#sception plays demon's souls

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 11 - the end?

Uh oh.

In recent posts I mentioned that I had started connecting to the Archstones server in order to recapture some of the multiplayer features of the original game.  Unfortunately it turns out that came along with exposing my game to hacking, as my last session playing the game ended in some abysmal, near game crashing lag, and upon booting up the game today it turns out that lag was the result of someone effectively overwriting significant parts of my game save.  npcs are hostile, I have the lovely clownface and pink hair shown above, the blacksmiths no longer speak to me, world tendencies are black, the path to the final boss is open, but defeating it just doesn’t open the way to the ending to even go into a new game plus.

So, if any of the like two people who have been reading these posts were considering playing Demon’s Souls on PS3 using the Archstones server, uh, maybe don’t do that instead.

This is, admittedly, kind of an objectively funny troll.  If they had only changed my appearance to look ridiculous and otherwise left my game file intact I’d just take it in stride and continue the blog.  As it is, though... yeah.  It’s killed my game and pretty much ended this liveblog entirely.  The save file is dead, and, I do not have a backup.  I do have a couple sessions worth of pictures and notes before this happened that I hadn’t blogged yet, but at this point I’ve lost the motivation to do so.

So, uh... final thoughts I guess.  Playing Demon’s Souls for the first time after playing Bloodborne and Dark Souls was, for a while, a really interesting experience, seeing how much of the souls game framework was already in place in this experimental initial outing.  Seeing the more fleshed out versions of some ideas that were merely referenced in later games, like the bridge dragon, was especially cool, and I regret not getting to see the full original versions of the crestfallen knight or Patches.

It was also interesting to see some design thoughts from demon’s souls that had been abandoned in dark souls, but then later worked their way back in by the time Bloodborne came around, like cheap plentiful healing items dropped by enemies, more linear level design rather than a metroidvania-esque world that had you repeatedly backtracking through previous areas to access new ones, a separate cordoned off area for leveling, teleporting, equipment maintenance and the like, having to talk to a specific, mysterious, soft spoken, vaguely inhuman female character in order to level up, and not being able to do so until encountering the first ‘real boss’.

Demon’s Souls also had some really compelling traits of its own - even only seeing the first or second areas of the various stages, I can still say they all have a somewhat more immersive, pseudonaturalistic, “lived in” sort of feel than in the other two games I played.  This was most noticeable in the Valley of Defilement vs. Blighttown, where VoD felt much more like a ramshackle, plague-ridden shanty town assembled and inhabited by the discarded and insane, while Blighttown felt more like a scaffolding-and-plywood-box-themed video game level with some arbitrary enemies scattered throughout.  Even Yharnam’s rich detail and thick atmosphere doesn’t quite manage the same feel - it’s hard for me to imagine people ever actually living in its streets and houses.

As for whether I’ll ever try playing Demon’s Souls again... I don’t know.  It probably wouldn’t take me too long to make up the lost progress, particularly via use of some well documented item duplication glitches, but then again I’ve also heard a lot of talk of a possible re-master of the game on PS5.  Not that I could afford the system right away, but I’d probably get it eventually, and if I did than I might even be able to play with working multiplayer features that don’t get my game corrupted by dickish, if admittedly rather amusing troll.

#demon's souls #sception plays demon's souls

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 9 - OG Blighttown

I’m already aware from various Souls game commentaries that every single souls game has a shitty swamp area and that they all trace back to the Valley of Defilement in Demon’s Souls.  It’ll be neat to see the original take on it.  Personally I didn’t hate Blighttown in Dark Souls, so I’m actually kind of looking forward to this.

I, uh... didn’t get a lot of pictures here.  The whole ramshackle village of narrow rickety boards is super unnerving from a platforming perspective, the enemies are weak and die easy but they’re also really gross and can easily surround you and knock you off the edge and the give you like no souls.  The in game camera gets stuck all over the place, so it’s hard to see where I’m going and avoid death drop holes in the floor, or holes that don’t drop me to my death - just into the middle of a bunch of enemies who then kill me.

Apart from the camera troubles, I kind of love it.

