07/29/2010

Subject: Gaming
Title: Final Word on Demon's Souls

WHAT? UD IS MAKING ANOTHER BLOG ENTRY ABOUT DEMAN SOLES? GOD DAMN SOMEONE SHUT HIM UP ALREADY! THAT DAMNED GAME IS ALL HE EVER TALKS ABOUT ANYMORE! KILL THE HOSTAGES AND STEAL OLD LADY GERARD'S NEWSPAPER OFF HER FRONT PORCH!

As this blogpost's title implies, this will be the last one mainly about Demon's Souls. I am sorry to talk about this game so much, but it's the biggest thing on my mind and I need to get out my thoughts somehow. I had originally intended to make this blogpost an actual audio essay, a kind of "sequel" to the audio review I did on DS back on 12/16/2009. However, that stint of audio reviews and essays was short lived, mostly because I don't have the luxury of doing a lot of voice work. When your day job involves talking to people for 8 hours straight, you usually need your off hours to let vocal inflammation go down.

So, sadly but unavoidably, the followup to that audio essay must be in text form. I will link this blog entry from the YouTube page of that review, so that people will know it wasn't all I had to say about Demon's Souls.

First off, let me summarize the general points of that audio review. My main assertions were 1) That Demon's Souls has some fundamentally good design, but 2) Is unusually hard for games in this day and age, and 3) Disrespects the player's time through a lack of save points, forcing the player to redo an entire level if he fails at any point during the level. This all encouraged me to set Demon's Souls aside, disregarding it as a game that was too broken to play seriously.

At the time, I had only beaten one boss in Demon's Souls, and was struggling to beat any other level. Now, despite having seen more of the game, I want to make it absolutely clear that I retract NOTHING of the criticism I threw at Demon's Souls during that audio review. Since then, I've played the entire game through twice (having beaten it once each with two different character builds). If anything, seeing all of the game convinces me more and more that everything I said in that video was 100% true. Not only that, but I've become aware of a whole new bushel of problems in this game.

Demon's Souls is so loaded with flaws that it's difficult to list them all. But, in the interest of proving myself an ever larger hypocrite, I'll try anyway! In no particular order, here are the biggest issues that bother me about Demon's Souls.

---

Lack of checkpoints or save points

I know I already have mentioned this the above listed audio review, but it's still worth a recap. There is absolutely no excuse, in today's era of consoles with hard drives, that I should be subjected to a level that takes 30+ minutes to clear through without being given checkpoints. If I die right before or during the level's boss fight, the half hour spent getting there is wasted time, and I must again prove myself against all the challenges that I had already overcome just to be given another chance at the one challenge I have yet to beat.

There are two major counterpoints I've heard to this complaint, and I want to address them both here. The first one is:
"But UD! Having no checkpoints creates great tension! When you get to the boss, the stakes are higher than in other games, so you're that much more focused, that much more intent on winning, and have that much more emotional connection to what's happening in the game! It's a great rush."

And, in fairness, that is true. But I don't agree that DS gets that emotional high in the right way. It's true that players will feel a surge of adrenaline when tackling some difficult in-game challenge, fighting a tough boss, weaving through storms of bullets or hopping platforms and trying not to fall into a pit. That emotional high is intensified when the stakes are higher, when there's some reward to be gained, when the player has failed several times but is this time closer than ever to victory (as happens naturally, since the player tends to get better each time he tackles the challenge). However, Demon's Souls doesn't so much offer a reward as it does threaten a punishment. It's like if your angry abusive father yells at you to grab him a beer from the fridge, and your reward for the deed will be him not whipping the shit out of your back with his leather belt.

Demon's Souls could get an emotional high from boss fights just fine even with a checkpoint right before the fight started. Gamers naturally want to overcome the challenges put before them, and that alone is enough to make a thrill out of a difficult boss. Adding the threat of "YOU MUST REDO THE WHOLE LEVEL IF YOU FAIL" is just superfluous. It's not good for emotional intensity. It just encourages the player to rip the game out of the PS3, take it to the nearest farm and drive over the disc repeatedly with a tractor.

The second objection to my "no checkpoints" complaint is:

The people who say this baffle me to no end. When they say this to me, I can't help saying, Seriously? Just because you're not yet good at a video game, you want to perform at the same parts of that game over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND FUCKING OOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRR again? No. I refuse to believe that. No human being finds repetition fun. You're either lying to me or don't understand the scope of my complaint.

