Great environments, playing styles, fantasy RPG at its best: why did the designers wreck it with idiotic restrictions?
Demon's Souls could have been one of the best co-op games ever. Instead the game designers hatched a series of stupid ideas to turn it into one of the all time worst co-op experiences:
- No friends list. Playing with your friends takes a convoluted effort, and in a game where you are almost certain to die in early walkthroughs, or get invaded by a random player at the worst possible moment, it becomes nothing short of a pathetic system. When the game company refuses to explain how co-op system works and gives the sad "try it, you'll like it" excuse you know we are all in trouble.
- You can't play co-op if you are 10 levels apart; and this happened constantly with three of us trying to play co-op leading to nothing but frustration
- You can NOT replay areas in co-op after both players cleared the boss
- You WILL miss out on many cool side quests because of a buggy NPC system and a poorly executed "world tendency" concept. The concept is good, the way it works in practice is another layer of aggravation.
Basically the excitment of getting together with my friends to enjoy what absolutely could have been pure fantasy RPG co-op JOY... turned into an aggravating, frustrating, bitter experience. Bitter. It borders on being a crime, but apparently there is no law against creating something good and then sucking the life out of it.
Let's be clear - there is no complaint about the much hyped "brutal" difficulty of the game. Once you get the feel of the game (i.e. after you get burned a few times) you adapt and approach things a little more thoughfully. It would have been nice to have a reasonable co-op system because its a tough game. Playing solo, or in the odd half solo / half online mode (which was apparently the intended mode) limits the experience.
I don't know if it is possible with DLC to modify the co-op system in the future to allow more freedom. If it's possible it should be done. Otherwise we all have to wait...
Someday a RPG game will be released that doesn't put the designer's own egos above a solid co-op. Sadly, even with all the elements right there in the game's DNA, Demon's Souls flatly refuses to let the players play.