Demon's Souls: The Nexus Binds Me Part 1
Apr. 21, 2016Demon’s Souls: The Nexus Binds Me Part 1
Between Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, and Bloodborne, I’ve always felt the need to go back to Demon’s Souls. For almost a year, I played Bloodborne almost exclusively, with a brief stint to platinum Dead Space 2 and play a bit of Star Wars: Battlefront. But I always return to what I consider the purest Souls Game.
What Brought Me Back This Time?
Walking through a used bookstore chocked full of manga, vintage video games and consoles, half-naked anime figurines, and countless movies I’ve never even heard of, I spotted a rare copy of Demon’s Souls. Not just the standard US version. A near-mint Japanese version with beautiful cover art and a thick software manual full of illustrations. There was no question: it would be mine. I purchased it, went home, popped it into my dusty PS3, and experienced nostalgia I haven’t felt in a long time. I grinned ear-to-ear, playing through the game as if it was my first time. Adrenaline rushed through my veins and my heart started pounding as my first invader entered my world. Within a week, I played through the game 3 times and made 2 PvP characters, going on 3. Unlike most other games, this is one that I never tire of. It set the bar very high for every other game I played.
What Makes This Game’s Characters Special?
Every NPC you talk to has something that makes them stand out, and the way they are presented is very intriguing. Garl Vinland, a human fortress, falling victim to the wiles of a “Saint” that delved deep into corruption and became a Demon herself. Ostrava, the hopeless knight who always needs rescuing and inevitably kills himself. Yuria, the atypical witch with a kind and gentle heart, but terribly powerful and rudimentary spells. Patches, the guy who will always trick you and push you down a hole filled with corpses and supposed “treasure”, nevermind the fact that there is always something worthwhile at the bottom of said hole. Scirvir, a Wanderer who chose magic and a longsword over the curved sword that his name suggests, and a fierce fighter despite his stuttering and timid disposition. Biorr, the would-be brute who probably has a bigger vocabulary than you. The list goes on, but all are unique in some way or another.
How Does the Level Design Rate?
Overall, it was elegantly done. Every level was tightly woven and had verticality to it, making it a three-dimensional experience rather than a linear path to follow. All of the levels had a different atmosphere, layout, and enemy set, but each kept you on edge.
The Boletarian Palace’s traps and enemies are all perfectly placed for thrilling traversal and a death here or there if you don’t pay attention to your surroundings. Dragons, towers, a damsel in distress. Just another day at the RPG office to get you into the groove of things.
Stonefang, an elaborate network of tunnels, scaffold, ancient ruins, a river of lava and – oh – the Dragon God who kills you like One-Punch Man after a slow grind against the Vanguard in the tutorial level. Not only does Stonefang have the easiest boss in the game, who ironically looks to be the hardest, but it sports what many players argue is the hardest boss in the game, the Flamelurker. Go figure.
Prison of Hope, an ironically-named labyrinth of jail cells with moaning Dreglings, an irate prisoner, Octopus-headed Wardens, a ball of bodies wadded together that shoots Soul Rays at you and cuts you to ribbons in seconds if you get too close, a network of massive stone towers erupting from a swamp full of Facebugs, and Gargoyles who love to just drop on your head to say hi while stabbing you with a Spiral Rapier. What’s not to love about that? And your toughest opponent? Another player who has automatic Homing Soul Arrow casts, full hp, and access to every ring effect you use as a living body and then some. No AI to exploit there, so best of luck to you! (Unless you fight the NPC, but that’s no fun, is it?)
Come visit the Shrine of Storms, the most popular PvP spot around. We’ve got Rolling Skeletons, Black Skeletons with dual katanas, Glowing Slugs, plenty of sharp weapons to trip over, false walls, and Flying Manta Rays who throw their stingers at you with the hopes of impaling you.
And, of course, the last and most hated of all of the worlds of Boletaria, the Valley of Defilement. Flies shroud everything, filling the air with a dissonant hum that makes you feel like swatting your ears. Goblins hide in every nook and cranny, seeking victims for their poisoned blades; or for opportunities to push the unsuspecting traveler over the edge of the decrepit walkways and into the river of diseased corpses below. Let’s not forget the vast Poison Swamp, Plague-infested Rats, Giant Mosquitoes, Giant Slugs, and Plague Babies. Caution: Falling Rocks Ahead.
So, you’ve completed all 5 worlds. Now what?
The World Tendency Events, of course!
Die enough in a world as a living body and you’ll see Black Phantoms of some of the NPC’s you meet in the game, harder enemies, new Black Phantom enemies throughout each level, and a greater chance of getting necessary items such as rare ores. Miralda, Scirvir, Rydell, Satsuki, and Selen Vinland have never looked so Red.