After several deaths I find this plank jutting out near a fog door.  The note says there’s treasure if I drop off it, but that looks like a troll if ever I’ve seen one.  Still, I’m already in undead form, and have no souls to speak of since the enemies here are worth nothing and I keep dying anyway, and I don’t really want to go through the fog door in case it’s a boss, so what do I have to lose?

And would you believe it, the note wasn’t a troll.  You fall far enough to kill you, but land in some straw that apparently cancels the damage, a mechanic that doubtless will be repeated zero times in the future.  A few enemies later, and I find a Blessed Mace!  Sounds like the perfect weapon for the faith build I’m going for.

It’s moveset seems decent, though damage is currently a lot lower than my halberd.  Maybe Boldwin or Ed can buff it up for me a bit after I get back.  Its damage does scale with faith.  Right now my faith is still at the starting level, since I’ve been pushing stamina to be able to actually wear my armor, but once I get stamina up to around 30 and vitality up to at least 20 I will be pushing faith pretty hard, so yeah, this should be a pretty good weapon.

Shortly after that is this guy, and it’s not apparent from the pic, but this guy’s huge, like twice as tall as the normal gross plague dude enemies around here.  He absolutely wallops me, and at that point, divine mace in hand, I decide I’ve probably had enough of OG blighttown for now.

Pretty cool for a first impression.  Very claustrophobic, super maze-like and vertical.  It’s a really neat area, I kind of hate it and love it at the same time.  So far the Valley of Defilement feels a lot more messy, dirty, and organic than Blighttown in dark souls did.  A lot less square angles.  More lived in, if that makes sense.  More ramshackle.  And it feels a lot bigger, though i haven’t been through enough of it to say if it actually is bigger or not.  Despite the fact that the Valley of Defilement is a discrete area that you teleport to instead of part of a larger interconnected world, it still feels more like a *place* you’re invading and less like a level in a video game than Blight Down does, at least by comparison.

And that’s the last archstone.  I’m sure there’s a lot more to see in later zones of each, but that’s the main worlds we got.  Grey stone medieval castle defended by knights, peasants, and dragons; reddish mountain mines with sturdy miners, pyromantic overseers; dark spooky prison with mind flayer wardens; greenish windswept ruins defended by skeletal warriors; and filthy brown ramshackle shanty town full of plague zombies, descending vertically down into, I presume, a hideous poison swamp.

I’m given to understand that the sixth broken archstone was at one point intended to lead to some sort of snowy/icy area, which could have been cool.  Apparently it was either cut content or a DLC expansion that never got made.  All the more reason it would be great to see a proper remastered update of the game.

In the mean time, though, that’s a solid set of levels, with really different feels between them.  About the only one I’m not looking forward to going back to is the mindflayer prison, and that’s mostly because that level was very successfully creeping me out, so if anything that’s a mark in its favor.  In all that running around Sception’s leveled up a few times, upgraded her main weapon from +1 to +5, met some friendly npcs, and picked up a few neat treasures, including a secondary weapon that should become more useful down the line.  All in all, a pretty successful tour, but now it’s time to head back and see what was on the other end of that dragon bridge...

#demon's souls #sception plays demon's souls #valley of defilement #better than blighttown #not sure if that's a controversial opinion

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 7.5 - the Blacksmith Bros.

Last time I met the Blacksmith Ed in the first part of Stonefang Tunnel.  He looked a lot like the Blacksmith in the Nexus, Boldwin, as you can see on this loading screen image.  I’m thinking maybe brothers?  So I decide to stop by Boldwin before I head off to other worlds, to see if he has any dialog about Ed

Boldwin actually does have a fair bit of dialog about Ed when I talk to him.  Calls him a grump and a hardass basically, but even so he sounds really happy to hear Ed’s alive.  It’s actually super heartwarming, especially for this game.  I hope they get to meet and hang out later.  Maybe they could team up to craft me some epic gear together.

#demon's souls #sception plays demon's souls #short update #a rare happy moment #in an otherwise pretty bleak game

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 7 - Stonefang Tunnel

So last time I made it most of the way through 1-2 (starting to pick up the lingo here) - or at least I think I did, as I got to the end of the dragon bridge only to get killed by the bunch of archers & blue eye knight.  I could see a fog door past them that I think is the boss room, but maybe not, the overall level to that point was a lot smaller than 1-1.

