Videogame Review: Demon’s Souls – PS3

Demon’s Souls – PS3

Buy on Amazon

At first I didn’t know what to think.  I gripped my sword and held on desperately to my shield for this world was rumored to favor death.  The training seemed simple enough until I encountered the well known beast at the end.  At first my heart skipped but my body still moved out of the way of its first blow.  I struck the beast to little avail but there was a moment, a small moment were I felt confidence.  I saw his life force halved and I knew I could win if I just kept it up.  And in that moment of boast, I died.  When I awoke, I was in the Nexus.

The Nexus held 6 stone pillars, one of them crumbled, each representing a different domain of the parasites for the beast.  People had come here for safety and to barter for souls.  There was a warrior here, but he did not last long.  At the time I felt shame for when I found his corpse I pillaged his soul.  Do not judge me for you would too.  There was a man who lost his daughter and a woman held fast to her god for support.  I would later find others who would in turn find there way here.  Some were murderous and some were considered saints.  I did business with them all.  One of them tried to kill me.  I did not return the favor for I needed his arrows.  After dying a dozen times I pried my falchion loose from the corpse of the Phalanx demon, the maiden came to the Nexus with the offer to increase my power in return for souls “so the world might be mended”.

I listened to rumors and instructions outside of this world and learned the advantages of different weaponry and the art of crafting.  I could attack with the spear while not lowering my guard.  I could kill a dragon without endangering myself if I brought enough arrows and perched in the proper space.  And I could forge weapons from the souls of demons if I took the soul of the demon Flamelurker and found and gave it to Ed the blacksmith.  The smithy’s were a fickle lot, only interested in souls.  After dying at least a hundred times and killing thousands I finally managed to get enough shards and chunks of rock to fortify my tools.  The road to Flamelurker was a tricky one involving strategically falling down a mine shaft.  When I finally reached the beast I stayed back in terror, attempting to quell it with my bow.  I died many times and lost many souls because of it.  Sometimes I found myself so frustrated I would openly commit suicide in the mine shift.  But is it really death or suicide if you can never truly die?  Months passed and eventually I came back and bested the beast with my spear forged by moon rock.

The victory gave me a renewed vigor.  I started braving other worlds as a friendly phantom, wanting to learn from their failures and successes.  The False King, the Penetrater, the Blue Dragon, the Maneaters, all of them fell before my silent friends and I time and time again.  The thrill of victory was incomparable yet unquenchable but their souls soon proved not to be enough for the Beast.  Often times when in human form after killing one of these beasts a Black Phantom would visit and kill me.  I did not win many of these fights.  Sometimes even with friends at my side we would lose.  The thirst truly consumes some of us whole until that is all that is left.

As the archdemons fell I sought out particular enties for more knowledge, equipment, and souls.  Executioner Miralda was the first to fall.  I never revealed to Satsuki that I found his magical sword.  Ostrava died I assume for I never saw him after I vanquished the Tower Knight demon and thus was denied access to the Old King.  Eventually the world turned black and I faced black phantoms of all these individuals.  There was really only one item I was after: the Talisman of the Beast. A relic that allows both the use of magic and faith.  One phantom, Scirvir I believe his name was, had it.  And I took it.

I wish I could tell you the world was healed after I pillaged all those demon’s souls.  I made the right choice I believe, for there is a choice at the end.  But afterwards, I found myself back at the beginning.  Some go mad they say, never being able to truly die, to truly emerge victorious.  But this time will be different.  This time I will entertain Mephistopheles offer.  This time everyone will die, starting with that whelp Ostrava.  I will not be denied access to the Old King again.

About MusiM
Musician, writer, Gundam model hobbyist, video game lover, host of The Carousel Podcast, and all with a day job.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 152 other followers

%d bloggers like this: