Demon's Souls
By Harold Goldberg,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Brilliant, extremely difficult, violent RPG in bleak world.
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Demon's Souls
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Based on 3 parent reviews
I LOVE THIS GAME
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Just a little bit difficult.....
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What’s It About?
In DEMON'S SOULS, a drab, encroaching fog full of soul-sucking demons threatens to make an utter wasteland of the already miserable Boletaria. It's a kingdom which has plunged into an eerie darkness because its greedy king awakened a seemingly unstoppable evil being. In this role playing game, you are the final hope for humanity, the hero who must fix this depressingly bleak world. But you will probably die, many times, while trying. If you're good enough, you'll discover the mystery of the Old One, the greedy king. Along the way, you'll fight gross things like insects with human faces, octopus men, grim reapers and giant, round masses made of human bodies.
Is It Any Good?
It's not easy. This extraordinary sleeper hit features a short, wham-bam tutorial and a challenging, dungeon crawler experience from the first fight onward. The steep difficulty level itself (you die miserably a lot), makes it an adults-only game and the massive amounts of sword killing, spurting blood, and fleshy gore seals its mature rating. (However, the bloodletting can be turned off.) Dying a lot yields a harder level when you try again. You can't even pause in this masochistic hardcore gamer's delight. It's ingenious nonetheless. Besides a massive world to explore and many classes of characters to try, the fascinating online mode lets previous players leave messages of warning to help for you. You can also beg others to help you defeat an ugly boss in this, the most difficult game ever created for the PS3. Bravo.
Online interaction: By joining you, friends can help you beat a boss online. Players can leave helpful messages. But people can also steal your game, too. There is no ability to text or use audio in the online mode, so there should be no fear of four letter words or worse.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
What do you think of this world? Is it too sad and forsaken? Or is it a step forward in games to see these deeply negative emotions?
Is it hard to deal with the constant dying of your character? Why or why not?
Do you wish the game saved automatically more often or do you like the challenge of getting to the end of the level and fighting the boss without save points?
Game Details
- Platform: PlayStation 3
- Available online?: Available online
- Publisher: Atlus
- Release date: October 5, 2009
- Genre: Role-Playing
- ESRB rating: M for Violence, Blood
- Last updated: August 31, 2016
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