The stage wasn’t too hard.  If that is the boss door, I’m pretty sure I could have just gone straight back right away and probably made it through, and I did leave a decent pile of souls over there... but not really *all that* many, and if I’m in soul form anyway I might as well check out those other archstones that opened up while there’s no major additional penalty for dying, right?  So instead of returning to 1-2, I head over to 2-1 to give that a try.

But before I get into that, I did a bit of searching around online and found this - 

https://thearchstones.com/index.html

Yeah, apparently some dedicated fans have a working private server up, so I can actually play Demon’s Souls with at least some of the original experience intact!

Granted, it’s not a particularly *busy* private server, so I may or may not run into any actual multiplayer, but at the very least there will be some messages & such.

Oh, and I’m sorry for the bright reflection of the lights.  Somehow I didn’t notice them while playing this time around, so yeah, they’re going to be there for the next couple posts.

So, Stonefang Tunnel...

Messages already!  Fun!

There’s a merchant right away who sells some upgrade stuff, but it’s expensive enough that I think just farming the phalanx enemies at the start of 1-2 would be faster.

The main enemies are these super passive miner guys.  They ignore you at first, but they *do* eventually aggro when you start fighting other enemies so I get surrounded pretty quickly after ignoring the first bunch.  That and, while they’re slow and not at all hard, they take a long time to kill with my current weapons.

After dying once I head back to 1-2 and grind out upgrade mats until my halberd is up to +4, and level up a bit with the spare souls before coming back.

The level is pretty neat, actually, winding over itself a fair bit.  In addition to the slow miners there’s also some fiery geckos that will drop down from the walls on you if you get close, and a couple of fat laughing pyromancer guys who are fun.  Lots of levers and machinery, including shortcuts in the form of a lift that runs back to the beginning...

But also can be ridden further down to another blacksmith, Ed, who looks a lot like the blacksmith in the Nexus.  Are they brothers, maybe?

A lot of the enemies here drop upgrade materials, so I’m able to push my Halberd up to +5.  Nice.

Going forward there’s another neat shortcut where you re-direct some water that was pushing a water wheel to dump it in an area that was covered in lava right near the first shortcut, creating a new path forward.  It’s really clever, and a lot more interesting than a simple one sided gate or elevator. 

Past that there’s another pyromancer in a room full of exploding barrels.  The trap’s pretty obvious, though, so I’m able to bait out a fire attack and avoid the explosion... though the pyromancer does kill me once after that anyway.  Thanks to the shortcuts it’s a really quick run back, though.

Past that, there’s some deeper tunnels, getting into a proper mine area, and I’m noticing a bunch of spiderwebs w/ corpses stuck in them.  Looks like a spider boss is coming.

Down a deep elevator and... yeah, you can’t really see it in this picture, but past that fog wall is definitely a cluster of read glowing eyes in a spidery type arrangement.

I could dash in and check it out... but I’m not ready for a boss yet.  I’ve still got a few worlds to visit before I regain my human form.

#demon's souls #sception plays demon's souls

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 5: Monumental

After defeating the first real boss of the game, I head back to the Nexus for another background lore cutscene.  Basically this whole situation with abuse of Soul Arts leading to the awakening of the lovecraftean “Old One” with it’s associated plague of fog and Demons has happened at least once before.  Last the so-called Monumentals managed to contain the Old One and put it back to sleep, but at the cost of their own lives, civilization, and half the world’s population.  In slaying a demon I’ve proven myself to the remaining Monumental as someone who could defeat the archdemons and return the Old One to slumber.  Sounds like a lot to expect of me based on beating Phalanx when I’m not sure that thing should really qualify as a boss to begin with.  But there’s only one Monumental left, so likely they’re choosing me out of desperation as much as hope.