And, from all the people who have given me that particular objection, I have reason to believe they exist outside that scope. The people who have said that are very good at Demon's Souls, and seemed to pick up on the game much more quickly than I did. In other words, they wanted a game that had consequences for the player being careless. As in, consequences for a player who was very good and knew what he/she was doing, but just got sloppy or lazy. They wanted a game that kept them on their toes and demanded their attention.

That's all well and good, but realize that not every gamer in the universe can just look at a ball-cruncher like Demon's Souls and dominate it like you did. Besides, what if we do want punishment for failing a challenge in the game? How about we take the punishment of having to attempt that challenge again, and not being allowed to continue the game until we succeed? Why do we have to redo an entire goddamned level for failing one part of it?

Okay, enough of that. Let's move onto the other issues.

Character balance

There are no difficulty settings in Demon's Souls. The "New Game" menu gives you only the choice of character appearance and class, not difficulty like Easy, Normal, Hard or Insane. The closest thing DS has to difficulty settings is the different character classes. For instance, you can start as an all-melee character like the Knight, which can be considered moderate difficulty (since you have good starting equipment for melee combat, but no long-range attack options). You could start with the Royal, which is considered easy mode (since you have a nice ranged attack spell which one-shots enemies at the start of the game). Or you could start as the Wanderer, a class considered hard (since your starting equipment has little defensive value and you must be very good at dodging enemy attacks).

There are two problems with this, though. For one, no one tells you that it's harder to start as one class versus another. Had I known the Royal was the best class for beginners, I would have started with him back in December and gotten into the game more smoothly. Instead, I started as a Knight and got my ass handed to me repeatedly. People who are better at games than me might want to start with a more challenging character, but how would they know who to pick? This game is excellent at not telling you things.

The other major problem about Demon's Souls character classes is that they are only starting classes. As a character progresses and faces the game's many challenges, he must become more generalized. DS is not a game where you win through specialization. You absolutely must become a jack-of-all-trades, being at least moderately effective at melee, ranged combat and magic, or there will be levels and bosses damned near impossible to beat. This means that, as the game goes on, the class you chose becomes more and more meaningless. The two classes I've beaten the game with were a Royal and a Soldier, and there honestly wasn't much difference between them when each game ended.

Now why is this a problem? Having DS classes be different only at the beginning means that, except for the first couple of levels, every playthrough is going to be the same. One of the charms of an RPG with multiple classes is having to adapt to new situations, bringing your strenghts to bear while minimizing the effect of your weaknesses. Warriors get up close and slash the shit out of their enemies, tanking up damage. Mages stay back and rain down fire and lightning on their enemies. Rogues move fast, darting in and out of danger with quick strikes or sniping enemies with arrows from afar. It makes a game fun to play more than once, since you can take on the same challenges with different specializations in gameplay style. In Demon's Souls, you very soon need to do all three, or you just don't succeed. This severely robs DS of replay value.

Dick moves, dick moves and more dick moves

There are many times playing Demon's Souls where something will smack you out of nowhere, and you're left staring at the TV jaw-dropped. These are all problems that can be avoided, but because DS never fucking tells you anything ever, you can only bypass them through brute-force experimentation and repeated failures. I'll list all the examples that come to memory here.

1. The Red Dragon of world 1
In the game's first major area, the Boletarian Palace, there's a giant yellow-red dragon which will spit fire repeatedly on the paths you must cross to reach the level's end. This dragon does not follow you specifically, and you're safe from it so long as you're standing inside a guard tower. In theory, the dragon could land on the bridge, poke its nose into the guard tower, then simply exhale and turn you into a crispy fritter. But no. The dragon instead does strafing runs on the adjacent bridge, over and over. You're only in danger of getting burned or getting brained by the dragon's swooping feet if you're actually on the bridge. This led me to believe that the dragon was meant to be an environmental hazard, something to be avoided, like a pit of lava or spikes shooting out of the walls. But nope! Turns out you can kill the dragon, by standing on a guard tower and poking it full of arrows like a scaly pincushion. This makes absolutely no sense at all. Why would a dragon swoop down over and over again, letting me slowly grind down its health bar, when flying ten yards further would let it breathe fire on me or pluck me up with one of its feet? How was I supposed to know you could kill the dragon? Should I start shooting arrows at pits and walls, just in case I might be able to kill them too? And why am I safe standing on a guard tower? I guess dragons just really fucking hate bridges. Never mind that everything on the bridge is already dead. Forget that there's some plucky hero repeatedly shooting you with arrows on the nearby guard tower. MUST. KEEP. BREATHING. FIRE. ON. THIS. BRIDGE. DRAGONS. FUCKING. HATE. BRIDGES!

