Enter the dark land of Boletaria where the only light, is the light of your soul...

User Rating: 9.5 | Demon's Souls PS3
What sort of creatures hide in the dark? What's the best way to slay them? Am I strong enough? Am I going to die? The answers to these questions await you in the clouded kingdom of Boletaria. The answers to most of them you won't like, but I can answer one for you now; yes, you are going to die.

The Kingdom of Boletaria has been shrouded in a fog that cuts the land off from the outside. Many warriors have gone to Boletaria to aid the kingdom, only a few have penetrated the fog. What they found was a land filled with death.

King Allant XII freed the 'Old One' and released sealed demons who once fed on human souls. You are one of the warriors sent to aid Boletaria. Upon your arrival, you are killed by a powerful demon and your soul is taken to the Nexus, a safe haven for the living. You are then tasked with slaying the most powerful demons and taking their souls, in hopes of resealing the 'Old One'. This game's length depends on your patience and skill, but could take around 15-20 hours.

Gameplay is focused on exploring the 5 unique areas of Boletaria and slaying the demons you find there. You can focus on melee combat, ranged combat, and magic, the most effective and most used being melee. Combat consists of attacking a dodging. You are restrained by a stamina meter that is drained when you attack, block, dodge, or run. You have to strategically manage this bar during combat.

The rest of the gameplay consists of exploring every nook and cranny of each stage, collecting items and equipment, collecting souls from defeating enemies to buy new items or power up, and ultimately defeat all the boss demons.

When you die, which you often will, you lose all your collected souls and enter soul form. While in soul form, your health is cut in half. You get a ring early on to boost it to 3/4s of your original health, but you are still at a disadvantage. When you slay a boss demon, you are returned to your body. This soul form is used in the multiplayer portion of the game.

When exploring the world, you might find red messages all over the place along with bloodstains, as long as you are signed in to PSN of course. These messages and bloodstains are left by other players playing the game. Players can leave messages to help, or harm, other players. These messages can also be recommended so the fake ones stand out. The bloodstains show the last few seconds of another player's death, made to help you from meeting the same fate.

You can also invade another player's world while in soul form, if you do this your goal is to kill the living player. You appear as a red phantom and if you succeed, you revive and gain souls, if you fail, however, you lose your collected souls like normal and lose a soul level. You can also help a living player while in soul form. You appear as a blue phantom and help the player through the level and ultimately defeat the demon at the end. The multiplayer has it's problems, such as; inability to invite your friends to join you and trouble playing with certain people in general, and the servers seem to be a little unreliable. I found myself being kicked offline in the game, while still being signed in to PSN.

The most important thing about the gameplay is the difficulty. The game is hard, it starts off brutal and only gets more difficult as you progress. You can grind earlier stages for souls to counter this but the fact is...this game is brutal. You'll die...a lot, but have fun at the same time.

The audio is top notch, the disturbing soundtrack combined with the growls and screams of the demons make a really eerie atmosphere. The voice work is excellent as well, the few characters sound alive. There's also some strange sounds that are only heard in certain places, like eerie singing, or a dramatic sound when you open an iron maiden.

The presentation is dark, with all kinds of hidden details. The animation is excellent, though the physics on the corpses is a little silly. There are a few glitches here and there, but the look of the game is awesome. It may be a little generic, but the darkness suits this beast fine.

Overall, Demon's Souls is an excellent Action-RPG for all PS3 owners to devour. There is no other game like it and it sure is a brutally fun ride.

Story: 9.0/10
Gameplay: 9.5/10
Audio: 10/10
Presentation: 9.0/10