After talking with the Monumental I can actually level up with our friendly wax-eye’d firekeeper doll maiden in black.  Sort of like how in Bloodborne you have to get some insight before you can level up with the doll - insight which new player’s generally get from encountering one of the first bosses.  The idea of a spiritual location with questionable connections to the physical world that traps your character’s spirit preventing you from escaping or dying until you’ve hunted a bunch of supernatural monsters is also more directly echoed in Bloodborne than in Dark Souls.

I’ve only got enough souls for a few levels, so a point of vitality for some more hit points and a couple points of endurance to get me closer to comfortably wearing my armor are all I can afford.

Crestfallen dude has some more to say about the wax girl, and there are a few more npcs around, including a miracle vender who also seems to be the guy to talk to for changing what miricles I have prepared.  Don’t really have the souls to buy any new ones for now, though.

Otherwise I clean up inventory with Thomas & repair my gear with Boldwin and am ready for the next area.  The other archstones have opened up (apart from the one broken one - will that open up later?  Maybe that’s the endgame location?), but I figure I’ll keep going in the first area until I hit a roadblock.

Short update, but in my defense I did cut out *a lot* of wandering around aimlessly before I finally found the monumental.  Like, at first I thought I was supposed to talk to the big statue - that seems more ‘monumental’ right?  But no, just a little monk guy largely indistinguishable from a big line of unresponsive monk corpses kind of tucked out of the way.  I actually had to go online to look up what I was actually trying to find.  A little bit frustrating, that.

#sception plays demon's souls #demon's souls #meant to schedule this for tomorrow morning #whoops

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 4: Making Friends

I took this picture because it looked like a bit of an ambush down there, but actually the dude on the balcony is a courageous friendo trapped by a tiny group of the weakest enemies in the game.  Don’t worry friend, I’ll be there soon!

But first I have to go buy some, grass from the friendly neighborhood dealer

The grass dealer tells me about friendo, but I don’t put two and two together until I make my way around.

This guy talks a big talk about about his important mission, but I’m not sure how long he’s going to make it out here if like three of the weakest enemies are too much for him to handle.

If you follow him around though he’s pretty capable of handling himself, though?  Not sure how like three guys with torches cornered him.  Maybe friendo’s afraid of fire.

back on the main route I come to a familiar feeling bridge and...

NOPE NOPE NOPE

Though I will say that you hear the flapping wings and see the dragon swoop in from in front of you here, actually giving you time to run away, unlike in dark souls where the dragon just ganks you from behind if you don’t already know its going to show up.

But the only other path is a dead end with two more dragons guarding some treasure drops.  That looks even more like a death trap, so back to the bridge...

The bridge dragon strafes the bridge in fire pretty continuously if you stay in sight, but if you back off a bit it flies away and takes a while to come back, and you can run across before it comes back, which I guess makes a bit more sense than running flat at it while its staring right at you after it already killed you once, so yeah, much more sensibly handled than the dark souls bridge dragon, though I guess I had been expecting a bit more from it.

Shortly after the dragon is a lever that opens the main gate, and a big old ballista bolt shoots out, so, uh, I guess that’s where the boss is.

Then it’s down another set of watch tower stairs - similar to the ones before with the hanging chain bodies that led to the previous shortcut.  Along the way there’s these weird blob monsters?  With shields and spears/javelins?  So I guess the boss will be a big one of these, and this is teaching you about directional defense & dealing with enemies that have good melee reach & range.  Neat.

Along the way down I find that balcony with the item that I took note of last time

As expected the stairs lead down to another lever to open up another shortcut back to the starting area, only now the big gate is up and, yeah, that’s a boss fog wall if I ever saw one.  In terms of levels that feel like believable environments while still looping back over themselves to unlock interesting checkpoint shortcuts back to a single starting bonfire, this first real area of Demon’s Souls is actually pretty great, sets a high standard that most areas of the two later games I’ve already played really don’t live up to.

But then again, if I compare to bloodborne, the early Yharnam area is similarly pretty amazing for interested, interweaving level design, and the rest of the game doesn’t really hold up as well in that regard, so it’s too soon to say whether Demon’s Souls on the whole has great level design, or just this opening area of it.

Anyway, the boss gate is open, but just to be safe before I head in there I’ma run back to the Nexus to unload these souls.

