Guys, gals, peeps and weeps. This is THE hardest, most frustrating, most diabolical creation that has ever slipped through the gaming cracks and ended up being sold at stores around the world. It is hell on earth, on wheels and in a black dress. It came in 2009, and I am just getting to it, per usual.
So, honestly, not much of a storyline. basically, it goes that the world, known here as Boletaria (so badass) was once good and clean, ruled by King Allant, but something happened to make these demons appear, and a great, colourless (yes, they spell it the British way) fog appeared, and with it, came more demons. And the world was basically plunged into darkness. We're the whomping warrior who comes to rescue the land from the fog and lift it back to the light.
As the name befits, we have to get souls. Souls are everything - your money..and your money. Haha. That's all you need in this game. Souls to buy equipment, to repair it, to buy items, and to purchase upgrades. Upgrades are key to survival, if there is such a thing in this game - there are eight or nine attributes you can boost up - your vitality, strength, dexterity, magic, faith, luck, and a couple more. The thing is, besides attack power (strength and dexterity both contribute), nothing helps! Luck doesn't do anything, fire resistance, poison resistance, faith, all useless. You still get your arse pizzowned. I'm so pissed off at this upgrade system!
This game is pure diabolicality, for many reasons. I can't even begin to think of them all. But here's arguably the most frustrating one. Enemies hit hard in this game. Very hard. Enough that two or three hits from one will completely kill you. So that's automatically a frowny face thing. And in addition to that...you can never have full health in this game. Unless you are in human form. How do you stay in human form? Well, you have to use a Stone of Epheremeral Eyes, and/or beat one of the 12 bosses in the game. And how do you go back to soul form? Die in the worlds! Hahah. And then your HP gets cut in half again!
Also, gameplay is simple. There's NO puzzles whatsoever. It's just five worlds of getting through tons of enemies, and in each, a straight simple action hack-n-slack and bow and twist. Nothing more. Every level is very straight forward, and only one (the tower world that's levels upon levels - the Inception of game design!) is any kind of confusing. It's just run, slash, run, stop to revive stamina, stop for using arrows, block an attack, laugh at the pitiful enemies who try to break your guard, and then die. Sigh.
Let's move on...there's two main kinds of frustrating in this game. The levels that are easy to get through but have such hard enemies that going through them makes you die and lose all your thousands of souls, and the ones where it is so hard to actually get to the end of the level, but you only get a bit of souls. Either way is frustrating as caca, though! The level that is guilty of the first is the Shrine of Storms, an almost entirely outdoors place that is filled to the brim with skeletons and flying manta rays of death. They all give you a ish ton of souls, but! The skeletons are deceiving. They'll be easy at first, then the next time you fight, they'll completely change their attack patterns! And then stomp the hell out of you with one or two hits. And you lose all your souls. It's madness! (and Sparta!)
The other place, with not many souls but a hard ass level, is called The Valley of Defilement. Sounds icky and pervy, but it's just a confusing/hard area. No pedos hiding in the bushes! There's these nasty little critters who look like deformed humans running throughout, poking you with spears and lunging at you and trying to push you off cliffs and poison you. And that's just the first level! Then the second one is where it gets reallllly frustrating. The entire level is an actual swamp, every bit of it. And just being in the swamp for five seconds poisons you. And the poison in this game is AWFUL! Antidotes are really expensive, and hard to find, and if you don't use them, poison takes about five minutes to stop. You have to keep healing over and over, and just wasting your full and half and late and dark moon grasses (isn't the coolest name for healing items? Haha). Of course, you can't run in the swamp, and the same enemies from before (the deformed humans) are still besetting you on all sides, along with the poison. So, simply put, you die in this level. A lot. I died here more than any other part in the whole game.
What else? Oh yeah. The games saves for you. There are no save points of any kind, and it just saves your progress literally every time you take a few steps. Nucking futs, guys and gals! You can reload anytime you want, but it will drop you right where you were. And if you messed up, then you did done goofed! And then of course, no pause! That's right. You can be doing battle with the meanest blakcest bastard in the whole game, and if you have to have a bathroom break, better hold it or take it there, because there ain't no way you're getting left alone in this game. Ugh. frustrating as all get out.
I've left out the best part, though...I beat this game. Okay, I went through hell and beat it. And yo know what it rewards me with? The shittiest ending this side of SaGa Frontier and..AND...guess what? a New Game+! Which means, it's even fucking HARDER! Whoamygod. I saw a guide that said 40%.Yeah, try 140%. Assholes. Even the easiest enemies, with the best armor (you keep all your old items, weapons, armor, and stat upgrades) are hard to kill! It's pure madness. And apparently there's a New Games ++, +++, and so on! Who the hell devised this game? They must be institutionalized, NOW!
Speaking of Institutionalized, I miss Guitar Hero like mad. Perry! We need to play that. And Andy, Rock Band when I come back. Snuggle Pallor, reunite!
You're probably saying, how the eff is this game so fun? Well...it's not. Hahah. At least terribly fun. But it's damn addicting. And that's the worst part of all. Everytime you die, you scream and get mad, but yet, you want to go back, beat the daylights out of the baddie who killed you, and reclaim your souls and your pride. That's all that pushed me through this game: revenge. If you're the kind of person who likes to torture themselves and purposefully plays hard games for a challenge, there can no better than this one. My awesome roomie helped me through this game too! Never would have beaten it without her help.
As befits a review, I shall give it a score: and as good technically as the game was, with lovely graphics ...I can give it no better than a 6. Good, solid fun game, but the difficulty just blew the score up. Sorry, Demon's Souls! But you sucked 80 hours of my life away. That's more than I have spent on any non-RPG. Good heavens help me.
To all a good night!
The grand old elder,
Elder
P.S. If anyone out there, barring Ps, has played Dark Souls, please tell me it's not as fiendishly hard as this one. If it is, I might just cry tears of blood.
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