Is Demon's Souls "Hardcore"?

Demon's Souls.

I had heard so many good things about this game since it came out. Well, I guess good things might not be the right words exactly. I heard it was hard but that it was one of the best games of this generation. I bought it like a year after it came out, before it became a PS3 Greatest Hits titles but had just never gotten around to playing it till this weekend.

I guess what finally made me try it was the fact that Atlus said that instead of taking the servers offline in a couple of days, they had decided to keep them running. Also, they announced that the worlds in Demon's Souls would have a Pure White tendency through Labor Day. Tendencies go from white which means the demons in the game are weaker to black which means they are stronger. So I thought it was a good time to play since the game would essentially be in easy mode.

I love the look of the game. It reminds me a bit of the Lord of the Rings movies and The Elder Scrolls games, and maybe HBO's Game of Thrones (IF it had a budget). I'll give it this. This game has atmosphere by the buckets. It really feels like demons have invaded the world and either have killed everyone or sucked their souls out and driven them mad. When you're in the dark with just the little glowing light on your belt, Demon's Souls ventures into Resident Evil territory.

The combat is also quite good, but though Demon's Souls LOOKS like a hack and slash a la Dungeon Siege or Diablo, it is more of a strategy puzzle solving RPG fighter. All your attacks have realistic follow throughs and inertia so if you just go in swinging blindly even a dog can kill you. You have to learn the move sets of enemies so you know when to counter, block, or attack.

You know, I thought I was just going to give some thoughts on why I am going to quit playing this game, but it's turning into a review isn't it? This is just my impressions after about 8 hours of gameplay.

The online messaging is really cool. Other players can leave pre-fabricated messages on the ground throughout the game. You can also write your own messages. Like if you get ambushed and live through it or die, you can go back and write a message saying "look out" or "archer ahead" so someone doesn't experience the trap when they play through. Of course, every player doesn't tell the truth. The game also lets you recommend messages, so if a message has very few recommends, it's probably a lie to get you killed! Again, that aspect of the game is brilliant. You can also click on bloodstains and see how other players died. But the messaging was much more helpful.

Now for the negatives that are probably going to make me stop playing this game.

You can't sell anything. I pick up armor and weapons and there is a shop where you buy stuff, but you cannot sell anything! The only way you get Souls (money) is by killing enemies, be they human or otherwise. So what this game seems to be telling me is that Demon's Souls is merely a monster killing game, akin to Monster Hunter. The combat in this game reminds me a LOT of the Capcom franchise. Maybe this game started out as a clone. Your options for equipment and items are to either carry them, store them with a dude named Stockpile Thomas, or simply drop them. It just seems like such a waste to have loot just laying around. Let's recycle!

You die a lot in this game. When you die you keep all of your items and equipment BUT you lose your money (Souls). When you die you are sent back to the last Archstone (transporter) that you used, which is at the beginning of the level. IF you manage to make it back to the exact spot you died at, you can reclaim your lost Souls. Problem is that I grow impatient and just want to plow through all the enemies to get back to my death point. I ended up dying a lot BEFORE I reached my initial goal and the original death point gets replaced with your most recent death when you had no Souls, so you lose ALL your souls. So the game prods you into a "use it or lose it" mentality. Even a tiny sliver of checkpoints would have placated me.

It also makes you afraid to explore and experiment. Especially when you face a new enemy. You see a new enemy, you get one chance to attack, he kills you, rinse and repeat. OVER AND OVER AND OVER. So you don't get the chance to learn when you face more powerful foes. You simply die. That's another thing. When you die you don't respawn mortal. You are in Soul form....which means you have about 1/4 of your normal health! The only way to turn back human is to beat a boss, use an item, or help another player beat a boss. I never got the chance to enter anyone else's game in the 8 or so hours I played.  What is the point of the Soul form, I ask you? Just to make the game harder. There were times when I skipped an area simply because I wasn't given the chance to LEARN how to defeat an enemy. I learned how to die, but I didn't have the oppurtunity to learn how to LIVE!

And that brings me to this thought: Demon's Souls main game mechanic, its one gimmick,  is that it is hard. I could essentially get this same experience by putting the settings of Dungeon Siege 3 or Monster Hunter 3 on Hard or Super Hard. Maybe not ambience wise, but in terms of difficulty. I'm sure if someone made a Call of Duty game and just set "Hardened" as the default setting, it would garner a cult following simply by advertising "This game is Hardcore. It's not for pussies." The whole idea of a "hardcore" game makes me laugh. The very fact that it IS a game says that its not hardcore. If Demon's Souls was "hardcore" then you would die once and the entire game would never be playable by you again. Do not use difficulty as a game's main selling point. End of story.

I have not been taken in. I am not a pussy. I just refuse to continue to play this game. Tedious. Frustrating. This is not the 1980s.