass awesome post

my penis is hard

glad i paid that extra 20$ aussie for fast shipping i want to get this game by fucking friday!

This looks like it has the potential to be super fun, though idk if I'd like the difficulty or not. I'd have to try it first, but..

it's not even out here. And I'm not importing a game, especially if I'm not sure about it.

uh we have a problem here. i went to the post office at 9:00 AM to pick up the game... but i just got done playing it right now (3:30 AM the next day)

i mean srsly wtf? this game is too addicting. i am in love with it. i must have died like 60 times already but it's totally okay because this game is a gem.

if you're into action rpgs (aka the fun kind of rpgs!) and you can handle some difficulty (aka you're not a pussy) then do yourself a favor and buy this game immediately. even i had doubts about this being good at first but so far my experiences with demon's souls have been nothing short of superb...

uh we have a problem here. i went to the post office at 9:00 AM to pick up the game... but i just got done playing it right now (3:30 AM the next day)

i mean srsly wtf? this game is too addicting. i am in love with it. i must have died like 60 times already but it's totally okay because this game is a gem.

if you're into action rpgs (aka the fun kind of rpgs!) and you can handle some difficulty (aka you're not a pussy) then do yourself a favor and buy this game immediately. even i had doubts about this being good at first but so far my experiences with demon's souls have been nothing short of superb...

I am guessing you have no idea about world tendancies, and have yet to encounter a black phantom.

If you want an example of how hard a Black Phantom can be to kill. Go to the first stage, at the area with all those catapults. Then go down the side that is opposite to where the blue knight spawns (and where the fog is you enter). There will be a crossbow guy and a soldier with a pike down there, so you know it is the right area.
Go through the room at the end, then down this narrow pathway. You'll run into a red knight, he is holding a spear, so you know it is the right guy. Hahaha, try and kill him.
I bet you cannot (he is way harder than the first boss, probably even harder than the second and third bosses). Black Phantoms are like this red knight, but stronger, faster and take a lot more of a beating. At certain areas you will have to fight 2-4 of these at a time.
Enjoy never being able to progress through stage 1, or complete the game, because in the second area of stage one you have to fight a ton of black phantoms to progress, and it is in a very small, enclosed area and there is a lot of crossbow soldiers shooting at you. (Which when you are in a black tendancy area can kill you in 2 hits, actually any sort of soldier can 2 hit kill you in a black tendancy area)

The game is great and all. But they way it punishes you for dying (by making the game exponentially harder, to the point that it is impossible to play) is really retarded.

lol you fuckin scrub i eat black motherfucking fantoms for dinner. i fought six at once in stage 3 it was easy if your not a scrub.

lol dude i know what world tendencies are. but yeah i agree with you. npc black phantoms can be stupidly tough, there's no denying it. so far i've only fought and beaten the red eyed knight in 1-1 and the female archer phantom that appears before the boss of 3-1. i wasn't able to beat the red knight on my first playthrough of the level, though. i returned after i was strong enough and i resorted to making use of the catapults lying around because he would often get stuck on them if you're standing on the other side. from there you can weaken him a lot with firebombs and stuff or projectile weapons.

i haven't encountered a human black phantom yet, but one time in 3-1 i was requesting a coop game and some weird shit happened where i was teleported to a room where i got this big yellow tornado hat from a skeleton dude. it was weird and i got to walk around the room for a while before it ended but nothing else happened. does anyone know anything about this??

i didn't get to keep the tornado hat either...

as far as difficulty after dying goes, i think that co-op play can really help. it's like a way to help you get back on your feet. not only do you get some experience from whatever your partners kill, but you also get revived into human form after clearing the boss.

edit: just found out that if you're a phantom and you died in coop you get to keep your souls

currently it's only available in Japan and asian countries.

the distribution is really weird.  hong kong and singapore have a large english speaking population (they are the centers of eastern world business) but sony has mentioned nothing about distributing the game anywhere else.

there have been no announcements made for a US/EU release. but to make things clear, there are currently three versions of the game that are out right now: japanese, chinese, korean. of these, the chinese and korean versions are complete with english text as long as that's what your language is set to on your ps3. the only thing that doesn't come in english is the boxart and the manual, but who cares about that... if you're interested in the game i don't see what could be holding you back. import away!

lol dude i know what world tendencies are. but yeah i agree with you. npc black phantoms can be stupidly tough, there's no denying it. so far i've only fought and beaten the red eyed knight in 1-1 and the female archer phantom that appears before the boss of 3-1. i wasn't able to beat the red knight on my first playthrough of the level, though. i returned after i was strong enough and i resorted to making use of the catapults lying around because he would often get stuck on them if you're standing on the other side. from there you can weaken him a lot with firebombs and stuff or projectile weapons.

i haven't encountered a human black phantom yet, but one time in 3-1 i was requesting a coop game and some weird shit happened where i was teleported to a room where i got this big yellow tornado hat from a skeleton dude. it was weird and i got to walk around the room for a while before it ended but nothing else happened. does anyone know anything about this??

That is the only stage in the game where you get to potentially play as the boss. Chances are, the other person playing realised this, and quit the game or got themselves killed.