Apparently I picked up some upgrade materials for my Halberd.  I don’t even remember where I did that.

Friendo’s here!  Turns out he’s the prince, the son of the king who started all this bother.  I guess that makes him important to the story, I should probably try to learn his name.

Oh, that’s sad.  I’m sorry, dude.

In exchange for the hairpin he gives me a ring.

Oooh, it ups Item load!  Like Havel’s ring?  Maybe I can equip my armor?

But, wait... my equip load hasn’t increased...  Item burden?  Wait, that’s a separate thing?

Wait, there’s an inventory cap in this game?  Damn, that’s... that seems like it could be obnoxious.  Stockpile Thomas’s services suddenly seem a lot more important.

While handing off items to Tom here, I remember the game has been giving me a bunch of firebombs and flame buffs for my weapon.

Do you think the boss might be weak to fire?

Anyway, I dump the rest of my souls into grass and head back.

I could go to the boss now, but... I’m already in soul form, I’ve got no souls left, so there’s really no penalty if I die, right?  In that case...

Back to these dragons over here.  Time to find out if all those treasures are just bait, or if I can actually snag something interesting here.

A quick run out and dash under the first dragon’s flames grabbing items as I run, roll under the other ones tail to grab a couple more, before the two of them together just annihilate me.  But success!  I think I actually grabbed all the treasures before dying.  So what’s the loot?

Sweet, but takes way too much strength for me to equip it any time soon.

Pretty cool, this one I can actually use.

Holy shit, the *actual* Havel’s ring of this game!

*NICE*

So the boss, Phalanx, isn’t so much a bigger, bossier version of the little shield & spear blobs as it is one big useless blob surrounded by a bunch of the regular enemy versions.

And yes, they are quite weak to fire, especially firebombs with the aoe to damage multiple of the little guys at once.

Beaten first try.  Phalanx seemed quite easy as long as you keep moving to avoid javelins.  Might have been harder if I hadn’t used like a dozen firebombs, but anyway, yeah, eazy peazy.  Still more interesting than the Dark Souls version of the same boss.

One boss down, back to the Nexus I go.

#sception plays demon's souls #demon's souls #part 4

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 1 - “You Died.”

Gonna play me some demon’s souls.  I’ve never really played it before, but I have been largely spoiled on lore and some gameplay elements via souls series video binges on youtube after playing and loving dark souls for the first time last year.  Honestly I should have blogged that - played it on the switch with a screen cap button, now I’m playing Demon’s Souls on ps3 where I have to point my phone at the tv and take pictures like I’m living in the stone age.  I’d actually planned to get a video capture device & hdcp bypass w/ christmas moneys, but the couch broke so here we are.

But anyway, yeah, as I’d mentioned elsewhere, I loved Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and after playing those games I’ve been excited to give the rest of the series a try, starting with Demon’s Souls.  Especially after watching Matthew Matosis’s “Lost Soul Arts” video.  In particular, there were a bunch of small individual elements in Dark Souls that felt undeveloped or out of place, in particular the Bridge Dragon, and some of the npcs including the Crestfallen Knight and Patches, that I’ve since learned were references to things that were either more fleshed out or just made more sense in Demon’s Souls.

Things I’ve heard about Demon’s Souls: enemy AI is even less capable of responding intelligently to ranged attacks than in Dark Souls, and most have poor magic resistance compared to physical, so magic in general is just kind of busted.  In particular, starting with the Royal class gives you a ring that regenerates MP, giving you infinite uses of magic.

Now, I’m no “Elite Gamer”, my gamer pride was abandoned long ago, but I do want to actually play Demon’s souls, and killing every enemy one at a time from outside their agro radius strikes me as against the spirit of things, at least for a full play through.  No, I want to play a bad dude (or dudette in this case) in beefy heavy armor who fights up close and personal.

