I Remember first hearing about Demons Souls through a mate who worked at EB(Gamestop for Americans) who kept telling me he was getting a bunch of returns for a game called Demon's Souls, he took it home one night and eventually called me at about 4am telling me to come get the game and play it, I went into it completely blind and had no idea what i was getting myself into, all he told me was that it was "Hard as shit" so I went down and got it the next day, and it's safe to say I wasn't prepared for the brutal experience i was about to "enjoy".

Demon's Souls was the first in the souls franchise and arguably one of the best ones, spawning an entire genre revolving around terrifying boss fights, amazingly detailed set pieces and convoluted levels and character progression, today we're going to look at the first entry in the Souls genre, one that spawned a generation of gaming and one that is responsible for more broken controllers than Counter-Strike.

Welcome to Boletaria.
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#### Story And Setting.
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Demon's Souls takes place in  Boletaria, a decaying nation that has fallen into ruin after the King Allant XII's greed  and the "Dark Fog" rolled in causing the corruption of men and turning them into beasts, neighboring kindoms sent emissaries to see what the fog was doing, but none returned once they entered, it wasn't until Vallarfax the assassin managed to escape the fog and returned that the world learned of the horrors taking place in Boletaria, that King Allant has inadvertently summoned and Old One, a gargantuan demon lord through his greed, the Old One corrupted the souls of men and caused the dark fog that is now spreading outside the lands of Boletaria into other kingdoms.

The souls captured by the old one give the possessor tremendous power and many heroes seek to not only rid Boletaria of the dark fog that is consuming the lands, but also to gain the souls to gain immense power, our player character is one of those warriors who arrives in Boletaria seeking glory and ending the Dark Fog, upon entering the Dark Fog and heading towards the palace, they're confronted by a massive demon known as the vanguard who quickly kills them, they're then awakened in soul form, unable to die in the lands of Boletaria and are told by the Maiden In Black that they're now undead, cursed to walk the lands of Boletaria forever if they cannot retrieve their souls and put an end to the Old One.

The Kingdom of Boletaria is now a horrific nightmare with some of the strongest among them being turned into terrifying and powerful demons, the hero begins to progress through kingdom slaying and absorbing their souls for power, after finally defeating all of the once great heroes of Boletaria and collecting all of the souls of the archdemons, the Maiden in Black opens the way into the Nexus, to call forth the Old One, inside the nexus King Allent, now horribly deformed sits by the Old One, after a tremendous battle Allent lies dying and informs the hero that the Old One is acting out of "mercy" as humans do nothing but cause suffering and he is offering them a way out, the Hero has a choice now, to walk away with the Maiden in Black leaving the old one trapped in the nexus, or to kill her and take the place of Allent as the chosen of the Old One bringing doom upon the world for all time.

#### Game Play.
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A massive throwback to the original platformers of the golden age of gaming, Demon's Souls is crushingly brutal, you will die a lot and you will get angry, this was what FromSoftware aimed for when developing the game, to make it such a punishing experience that players would hate-love the game and it worked very well, while an RPG at heart, the game created a new type of experience one that's equal parts rewarding as it is frustrated, players get to create their character from scratch including base attributes, class design and customization, these are actually incredibly in-depth that people didn't understand the first time around and led to a lot of campaign resets because their characters weren't viable.

The most common play style is melee, sword and board to be specific, unlike most RPG games Dark Souls have no checkpoints, no save mechanics mid game and no artificial progression systems, if you wanted to get out of a level with souls to level up with and new armor, you had to get from one "checkpoint" to the other where the time between a checkpoint could be hours depending on where you are, likewise monsters were numerous and very deadly, one of the worst places in the game, actually i take that back, one of the worst places in ANY game to ever exist was the Valley Of Defilement, a poison soaked nightmare piece of shit that made me break a controller on. 

