Demon’s Souls is a 2009 action RPG developed by FromSoftware, known for having previously developed… hold on a moment looks at Wikipedia King’s Field and Armored Core, among other titles. It was a project that went through much developmental turmoil, ultimately forming a product with so much potential that Sony’s head of product development remarked “This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.” and the company did not bother to release it in the West. But then it got picked up by Atlus, word of mouth spread, and here we are nearly a decade later with four sequels that people won’t shut the fuck up about. So let’s go back to where it all started (please ignore FromSoftware’s previous 20 years of game development) and see just what got the ball rolling.
This is going to be a comprehensive playthrough showing off all of the game’s content. For those in the know, yes that includes character tendency, world tendency, and even… pure bladestone. I’ll be showing off as much of the online interactions as I can, and if anyone wants to try and invade or be summoned by me I’ll be posting when I’m recording here. Note that you have to have the NA version of the game because multiplayer is region-locked and that’s the game version I have. Also, the PSN version is 50% off for the rest of the month.
In addition to comprehensively covering the game I also want to incorporate viewer participation. Demon’s Souls is fairly open in its progression and provides a wide variety of equipment with which to slay demons, and while I could just show off “the best” items and progress through how I typically do, I think it would be more fun to leave it up to viewer choice. So each update will include a strawpoll asking where to go next, and what to use there.
I’ll be updating frequently. Kind of don’t have a choice given how close the servers are to shutting down.
Well hot diggety, I first learned about this series from Squint’s old, old LP of it and I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve seen in your archives as of your Salt and Sanctuary run, so this should prove to be plenty interesting!
Are there any facets of the game you’re intentionally going to avoid (not fun to play, not fun to watch, some other ineffable reason), or is dealing with some of From Software’s extreme Fromminess part of the appeal?
I’m going to show off everything I can manage, no matter how much I suffer from it.
Yup! Hence this let’s play. Actually meant to start it like 2 weeks ago but I kept getting sidetracked >_> It’s short enough I should be able to show off at least /some/ multi stuff.
Definitely recommend it! Even without the online it’s a great experience.
I feel like there was a Dungeons and Dragons game going on at From Headquarters and some exec was like: “Hey, can we use your setting for a game we’re working on?” and then the series started.
Either that or it was a failed attempt to bring King’s Field to the PS3.
Looks like everyone else won’t let you, Royalty is still in the lead, though there’s time for that to change (was gonna record today but didn’t find the time).
I mean it has a ton of references so I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point that was the intent. It definitely has a more dungeon crawley sort of feel, more akin to King’s Field than the later Souls games, imo.
Ah that was the class I was torn between choosing, so I’m happy with this. I figure either will display quite a different playstyle from what I’ve seen or done before (knight, barbarian, magician).
In today’s update we make a fresh start and go beyond the tutorial. This and the next update were recorded as one, but I split it into two due to length reasons. Oh, and as an aside, if you want to see the full poll results, just click on the strawpoll link for that update. Unless I forget I’ll have replaced it with a screencap of the results.
And yes I will modify the update graphics… eventually. Look I’m not good at graphic design these things take time for me
As an aside, one more update then I’ll be polling again for where to go/what to use in it (might actually couple these together because, as an fyi, some weapons are REALLY BAD for some areas).
A return to the Nexus and meeting many new people today.
Since the poll seems clearly to favor Latria, that’s where we’re going. Probably just going to do all of it to at least showw off the cool multiplayer thing there.