So I intended to play a knight, but it turns out there’s a “Temple Knight” class with even more armor, one that starts with a higher endurance, strength, and faith.  I don’t know if miracles are supposed to be as broken as sorceries in this game, but if it’s mostly some extra heals, maybe some pushes to shake off crowds, that could be cool.  So yeah, a paladin-esque sort of cleric knight situation sounds good.  And that halberd looks neat, so there we go, I guess I’ll see if I can put together a workable heavy armor/melee/miracles sort of build with a lot of vitality, endurance, and faith.  Something survivable to help cushion my badness without just bypassing the core gameplay entirely.

Going for a lady sception this time, fairly default appearance, just some slight changes to the hair.  I like that ‘Gender’ is a slider, that’s cool.  There’s a lot of nitty gritty appearance options under “Edit Appearance”, but I intend to be wearing a lot of armor with this character, so that feels like a bit of a waste of time.

There’s some lore business before the title screen, and a fair bit of story set up after character select, leading me to think that narrative maybe plays a stronger part in Demon’s Souls than it did in Dark Souls or Bloodborne.  Both those games had mountains of lore to pick up from item descriptions, random npc dialog, environmental details, and so on, but very little in the way of an actual plot or story occuring during the game itself.  It’s something that I felt the games could actually stand to have a bit more of, since they can be a bit aimless as is, like all the important stuff kind of already happened, and you’re just picking up pieces in the aftermath.

The intro story bit also rattles off a long list of names of various heroes who disappeared into the fog, and the loading screens sho static images of what I assume are npcs.  Maybe a bit less informative than the item description loading screens, and doesn’t serve the same purpose of reminding the player that they should be looking at item descriptions for extra lore and context.  That said, it does imply to me that npc characters might play a bigger part in Demon’s Souls than they do in the later games of the series that I’ve played.

after the story bits, there’s a brief clip of main character entering the fog, and the game plops me in tutorial zone.

Ugh, fat rolling.  Yeah, the equip load, with cut offs at 1/4 for fast and 1/2 for medium rolls are a thing, just like dark souls.  I don’t mind medium rolls, but slow roll is just unacceptable.

Which forces sception to strip off all her armor save for her shoes.  Eventually I’ll buy up enough endurance to put it back, but I knew going in that Sceptions starting armor would be more a statement of long term goals rather than a practical early game outfit.

Not too much to say about the tutorial zone.  It’s somewhat functional, introducing some base mechanics via dev notes on the ground.  There’s a few mostly very weak enemies, and a couple significantly tougher ones with glowing blue eyes that I didn’t manage to get any decent pictures of.  Again, it’s a shame ps3 had no screen cap function, and that furnature emergencies stole my video capture money, because trying to take a picture with one hand while holding the control with the other doesn’t work too well.

Eventually I make it to the tutorial boss, a giant clumbsy demon with a big ole ax.  I do ok at it for a while, but I’ve never fought it before and don’t know it’s attack timings, so eventually mistime a role and get splatted in a single hit.

#thankyoudarksouls

....

As a first impression, pretty cool so far.  The Undead Asylum definitely strikes me as a more effective and interesting tutorial, but something about the environment from this area feels a little more, I don’t know, believable?  Immersive?  Could just be new game syndrome.  But where Dark Souls having the tutorial boss splat you only to circle back around and defeat it before leaving the area worked better as an introduction and felt more satisfying, it also had a slightly more videogamey feel, like it was more obviously created to be a level for you to play through.

Again, though, maybe it’s just new game feel, combined with the matosis vid priming me for that exact opinion.

#sception plays demon's souls #demon's souls #souls series #part 1 #I say part 1 like there are going to be more parts #haven't really decided on that

[gamesception]

Sception’s Switch Port Wish List:

Dragon Age, first game only.  Fun game, even on console.  Best of the series easily - the second game’s rushed dev time forced so many cut corners that there’s hardly a game left over, and the third game is so bloated with tedium that every time I try to play it my eyes glass over and I slip into a boredom coma before I can get a quarter of the way into it.  But the first game?  Way better on PC with mods and keyboard/mouse controls, but even so I’d jump at the chance to play it again on switch. Chances of it happening?  Low.  EA doesn’t want to remind people of when Bioware made good games, and they aren’t interested in releasing anything on the switch that isn’t an exploitative microtransaction store.