Kill enough invaders, NPC Black Phantoms, or level bosses in an area without dying as a living body and you’ll find weaker enemies, new areas open for exploration and looting, and perhaps even a new NPC to talk to. No level is monotonous, and all keep you fully immersed.
What About Game Mechanics and Balance?
Overall balance was well-done across the board, with only a few small exceptions. Suffice it to say that few weapons felt more powerful or less powerful than they should have been.
Offensive spell variety was very low unfortunately (Soul Arrow/Ray, Flame Toss/Fireball, Firestorm, Ignite, Homing Soul Arrow, Firespray, Wrath of God), but their usability was quite good for the most part. The unintentional effect of the Pivot Cast glitch made Spellcasters viable and even allowed players to refine their skill and use more advanced PvP tactics (a mechanic that could actually be a great addition if used intentionally by the developers to promote further development of player skill levels and technique).
Second Chance added another level of depth by negating the possibility of a one-hit kill and allowed a player to rally after their SC was broken. Negation of backstab damage via rolls helped make up for the small amount of latency that occurs in online play, working perfectly in sync with SC. The damage cancellation on backstabs also gave straightforward combat more emphasis that was seen in Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2.
The variety of weapons, their movesets, and the array of upgrade paths was well-balanced, allowing for just about any build type to access a desired moveset with minimal stat “waste”. Want a Greataxe moveset, but don’t have the points for it on your spellcaster? Use the Crescent Axe with a Moon upgrade. Want a katana on your Faith build, but don’t have the points to split off for dexterity? Use the Makoto. Need miracles and spells, but don’t want to give up a weapon slot for a second casting tool? The Talisman of Beasts! Experimentation with weapons – as well as their use on a variety of builds – is not discouraged, creating a favorable environment for unlikely weapon pairs like Greataxe-Katana.
The summoning system was simple and provided ample opportunities for co-operative play, random PvP throughout the game, and co-ordinated PvP if desired. Even the HP penalty for Phantoms/Black Phantoms was passable because of the damage buff that made up for the loss of ring choice and the hp deficit. For these reasons, among others, the design of this game could only promote a strong competitive community and even allowed it to become an artform, something that the more recent games seems to lack for a variety of their own respective reasons.
The status effects were implemented fairly, putting pressure on the afflicted party while not completely destroying them if they waited for an opportunity to use a lotus. Bleed caused damage over time and built up per hit with slashing weapons, as it should. Poison dealt damage over time and halved the effect of healing. Perfect. Plague dealt damage over time, halved the effect of healing, and reduced stamina regeneration. Flawless status effect execution. While the use of clouds probably wasn’t the best way for status to be spread, they still provided the opportunity to put pressure on opponents that were fond of healing or hp regen.
What Could This Game Have Done Better?
The primary drawbacks in this game have a significant impact on the way people play it in PvP, but that’s not to say it’s not still greatly enjoyable. The main things that really held the game back were a few select pieces of equipment that many considered too powerful compared to the rest of the available arsenal, as well as a few glitches and mechanics.
The Dark Silver shield, a shield that completely blocks physical and magic damage, reduces fire damage by over 70%, and passively increases your Magic Defense. Guardbreaking this shield with anything bigger than a Claymore meant your opponent could block the next attack for zero damage and stagger again with little risk of taking damage at all. It could also effectively shut an opposing mage down completely unless they used the Large Sword of Moonlight, a sword that ignored shields, but dealt pure magic damage and was severely affected by the passive defense increase.
The Adjudicator Shield, a wooden greatshield with 8 passive hp regen per second. Alone, this shield is not a big deal, but in concert with a blessed weapon (up to 6 hp per second regen) and/or Regenerator’s Ring (4 hp regen per second), strafing never felt so sickening. Overlapping 2-3 sources of regen, a phantom player could regenerate their hp from 0 to 100% in less than a minute. In a fight over 3 minutes, that player might never have SC broken despite taking more than 300% of their hp in damage because of that constant effect. Ultimately, this turns fights into long grinds with lots of healing or forces the offensive player to try to kill the regen-abuser in one shot with backstabs, ripostes, or hypermode. The only other thing that can effectively combat it is kill-combos, which are not always possible if your chosen weapon or build does not have that capability. Doing that with anything but a cursed weapon is quite the feat.
The Northern Regalia, a weapon with relatively low stat reqs that almost matched a 50 magic/faith Greataxe or Greatsword in terms of power and could kill most phantom players with a single backstab or riposte. Players using this weapon had so many stat points left over that they could almost max the Vitality stat by the time they reached the PvP level range of 118-130.
