This is not a game for everyone, but if you have the heart and patients, try it out.
To prevent spoilers, I will not discuss the plot of the game. Basically you will stay in a sanctuary called Nexus for most of the time, inside there you will have peace, even thou you can still harm the NPCs....... You get to visit a few worlds and the goal of this game is to kill all the demons located in each world. The story is pretty...I don't know, I respect Japanese way of telling the story but still, it is a bit confusing for me. As for plot, I give it a 7.
Overall the graphic for the game is nice, it is dark, creepy, and some level gives you depressing feeling that you feel like you are playing a horror game. People complain about shaders and lightings are bad obviously put the brightness level too high (the game actually asked you to tune the brightness level to very low at start of the game, mine is 1). I like the graphic, I think it's pretty ok, so for graphics: 8
There isn't music most of the time, I think only when you are in Nexus, or fighting a boss, you will hear some music. The ambient sounds are perfect, it adds up the overall creepy old scary tones of this game, and I actually prefer if RPGs to have lesser music but more ambient sounds these days coz most of the music is loud and out of place. I give about 8 for overall sound & music work.
As for the game play, first start off, this is supposed to be a RPG, but however, you will notice a lot of difference from other RPG. For instance, it gives you an oblivion kind of open world feeling, that it allows you customize your own character. You get to choose form a few classes; there wasn't much of explanation for each individual class, so you can only try to figure out form the starting states. As what the game suggested the starting states only affects how your character starting play, as the game progress you will be able to use all sorts of weapons and spells, provide that if you meet the necessary requirement.
The control is responsive and good, I can attack and defense easily, and the movement is ok. Somehow I feel my character is a bit "weightless" (especially in soul form) when she moves but overall its ok .You can't jump but you can run and roll. R1 and R2 for your right hand equipment and L1 L2 for your left hand respectively. It is pretty cool that you are able to control your character as if it is an action game, as most of RPG these days (oblivion and fallout3 been some rare exceptions) are mainly just about point at click, level etc.
As most of your already know that, this game is hard. The enemies are tough; you will meet up with monsters that are able to kill you with 1-2 hits, and your hp and mp will not auto-regenerate. If you die in your body form, you will transfer into soul form, which limits only 50% of your max hp. In body form you have 100% of your health, but you are more likely to attract attacks form the enemy. There are many weapons to choose from and some are good against certain enemy while some aren't. There aren't much of spells and miracles to learn, nor there are any skills that you can pick up as you level up, even you are a mage, for starting game with low MP and it does not regenerate, you still have to rely on your melee sometimes. Overall I think the gameplay is good, is better than most of the RPG I've played recently. I gave it 10.
What special about demon's soul is that if you logged in with your PSN account, you are able to enter online mode. You will see messages left by other players; some are great hints while some are lies and traps. You can see some white phantoms in the game, that's other players that in the same world as you. If you are good, you can invade other's world as a black phantom, and you can also place yourself as a blue phantom that others can summon you and help to fight the game. Corporative plays is very fun and there are some superb players out there, while I feel the PVP part is less enjoyable. For instance, I can't block a black phantom form invading my world if I'm in a critical task such as fighting the boss, or fleeing away from enemies. During pvp some battles will ends shortly while some can last for very long, especially if the opponent is a sneaky one. I thought the white stone can banish the black phantoms but it doesn't. Later in the game you can learn one spell that removes them from your game, but still, it feels annoying especially if you are just into this game for less than 2 weeks (like me)and constantly getting killed by invading black phantoms. Sometimes I really not in the mod for PVP guys.... there's one time that I was trying some weapons that I never used before, I was literally naked, and one guy invaded me and killed me in like 3 hits. They should put an option on the staring of the game that whether you prefer PVP or not, and later you can change it on status menu if you feel like having some PVP experience. Often in some area, I will force my character's death as after experience form online play that there are players that trains in that particular area so that they are very familiar with that place and able to hunt you done very quickly if you are not prepared. Because of these in online experience, I give it a 7.
While the review suppose to end here, but still, I can't help but to share some of the things I find it upset the gaming experience. As I said, this game is hard, which most of the times it is hard in a very fair way: You made a mistake, or you underestimate your opponent, and you pay the price. However, I can't help but to notice a few minor issues that the game outruns you in cheap way:
1. There isn't friendly fire in this game. Without friendly fire, enemies can gang up on you without even worry of hitting their allies. Archers can shoot through their allies and hit you, which I really feel not right. I want to have "fair fights" with some foes that already overpower me, I don't feel right if there is no friendly fire and 3 spear man can just stack up they attacks by spear through each other's body and feel nothing about it).
2. The structure hit box in this game is very big... I love to use arrows and range weapons to attack my enemies, but what I don't like to see is the arrow getting stuck at the invisible edges of the walls.
3. Thinks about it, foes arrow will magically follows you too. Although not that much of homing like some other game, but still, you can see the arrow band and follows you sometimes.
4. You should be able to sell away things you collected. I heard people said if you can sell away your gears, it will make the game easy. No it won't. This game has its potential of running 2 different currency (gold and soul) while you level using soul and buy stuff using money, and enchantment, magic learning requires both. I think it will be a better system because soul can be farmed, but gold and only randomly drop or sell away some equipment. So the player will be force to choice carefully on what to spend on the gold, thus adds more fun to the game. (Currently I can farm 60K soul in a very short time, seriously what can't I buy?!)
I think that's all I want to say about flaws. They are quite minor, but some can be annoying at times. Overall I give this game a score of 8/10. This is not a game for everyone, and I suppose not everybody will like it or play till the end. But still, if you have the heart and patients, I recommend check it out.
PS: after a few days of online play, I have to say I'm fairly disappointed.....The online play is a mess.To cut it short, bascially, you can summon people form NG+ as blue phantoms to fight for you. Or you can get summoned into NG+ game when you are just a mid level NG character (I got summoned in to NG+ twice, once in level 40+, once in 50+, I invaded NG+ game twice while I was in level 30+and 40+).........
PVP is even more ugly. I didn't know that people in this game love to gang so much (So much for my dota experience, but that was 5V5, not 3V1... ) Usually when you invade people, they either have 2 bodyguards await you, or they will running to the start and summon allies. I don't know but somehow the matching system didn't work as what some DS forum said so. I don't mind some challenge when I fought with someone level higher than me and have much better weapon, but hey, I mind fighting 3 people , and some of them might be even form NG+....
That's what I have to say for now. I will join some of the DS forum and stuff to ask for details about the online gameplay.