Just as you begin to figure out the game, it throws you curve balls like this, nearly everything in the valley could poison you, there were swarms of enemies, jumping puzzles, a plague mechanic that could kill you almost instantly and the boss, Leechmonger, was almost impossible to defeat until you had a few attempts to learn the boss, keeping in mind that once you die on the boss everything resets back to normal and you have to go through it again, while addictive, it was frustrating as well seeing as it was very easy to die and very hard to progress, but eventually you find a way to get through it, that in essence is what Demon's Souls is about, facing insane challenges and figuring out ways to push through them while growing stronger with each monster kill.

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It's impossible to go through all of Demon's Souls content as there are multiple classes, builds, items and use items, but whatever way you decided to play presented a challenge in some form or the other, magic users would get utterly crushed by physical monsters and melee characters would get decimated by magic enemies(and physical enemies) but what is great about Demon's Souls gameplay was the fact that it just got harder and harder until you're wishing you're back in that area you died 40 times in, it was amazing to have such a tight, difficult and punishing experience come out in the modern era.

#### Spawning a franchise.
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After the success of Demon's Souls, FromSoftware began work on Dark Souls which propelled their games into the spot light, while not as brutal as the first game, it managed to create a huge community of players who enjoyed it and spawned the brutalism genre of gaming that we saw the origins of in the 90's with games such as ghouls and ghosts but the most impressive thing about the start of the franchise was that FromSoftware had next to no marketing, they weren't well known in the gaming world and the game got limited releases all around the world til it got huge, it was one of the last games to perfectly spread via word of mouth and the game's quality and ingenuity was it's selling point, as opposed to now days where a games selling point is usually based on its trailer.

A lot of games have taken the Demon's Souls paradigm to heart and inserted into their games creating brutal version of otherwise easy to play games, it's a real throwback to the golden age of gaming where the difficulty of a game was rewarded by the sense of achievement, not how flashy it looked or how many people reviewed it, one of my favorite bosses in Demon's Souls in the Dragon God which is another showing of their ingenuity in making a massive boss fight into a sort of puzzle game where one hit still means death and precision and timing are key, again, as opposed to most games that will usually trade one for the other.

While Demon's Souls was the first offering in the Souls genre it remains one of the most brutal experiences as it was tailor made for solo play, while new Souls games have multiplayer tied in and are a little bit more forgiving in terms of level and boss design, Demon's Souls was a massive fuck you to the players as everything destroyed you and safety was very rare, it's legacy is well entrenched with the new titles and with the genre it created for itself, coupled with a deep character progression system and world progression system.

It was possible to play the game to the end, but never "finish" it in the traditional sense and the game could be made harder by taking the black world tendency, for a game that seems pretty straight forward when you get into it, it's has pretty incredible depth once you really soak into it and it remains a very fond memory for many gamers. 

#### Critical Review and Reception.
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It's been a few years now since I played Demon's Souls but a lot of it is still pretty fresh in my head, you can always tell a games lasting impression by how long it takes you to forget it, Demon's Souls is one of those rare games that made such an impact in not only the gaming industry, but in the minds of gamers all around the world, which is rare even by the early 10's standards of throwaway gaming, Demon's Souls stands out because it was made with a specific set of goals in mind, to punish the players who are playing it while also offering them a deep and rewarding system to progress with and ultimately succeed, anyone who has played Demon's Souls or any of the Souls games knows how amazing it is when you finally finish the game.

And without Demon's Souls success we wouldn't have some of the amazing new titles in the franchise we have today, it's always great when a new IP can do very well on it's first showing, so much so that it can create an entire franchise, another rare thing from non triple A studios in this day and age, sadly Demon's Souls is relatively dead now nearly a decade removed from when it was released the online portion of the game will be shut down soon, but thankfully that was never what made this game great, even today you could go out and get a copy of the game and sit down to "enjoy" it before moving on to the more recent entries in the franchise.

Regardless of it's age, Demon's Souls is still an amazing experience that all gamers should play at least once, a truly remarkable entry into the gaming industry that has spawned a legacy that isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
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#### Thanks for taking the time to read my review, if you enjoyed it feel free to up-vote, resteem or follow me for more, what are your favorite memories of Demon's Souls? Let me know in the comments below and i'll get back to you, thanks guys!