2. The pits in 3-1
In this stage, the first level of the Tower of Latria, you must wander through a derelict prison. Why must you wander through a derelict prison? Because someone left the Archstone (a checkpoint in this game) in a cell, I guess. But, whatever. As you're finding your way through the prison, you will occasionally fall into giant gaping holes in the floor. Why do you fall into them, you ask? Because the lighting in this stage is very poor, and often there's no light but the glowing rock on your belt, which extends about two inches in front of you. That means you won't know there's a pit until you've already run into it. Some of these holes in the floor drop you to a lower level, and it's annoying enough having to climb back upstairs. But some of the pits are insta-kills, like this was fucking Super Mario or something, and make you restart the entire level with all enemies respanwed. To avoid this, the player proceeds with excessive caution, taking his steps very slowly every time he moves into a patch of darkness. It makes the level very long and tiring.

3. The boss fight of 3-1
The boss of this same level is one of the easiest in the game, or so it seems. The Fool's Idol is a mutant woman who simply floats in the middle of a chapel, occasionally throwing attack spells at you. It's easy to avoid her shots and attack her either with melee or ranged moves. Sure, she generates some clones which also shoot at you, but it's easy to hide behind a pillar and snipe the boss to death. But even when you kill her, the level doesn't end! And when you leave the room and re-enter, the boss has respanwed! You have to fight her all over again! It turns out this boss isn't so much hard as she is a mindfuck. To make her stay dead when you kill her, you must slaughter a defenseless zombified old man sitting in a balcony over the chapel. There is no logical connection between the two, except for some entirely inadequate hints scribbled onto the floor. Without the Demon's Souls Wiki or the help of someone who had played before, I imagine some players would simply give up at this point. It's not fun having the game hold some entirely nonsensical puzzle over your head.

4. Yurt, the Silent Chief
In stage 3-2, the second stage of the Tower of Latria, you come across a lone warrior trapped in a cage who asks you to free him. If you do, he thanks you, and then disappears for the moment. All seems well, and the player goes on with the game, happy with his kindness towards his fellow man. Little does the player realize that, if you start beating boss monsters after freeing Yurt, some of the NPCs in your home base (called the Nexus) will start mysteriously dying. It's only unnamed NPCs at first, but if the player doesn't make the connection quick, Yurt will start assassinating the game's valuable service providers. He'll kill off the people who can teach you spells, sell you items and repair your equipment. The only way to prevent this is to kill Yurt preemptively, but the player would have no way to know this. The only hint given is the pair of useless NPCs who die when you defeat the first boss after freeing Yurt. This is such an enormous dick move that it staggers me. I seriously wonder who at From Software thought this was a good idea. (I wonder so that I can find him and brutally murder him in his sleep. Then he can tell me how fucking fun he thinks unexpected killings are.)

5. The female phantoms of 4-2
In the second stage of world 4, the Shrine of Storms, you encounter some nasty phantom specter-things which are pretty tough to fight. Thankfully, you can kill all the phantoms in an area at once by killing the grim reaper who summons them, and get a pretty hefty payment of souls to boot. There's a second type of phantoms, though, who appear female and are much more dangerous than the normal ones. When you pass into their area, they remain invisible and simply giggle in the darkness. Just as the player stops and looks around to figure out who the hell is laughing, the female phantom appears out of nowhere and backstabs you, getting a one-hit kill and sending you back to the level's beginning. There is no way a new player would succeed in his first encounter with these ghosty bitches.

I'm sure there's more that are escaping memory for now. Just let it be known that Demon's Souls is basically Cheap Shots and Dickmoves: The Game.

All of the Archdemon boss fights are stupid and gimmicky.

The main story quest of Demon's Souls is stages 1-1 through 1-4, which is basically the entirety of the Boletarian Palace. However, at the end of stage 1-2, you're told that you must get the soul of an "Archdemon" to continue. The Archdemons are the final bosses of the other four worlds, one each in stages 2-3, 3-3, 4-3 and 5-3. I'm going to list off these fights one at a time and explain what's stupid and gimmicky about them.

