Demon's Souls

Since I did my favorite game, we'll get to my least favorite game today. I dislike everything that Demon's Souls stands for (and how annoying it is to say). I actually platinum'd the game (not because I enjoyed doing so), in case you were wondering. This was a game made for hardcore gamers (specifically Asian hardcore gamers). I don't really believe there is or should be such a distinction, but the game ensures you must be this demographic and masochistic too. You're going to die. A lot. They don't communicate the mechanics to the player (anywhere)... they almost ensure you die in the tutorial by facing you up against a monster you would be hard pressed to beat this early in an environment quite suited to him. They kill you... often... and, when you do die, you start over from the beginning. This game is openly hostile to its players.

Now, I can understand making your game "hard." This game requires flawless executional difficulty, but there is little "thinking" difficulty even in PvP (player versus player). And, when you fail, you start at the beginning. So, I'd call this difficulty "annoying and spiteful" rather than "hard."

I understand why they did this. Let me explain. The game keeps plunging your balls in a vat of acid, but they try not to make you give up, because if you can just get back to your pretty blood smear, all will not be for naught. You can keep your progress! But, if you can't, you're screwed. Goodbye progress. This is conditional forgiveness. They want you to move through the game very cautiously when you don't know what you're doing by hanging the fear of having to redo what you did over you and by making the entire environment anathema to continued existence. They want you to keep doing the levels over and over again until you've mastered them. And finally get a mental pay off like, "Remember when this was so hard? Now you rarely die here. Good for you. Here's a cookie. Oh, it's laced with arsenic." Something like that, but this payoff is extremely hollow to me because the game isn't about learning, but bashing your face against minotaurs until one finally steps out of the way. That is the inherent problem. I did not feel rewarded for completing a section, I felt peeved at the developers for making it so annoying. Making me worse off than I was before.

If this game had an interesting combat system, I could probably forgive it, but when the most complicated strategy is something like, "Parry and then win" or "Wait till he does this move, and then smack him a few times" I can't say that that is interesting. In fact, I didn't necessarily use all of what was there. Parries I would totally use, but the punishment for failing is generally instant death. Forcing me to go back to the beginning. The parry doesn't even fit within the "caution" part of the game's design. Shield bashes... yeah... not useful. Then the strong attacks were rarely useful. Only really useful for the polearm because it has longer range. Generally it's just a normal attack that has a longer wind-up and a worse stamina/damage ratio. Only really good for "changing it up" in PvP. The lack of interesting choices really shows up in PvP. You pretty much stare each other down until someone dun messed up, then you eviscerate them. The stare down isn't interesting and the stabby part is even less interesting and unrewarding because of it.

I'll top this all off by saying. I hope I get flamed for this. That is all.