This game is the hardest game. It steps on your balls and grinds them to dust.
When you kill things/use certian items, you get souls. Souls are this games form of currency. Also they are this games form of exp. Souls are EVERYTHING. You advance your characters stats with souls. You buy some gear with souls and upgrade it with souls. Souls souls souls.
When you die, your souls get reset to zero and you must get back to the point in which you died and left a bloodstain on the ground to retrieve them. Unfortunately for you, this means you have to start the level you are on all the way from the beginning with EVERY MOB RESPAWNED. If you die a second time on your way back, your first bloodstain is gone, meaning your first pool of souls is gone.
Forever.
Example. You are a new player. You are playing level 1-1 "Think Diablo" and have gotten what you believe is fairly far in the level. You have about 4,000 souls which is a lot to a new character. You have just defeated a blue eye'd knight with a two hander who is a fucking BEAST. As you celebrate by pumping your fists in the air IRL, you failed to see the three zombies approach from behind and they fuck your couch because there is no way to pause the game. You die.
You fight back all that way and the blue eye knight with the 2 hander puts it in your ass. Your original stash of 4,000 souls is forever gone, and now you must fight back through all that shit again to collect your shitty pile of 300 souls.
Getting hit in this game sucks. Even with decent resists and gear, sometimes enemies will just destroy you in a few hits. It's challenging. You have this riposte attack, where if you use it at the right time when an enemy attacks, you negate the blow and can follow up with a super hit. It's great when it works. If you miss, you get hit. And that shit hurts.
You will die. A lot.
It doesn't hold your hand either. No road map "or map map" and no signs pointing you in the direction of what to do next. No pause button and all menu interaction is done in real time.
This game has a shitload of weird things about it that is pretty hard to describe. There is a kind of PvP and it depends if your character is alive or in spirit form and how you get summoned into other peoples games. I have had people come into my game and just sit there with a bunch of mobs thinking they will off me when I attack them. Unfortunately for them I just knocked them off a bridge first then took care of the mobs. Other times I've had people just charge me down and I rape them with my spear.
If you're connected to PSN, you're playing online. As you go through levels, you will find these bloodstains on the ground and clicking them will show you how another player recently died in that area. It can be funny to watch people do dumb shit or actually give you insight about upcoming danger.
You can also leave messages behind for other players. Select from a pretty big assortment of prewritten things.
You can build a character however you want, and the starting classes offer nothing more than just different pre built stat distributions and different selections of gear. The hardest part is actually having souls to spend if you keep pushing through a level instead of going back to the nexus to spend them. I've restarted so many times thinking that was the solution. Nope. The best way to play the game and win is to not suck shit at it. I'm used to hack and slash games, and I want to wade in and destroy foes while screaming at them. 9 out of 10 times this means death in Demons Souls. You really have to play smart, and sometimes cheese your way through.
It's a great game I think. Unfair many times, but when you do well you feel like a real man.
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