World 2-3: The Dragon God
This isn't even a boss fight at all. It's a very lamebrain puzzle. Instead of actually fighting something, you need to climb to either wing of the arena to fire giant magical ballistas at the boss, all the while avoiding its enormous fists as it punches at you. Once you hit it with two ballistas, the boss is disabled, and you can then stroll down to its level and chop at its chin until it dies.

World 3-3: The Old Monk
This boss can either be stupidly easy or stupidly hard. When you're playing Demon's Souls online, and come to this boss, there's roughly a 50% chance that another real life player will be invited to become the boss and play against you. If this happens, the boss is every bit as hard as PvP usually is, since you're fighting against an actual intelligent person rather than game AI which can be manipulated. However, if you play this game offline, then the fight becomes trivially simple. All the boss does is punch at you and shoot the occasional laser beam, both of which are easy to avoid or defend against. The Old Monk is basically "Play offline to win!"

World 4-3: The Storm King
Near the beginning of this fight, the game gives you a hint that you "need a weapon which can tear open the heavens," which does make sense, since your enemy is a flying stingray the size of an aircraft carrier. And the game does give you a sword with a ranged attack that can cut airborne enemies. What the game doesn't tell you, though, is that the sword has just about zero durability and will likely break before the battle is over, so that the only real way to win is to come in packing a bow and lots of arrows. If you already have a bow and arrows, then the fight is beyond easy. You just sit behind a rock and pelt the Storm King to death. But it takes a long time, since you can hit the boss only two or three times every time it swoops down at you. That makes this boss not only easy but boring.

World 5-3: The Maiden Astraea
A fallen saintly woman has taken refuge in a feted, purified swamp deep underground. When the player comes to kill her and collect her demon's soul, she has no defense but the plague-inducing swamp and her knight, Garl Vinland. The honest, straightforward way to win this fight is to defeat Vinland, which leaves Astraea defenseless, and drives her to commit suicide. Vinland is a pretty tough opponent and resembles a worthy boss by himself, but you never need face him. You can climb to a high point in the cave, far away from Vinland, and simply snipe Astraea to death with arrows. Vinland could theoretically come up behind you and smash the shit out of you with his enormous hammer, but he doesn't. He just stands there and lets you murder his lady. Good job knighting there, buddy.

---

So, that's all the complaining I have for now. The obvious question that comes up is, "But UD! If so many things are wrong with Demon's Souls, why did you keep playing it? Why did you twice beat a game that's got so many flaws?"

There is an answer, but it's not easy for me to say. I mean, seriously. It is really not easy for me to say. It's like plucking nostril hairs, pulling teeth, getting stitches, breaking bones, and all other manner of unpleasant activity. But I am going to say it! It's hard, but I must!

Despite all the above problems (and more), I like Demon's Souls anyway.

Dear Christ. What have I become?

If you want a game that provides hacky-slashy, shooty-stabby, action-RPG fun on the PS3, there really is no title that delivers better than Demon's Souls. Like no game I've ever played, DS provides a visceral experience of kill or be killed, survival of the fittest, and huge emotional payoffs for becoming good at the game. That, and DS is unique in one other respect, and I use the word unique with literal meaning. As in, DS is something that no other game is.

I was talking to one of my online friends recently, when he made a passing comment about how so many good games are "easy to learn but difficult to master." I thought about this, and realized that Demon's Souls is the only video game ever (at least to my knowledge) that is the opposite. Demon's Souls is difficult to learn and easy to master.

By far the roughest part of playing DS is the beginning, when you're learning how everything works. The game is badly obtuse and doesn't readily explain things to a newcomer. But, when the player gets some experience and begins understanding how to think in the strange world of Demon's Souls, everything begins to flow more easily. The game has to beat you into its paradigms, but once it does, the game feels much easier in a way that isn't explained just by better stats and equipment.

So, that's Demon's Souls. It's definitely an unusual game, harder than most, more frustrating that most, but also more fun than most. It's definitely not for everyone, but those who do like it probably will forever. It's bound to become one of those nostalgic titles that a few (compared to the overall gaming market) ever acquired a taste for.

Now, From Software. How about a sequel?