The Dragon Bone Smasher, a massive greatsword that could effectively deal as much damage at 30 Strength as a 50 Strength Crushing Greatsword, could almost kill a Living Body Host with a backstab without a buff, could kill anyone at all with a backstab if it did carry the Cursed Weapon buff, could kill almost anyone with a Cursed Weapon buff and a direct hit bonus, has the ability to knock an opponent down over and over while never allowing them to get back up, carries a passive Fire Defense boost, wide sweeping attacks, unparryable running R1’s in two hands, and could easily become a Vit-gouge build to become the strongest offensive tank out of any other build type. Perhaps if it weighed enough for the player to become encumbered when using it, these things would all be justifiable, but that simply isn’t the case, making this weapon nigh unstoppable in the right hands. While this weapon weighed a manageable 20 units, the Bramd great hammer weighed a whopping 36 units and was weaker than a 10 unit-weight Crushing Greataxe. Had the AR values of these burdensome weapons been switched, their weight would correlate with overall power and their relative balance would have been much better overall.
Glitches like Running Firestorm, invisible spells, Insta-WoG, Insta-SC, the Teleporting Pivot Backstab (where Player A can backstab Player B by making the game think A is behind B) and Hypermode were big setbacks to pvp that trolls abused. Hypermode easily allowed one invader to destroy three opposing players in seconds, especially with Firespray, Soul Ray, or one of the aforementioned spell glitches. RFS was almost unstoppable for melee characters and difficult for even characters with projectiles to stop before getting knocked down and hit with an immediate re-cast of Firestorm. While it was not often used, it was such a powerful tactic that the player using it could single-handedly shut down an active PvP area in less than an hour.
The Spiked Shield, if held in two hands, was a force to be reckoned with. Although it didn’t deal a massive amount of damage and could be countered by magic weapons and blunt weapons such as the Mirdan Hammer, it could block 100% physical damage and 70% fire damage while attacking and the running R1 could not be parried. In concert with passive regen from the Adjudicator Shield or passive magic defense from the Dark Silver Shield, this setup can be extremely difficult to combat for players who don’t have the means to counter it beyond backstab attempts.
There has been much debate over the years about this, but Pushlock was a controversial technique that was widely accepted for quite some time because it allowed a player with a katana in their left hand and a fast-pushing weapon in their right hand to lock their opponent into an attack combo until they ran out of the stamina to attack anymore. It became widely discouraged as the player base reduced to the more passionate fans of the game’s PvP, but retained proponents to this day. If used correctly, this technique could potentially guarantee a one-touch victory. Players who defended it were often the ones using it, and always argued that switching weapons while in the combo could allow escape. Unfortunately, delaying the push that occurred during the toggle would often result in the player being locked back into the combo and typically resulted in a prompt death. The fact that it could become an inescapable kill-combo made this technique too rewarding for the skill that was actually demanded to use it. Had it been weaker or much more difficult, it is likely that it would not have been so widely used, which reduced the variety of builds that players used for a long time.
Character tendency was well-employed, rewarding phantoms with higher damage for defeating Black Phantoms and rewarding Black Phantoms with higher damage for defeating Hosts and Phantoms. World Tendency, however, should not have affected player damage. That kind of advantage/disadvantage often resulted in fights that were favored on one side, which hindered competitive play unnecessarily.
Backstab was easy. Really easy. And it did a ton of damage. You had damage-cancellation via rolling i-frames, but that didn’t stop players from chaining it anyway or trying to use that one mechanic exclusively to win. Sometimes you couldn’t even do anything for a full 30 seconds in a fight if your opponent was good enough at catching you in a chain. This amount of stalling could create a significant advantage for your opponent if they are low on hp and use regen while you have no regen effects. Or it could stall out any weapon buff you happen to be using. The stalling advantages can go both ways, but any slight hiccup from lag can turn that chain into a deadly and inescapable combo.
Why Play This Game and Not Newer Titles Like Bloodborne?
Frankly, the skill level of this game is very high and the community is generally more honorable. Playing the newer titles, you see a lot of players who use the same few setups because they outclass everything else and the overall attitude is typically rude or “meh”. Specific mechanics also hinder the variety you see in combat as well, such as the simplistic strategy of quickstep R1 counterattack that gunfire promotes in Bloodborne, homing spell spam and buff/equipment advantages in Dark Souls II, or vacuum-backstab fishing and Dark Bead/Wrath of the Gods spam in Dark Souls.
Check back forPart 2as we’ll take a look on how the design principles of this game could be applied to create the perfect Souls game.