Mass Effect Trilogy: First game was good, second game was better, and, yeah, ok, the series didn’t finish on the best foot, the third game suffering from tone problems and a final ending that just flat out sucked, but Mass Effect 3 has a several key moments that stand out as among the best in the overall series, and while the ending is kind of bad, at least the series *has* an ending - something Dragon Age fans will probably never get to see. Chances of it happening?  Again, low, for the same reason as Dragon Age.

Arkham Asylum.  Just Asylum, not the rest.  City’s not bad, but the loss of focus costs the experience more than the larger world and better boss encounters can win back, imo.  The rest of the series, though?  Bleh. Chance of it happening?  I don’t know.  Bunch of Warner Bros games on switch, of varying port quality.  Asylum was developed by Rocksteady, not sure if that would introduce rights issues.  Better chance of this than of most other games on this list.

FF6.  Sure, Square has ported over PS and PS2 titles, but what about earlier ones?  FF6 is the best game in the series, imo.  Sure, it’s way too easy, like most JRPGs are, but the engaging story with a huge ensemble cast of likable characters is amazing.  I’ve never seen a game with so many playable characters where I liked all of them this much, and the couple of multi-party dungeons reward you for spending time building up all of them.  You also don’t frequently see this kind of story heavy jrpg game with a real ensemble cast, with no obvious ‘main character’, letting the player engage with whichever characters they like rather than forcing you into the shoes of a Chrono or a Cloud or some other default Hero, characters who are sometimes good but rarely the most interesting or engaging member of their respective games’ playable casts.  So yeah, FF6 is great, but good portable versions aren’t easy to come by.  The GBA version is amazing, but good luck getting your hands on it.  The mobile port is trash.  Phone emulators have to deal with awkward phone controls.  A switch port - whether of the original snes version, or the PS1 port with additional pre-rendered video bits, or the GBA version with it’s not-terrible extra postgame dungeon and bosses, would be great. Chance of it happening?  Frankly, I’m confused why it hasn’t happened already.  Square has ported a bunch of old final fantasy games to switch, I have no idea why they cut those games off at the PS1 era.  I would say the chances should be good that FF6 will come to switch, but it’s such an obvious port that the fact that it hasn’t happened already implies to me that there’s maybe some behind the scenes bullshit ruling it out.  And if it does come over, it might be a port of the ios version, which would be terrible.

FFTactics.  I will buy this on any platform it’s released on.  But if we could get a port of the PSP version, with post game multiplayer dungeons intact?  Maybe with online multiplayer support - the turn based nature of the game letting it bypass some of the lousiness of switch online?  Please. Chance of it happening?  Again, I’m confused why it hasn’t happened already.  FF7, 8, and 9 are ported over, but not Tactics?  As with FF6, it seems like an obvious and very likely port, except that it’s so obvious and so likely that the fact it hasn’t happened already maybe implies that there’s something specifically preventing it from happening.  At least if they do port the ios version it wouldn’t be a tragedy here, though I would still lament the lack of the post game content from the PSP version.

Fallout 3 / New Vegas.  Really Loved 3, and loved New Vegas too, though I never did get around to finishing it.  Would love to see these games on the switch, provided Bethesda didn’t use the opportunity to stuff them full of microtransactions.  New Vegas, despite bugs and some cut corners, remains probably the best 3d fallout game, and 3, despite the not-undeserved hate it gets for its main story, is still probably the most fun I’ve had just randomly exploring a world in a bethesda game. Chance of it happening?  You’d think the chances would be ok, Bethesda’s had a bunch of games ported to switch - Skyrim, Doom, Wolvenstein, etc.  That said, Fallout 3′s reputation among the Fallout fan community has plummeted in the last few years so Bethesda might not think a port would be worthwhile.  And as they’re still trying to push 76, I can’t imagine their eager to remind people that their Fallout games weren’t always the hottest of garbage.  So... better odds here than of Mass Effect or Dragon Age, but I’m not holding my breath.  As for New Vegas, I doubt Bethesda has any interest in reminding people that the best Fallout game to be released since they picked up the license was developed by someone else.

