Borrowin' one

Thanks to @munchk for letting me borrow a Fi Club off him. Mrs beta is going out this Friday 26th March so I'm hosting instead of Munchk.

Hope we'll get a bunch more demos and arcade stuff to look through. Maybe even have a look at Bio2!

Following on from the fun on Fifa, I'm going to look for some 2 v 2 games we can rotate around to maybe get away from the Show and Tell element and back into a bit of competitive gaming on a Fiday Nite.

αβ

Some Demon's Souls Rambling

Largely rambling as-it-happened C+P from an email to Simplicitly about Demon's Souls.

So, D'sS... As expected, very hard. The only in-game currency is the souls that you liberate from killing monsters, that covers 'money' and, so far as I can tell, XP. When you die, all those souls are dropped where you fell and can only be retrieved by fighting your way back to your 'bloodstain'. If you die again, on the way there, that's it, they've gone, and your new bloodstain contains only the souls you accrued on the subsequent run. All monsters respawn, although any physical action you've taken (cut chains, smashed gates, treasure found) remains.

Undefended, I can take two or three hits from a 'standard' MOB, one hit from the tougher knights I've met. Defended you can take maybe two more consecutive hits before your stamina runs out and you drop your defense. When you die, not only do you drop all the souls you've collected, but you become a ghost. As a ghost you have only half the HP of a person. To become re-embodied you must (at this stage) kill an end-level boss. I was a ghost by the end of the tutorial (by design, I think.)

On Sat nite, I played for 2 hours, died a dozen times and made no progress at all. I ended the session back in the starting location with no souls (so no money, no XP), still level 1, and some broken swords and shields I'd picked up (these stay with you.) What you gain is experience... where the MOBs are hiding (same spawn points every time,) how many hits they take, how they attack. I've learned that most of these can be picked off with a ranged magic attack, but sometimes they get inside and you need to quick-switch and use a melee weapon. Melee is a very satisfying system: R1 hit, R2 strong hit (don't usually have time), L1 block, L2 parry (split second timing, or you leave yourself completely open) followed with an R1 riposte (so far that's been a one-hit kill doing 10 times a normal melee hit and 3 times my magic damage, but it's hard to time and risky if you fail.) You got dodge and rolls with O+LS. You can equip two items to each hand and fast-switch on the d-pad. You can dual weild although if you don't have a shield equipped you better be good at dodging. You can choose to two-hand a weapon for a stronger attack, but again, you lose the defence. Some items must be used two-handed (crossbow is all I have so far, and my range on that is really poor, and a larger sword that I'm too weak to single-hand.)

Last night I played another 2 hours and escaped with some 3000 souls although I'm not sure what that's worth. It cost me 400 to +1 my rapier and 300 to +1 my shield. I fully explored two branches of a three-way fork and found that the third contains a more formidable knight than I'd already met, who made a paste of me immediately (I tried to magic him, failed and by the time I switched to sword, he was on me. This is the sort of 'lesson learned' that happens all the time.) I don't know if he is impervious to magic, somewhat resistant, or whether some hits will get through at full strength. This is tonight's main challenge. I can now get through the area that took me two hours on Saturday in about 10 minutes.

It's almost like N+ in a way... you expect to die, and in doing so, you learn something that you take forward the next time.

One lapse of concentration though, and that's it... back to the start of the level with all your XP and money gone.

Also: No saves, no pause, no map, no guarateed safe zones (although if you've cleared an area you're probably OK, but you want to make sure before you go make a cup of tea. This nearly caused me to wet myself last night trying to clear an area so I could go to the loo.)

All equipment degrades through use and must be repaired at a blacksmith (at the cost of more souls.) Herbs are used for health / Mana and get dropped fairly frequently, although you rarely have time to eat them in the middle of a fight. Some of the more intelligent MOBs (the knights so far) will eat their own stash to heal, if you back off and give them room.

I just spoiler-free FAQ'd the levels / souls / XP thing:

"There are 999 levels, and each level takes more Souls to reach. Your first level will only cost you about 800 Souls, but at level 100, this has increased to 60625 Souls per level."

Apparenlty the mechanism to level isn't unlocked until I've finished my first 'world' - which has so far taken me 4 hours and is only 2/3rds explored.


Visually, it's pretty good, although I've only seen the outside and parts of the inside of a looming, rather drab castle.

What else... oh yes. Other people. I can see the real-time spirits of other players running round my game. If *they* die, they also leave a bloodstain. If I touch that bloodstain I get an instant replay of the manner of their death, which is really useful when exploring. They can (and I can) also leave runic messages on the ground "Watch out ahead", "Search here for treasure", "It's a trap!" kind of thing and you can recommend them up if they're useful. Most aren't at the moment, as I'm in newbie world and everyone's messing about.

Later on in the game, depending on alignment and magic equipment, i can join other players' games (invited) and help them. If we defeat a boss in this state, I win my body back. OR I can join their games (uninvited) and attempt to kill them. If I succeed, i get their souls, and my body back. If I lose, they get my souls.

I haven't even begun to look at modding weapons, or magic, or my attributes. All this play is with the standard rapier and one spell I was given as my character class. I've picked up a handful of other weapons, but nothing with much oomph, and the best of the lot I can only use two-handed. I've found one magic ring which bumps up my 'dead' HP to 3/4 instead of 1/2.


I have no idea why it's not getting a European release. It's hard, but not inaccessible and not frustrating. It's hard by design, rather than indesign. It's crafted to make you think, make you nervous and cautious, to punish your mistakes and reward practice and attention. It's totally totally caught me up. That I'm not bored with looking at the same bit of castle for 4 hours speaks volumes. You can *feel* the practice paying off. Now I'm using the early section to master swordsmanship, forgoeing the magic ranged weapon to practice the parry / riposte technique that I suspect will become essential later on. The sense of achievement when I got back to the 'Nexus'' warp point with 3000 souls was brilliant. I'm thinking... all this fun and I haven't even levelled up yet.