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Astrichthyes_
@wes:I actually live on the west coast of the US. I’ve never been to Japan, but I’d love to go. The culture, food, and anime are all fascinating to me.
DkS3’s pvp looked like it had some big issues, but that’s based on a few videos that I saw on Youtube. I can’t speak from personal experience, but that was my general impression.
Demon’s Souls is honestly amazing. Please get this game and I can personally show you what makes it so great. It has incredible pvp. Fast, intense, and quite balanced compared to the rest of the games. Besides the few issues that were pointed out in the article, most of which are minor overall, it’s a great experience. The playthroughs are a lot of fun, especially if you go in blind and do all of the events.
Thank you for this article, I love it! I also live in Japan (I assume you do), and recently found the game at Hard Off, I’m very close to getting a PS3 for it but am having a hard time doing it now, since I play Dark Souls 3 on PC. I would love to hear your thoughts on DS3s PVP, but you make Demon Souls sound simply amazing.
@qeter: I actually haven’t played DkS3. I’ve only seen a few clips of pvp for it. Looking at each of the other titles, the pvp has been greatly hampered in some way or another.
In Dark Souls, the rolling was slow and anything bigger than a large sword – UGS/Gaxe for example – was easily avoided for a roll backstab. Poise was also always active, so having enough of it allowed you to eat a certain number of hits from a given weapon before stunning, which allowed for a pivot backstab. And backstab was not escapable. If they got a bs, it didn’t matter if you rolled because you still got vac’d back into it for full damage. The only thing that would negate it is a trade of damage at the exact moment when the bs was performed. It’s no mystery why the backstab mechanic completely dominated the pvp of this game. It was very easily abused.
Going into Dark Souls 2, you have Soul Memory, which eliminated the fair-matching system that was implemented in the previous games. Then there’s a large stress on equipment. With a high enough level, the proper rings, armor, and buff, you can tank just about anything without worry. Defenses ran so high on armors that even the KUGS could only chip at the best armor setups. Backstabs weren’t as easy to perform, but Monastery Scimitar parry more than made up for it because it was instantaneous. I could list 100 problems that made the pvp of this game unbearable at times.
Bloodborne took huge steps forward in a lot of departments, like stressing dodging instead of blocking and limiting backstabs in a way that made them incredibly difficult to perform. I loved how the wooden shield was implemented as a poke at the other games that had great emphasis on shield use. But gun parries with OHKO visceral potential and small/medium weapons hitting as hard as or harder than the big boys like Kirk was a big reason that much of pvp boiled down to small/medium weapon QS r1. Blades of Mercy could hit 600+ per 2h QS r1. Kirk could hit about 600 per 2h QS r1, but was half the speed of BoM and had less tracking. The one thing that really changed this was the r1 spam combos of Rakuyo and Saif, both of which could inflict massive amounts of damage before you could escape. Even so, the pvp of this game had vastly more potential than the previous 2 games. It simply needed re-balance of the weapons and gems, a way to balance host and phantoms/invaders with either equal hp or a proportional damage increase, and a punishable reload time after a gun is fired. Given those changes, Bloodborne could have been truly fantastic and would have had much greater longevity as a whole.
using bloodborne as an example is hardly fair when yo refer to pvp.
give people a few months and they’ll be people pulling of glitchs in a fraction of a second in dark souls 3 as well.
I wasn’t saying that the game was harder. I was actually meaning the skill level of the PvP was greater. In Bloodborne, you could defeat anyone with counterattack QS r1 and gun spam when they gave you any space. By far, I’d say it was more difficult than DeS ever was.
Great article..aside from the “Nobody likes it anymore because you needed so much skillz”…Yeah, just after pointing out how many frankly over/underpowered Weapons/Spells/Bugs it had. I vividly remember the Northern Regalia, which basically was the best weapon you could ever want, for practically no Stat Investment.
And for PVE, as soon as you got the spell with the physical damage reduction (Greater Ward, i think? It has been a while) you could facetank even bosses in NG+ with absolute ease. Not to mention that you had effectively infinite heals with herbs, you just had to farm them, as opposed to the limited Estus in DS1 and DS3…
Now dont get me wrong, i love Demon Souls, but the suggestion that it is way harder than the other Soulsborne titles is just ridicolous.
The best part of demons souls is its fromsofts raw concept, no suggestion box ideas, no pandering
I love bloodborne too as it rolls back on crowd pleasers as well as betraying fan expectations.
Ive grown disappointed with each darksouls title past 1. im glad bloodborne exists and it gives me faith that any new IP that fromsoft makes from the same vein wont be focus tested into oblivion.
Modern fromsoft games published by Namco are chasing a dragon trying to please everyone, why even bother?
oh $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
