When Demon's Souls was first announced, it almost immediately became my most anticipated game of 2009. Even though it had been given an official North American release date, I still had to fight myself from buying the overly-import-expensive Korean version. I was happy I waited -- North American players were treated to what I believe is one of the most impressive limited editions ever. Atlus certainly knows how to deliver -- It's not quite Falcom-level, but it's still great to have everything it came with.

I grabbed the game early yesterday, and I've put about ten hours into it as of writing this blog. I can now safely say that I can't stand a lot of what I've seen. Now, I know what you're all thinking -- "Ooh, he's a n00b, he can't take the difficulty, blah blah." The difficulty is one of the reasons I bought it. I grew up during the NES era -- I believe games are getting way too easy these days, and gamers are getting way too soft. I couldn't help but laugh when so many people complained about the supposed difficulty level of Mega Man 9. Well, I welcome something as brutally hard as Demon's Souls. My problems lie with the game itself.

The first thing that bothered me was something that people complain about in a lot of 3D games, and that's the camera. In most games, I may get hit here and there because of the camera, but it's kind of crucial to not get hurt a lot in Demon's Souls. On more than one occasion, I've been either fighting an enemy or running away from one, and I get stuck on something because I can't see where I'm going since there was a wall blocking my view all of a sudden. This game does NOT play well with close-quarters environments.

Another thing that I found odd was the fact that I was getting attacked through solid objects. Enemy archers shot arrows through their squad mates to get to me, and it worked pretty damn well for them. Even stranger was when I was attacked by the wolves. I'd try to hide behind various walls (none of which were destructible), and their heads would go through those walls. They'd then proceed to bite at me with their heads glitching through said solid objects, and lo and behold, they'd be doing massive damage to me if I got close. As luck (and general assumption) would have it, I tried to attack those wolves through the wall, and I wasn't doing a single point of damage to them. Come to think of it, I suppose I wasn't even really attacking through the wall, since the animals' heads were sticking out of it. I got nothing. Keep in mind that this wasn't a one-time occurrence -- Objects seem to go through other objects fairly often, and you can tell that it's not supposed to happen.



But the thing that really gets my blood boiling, the thing that makes me want to do horribly illegal things to the game disc, is the targeting system. This. Mechanic. Blows. Let me outline how this works for you -- To lock onto an enemy, you simply point your character towards him/her/it and click the right stick. Boom, locked on. To cycle between which enemies you lock onto without taking the lock off, you simply use the right stick itself. Sounds good on paper, right? Well, try to actually use it. I swear Demon's Souls randomly chooses which enemy it wants you to lock onto. I was looking at an enemy -- a stationary enemy -- with both my character and the camera. It was also the closest enemy to me at the time. I pressed the lock-on button, and you know what happened? An enemy that wasn't even on my screen is what I ended up focusing on. By clicking that right stick, my character and camera swung to some enemy I hadn't even seen at the time, and I was swiftly and painlessly pummeled into the dirt. (Well, I assume I was pummeled -- the camera was so bad that I couldn't even see myself, but my death was a pretty good indication.)

The actual locking-on isn't the only problem with this system -- The way you cycle through your enemies doesn't work, either. As I've mentioned several times already, the camera in this game isn't that great. Well, since the right stick controls the camera when you're not locked onto anything but controls the lock-on cycle when you are, you can't move the camera at all when you're locked onto an enemy. But if the camera's so bad, what's your first reaction? To try to fix your view, of course. I tried that when I was locked onto an enemy. Guess what happened? That's right, my lock-on was immediately switched to another random enemy to my left, turning my character around. Commence with the swift and painless pummeling. That means that if you're locked onto an enemy and you need to move your camera around (which will happen), you have to get rid of your target, adjust the camera, and then re-lock onto the enemy, which isn't guaranteed to work for you anyway. You're liable to get killed eight times within the amount of time it'll take you to do all that.

I wanted to like Demon's Souls, and I still say it has one of the best premises I've ever seen in an RPG. The "level-up" system is one of the coolest I've ever experienced, and the character creation in the beginning is extremely deep. But there are so many problems with the actual game that it almost felt like I was playing a beta at times. I truly have respect for you guys and gals who can stick with the game through all this stuff, but I sincerely doubt I'll find a reason to not sell it soon, which really pisses me off, since I had been waiting for it for so long. I'd like to think it's not just me, but something tells me it is, seeing as how the game has gotten almost nothing but positive reviews.

What do you guys think? Anything you can tell me that may dissuade me from selling it, or do you think I should just go with my gut?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: I took Ckarasu up on his suggestion below and I restarted the game as the Royalty class, and I have to admit, I'm having a much better time with it now. That's really strange to me, though -- I'm having more fun with the game playing as a different class with a different style, yet I'm still running into all the problems I complained about above. So why am I having fun with it all of a sudden? This game is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and topped with WTF.

At any rate, thank you, Ckarasu. I still hate the lock-on system and the various glitches I come across, but I'll be damned if your suggestion didn't help me out a ton. I have no idea why, but I have no reservations when it comes to enjoying games. :D