Morrowind - Still probably the greatest Bethesda game, though I understand it was already showing the trend towards streamlining and loss of depth coming off of Daggerfall that would eventually lead us to the likes of 76 and Blades.  But yeah, another classic I never got around to beating, that it would probably take a switch port to get me to try again. Chance of it happening?  Some but not great, largely for similar reasons to Fallout 3.  Skyrim sold quite well on Switch, IIRC, so you’d think other Elder Scrolls ports would have been a natural choice, but years later and nothing but Blades means it probably isn’t going to happen.

Mother Series, especially Earthbound - which like tactics I’ll buy and replay on any platform it’s released on - and Mother 3, which seems fantastic, but the only time I’ve tried it I didn’t make it very far due to the SNES emulator I had at the time ruining the rhythm based combat minigame.  So yeah, an official port would be great. Chance of it happening?  Actually good for once, for the first time on this list.  As with FF6/Tactics I’m kind of surprised that it hasn’t happened already, but Nintendo being Nintendo I’m more inclined to blame that on them either just not getting around to it yet or trying to hold off on a cult classic to use it to spike excitement in a dull release window later down the line.

Demon’s Souls - Great game.  Sadly my play through was killed by a hacking incident, but yeah, a classic, laid down the souls game fundamentals while pulling of some aspects better than any of the games that followed it.  And a remake has officially been announced for release on PS5, would be a great opportunity to release a port of the original to the Switch market... Chance of it happening?  Unfortunately, Sony owns the rights, so I just don’t see it happening... not unless Sony really plans to abandon the mobile market and instead push interaction with switch.  They did include that “would you be interested in PS4 remote play on other devices - including Switch” question in a survey a while back.  Still doesn’t strike me as likely, though.

Dark Souls 2 - like Fallout 3, Dark Souls 2 has become the black sheep of its series in fandom eyes.  Not entirely without reason, but there’s some interesting and novel design choices that get overlooked and unappreciated as a result.  I’ve never made time to play it myself, despite it sitting in my Steam library never downloaded, but would absolutely play it on the switch. Chance of it happening?  Without the fan crowd clamoring for a re-release, an updated port seems unlikely.

#dragon age #mass effect #arkham asylum #ff6 #fftactics #fallout 3 #new vegas #morrowind #mother #demons' souls #dark souls 2

[gamesception]

land-of-boredom-and-confusion replied to your post “Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 11 - the end?”

hitting the absolute biggest f oh my god

I know right?  I do want to stress that I’m not really bitter or upset, as I do think it was a pretty funny troll, if a bit more debilitating than I can really personally endorse.

The sad thing is less the killing of the save file - again it wouldn’t take me too long to catch back up, especially if I cheat with item duplication to catch up on levels and upgrade materials that I previously spent time grinding.  But I was making pretty regular blogging progress for the first time in a while, and that was nice, even if having to take physical pictures as I went was a bit of a hassle.  So I kind of want to pick that up again, but I’m not what to blog aboot.  Right now the main contenders are:

1. Cass Cain Reread.  I finally got out to see the birds of prey movie yesterday.  Was pretty fun, if way too much expository voice over for my taste.  Like, theatrical cut blade runner too much.  Still, Robbie remains great as Quinn, I liked the rest of the cast, Mary Elizabeth Winstead was particularly fun as an amusingly awkward take on Huntress.  The one issue I had was with the film’s version of Cassandra Cain, not with the actress, but with the writing that chose to use the character’s name and literally nothing else of her character.  Doesn’t ruin the movie, but it does kind of have me thinking about going back to re-read Cass’s original appearances to reconnect with what I liked about the character in the first place, and maybe write a bit about that as I go.

2. KH 3.  I blogged through my initial play of the game but never got around to a big commentary on the story or how it works and doesn’t work as an end cap to the series so far, in part because I was waiting on the extra content in the DLC, which is out now.  And I have plenty of more things to rant about in the ‘things that bother me about kingdom hearts’ department.  I don’t think I even got around to griping about the imo shitty twist regarding the dark spirit in kh3, and that one’s been bugging me extra since I found out the DLC includes data battles with each of the new org members, including Handsom Ansem (to distinguish from belt buckle ansem, young man ansem, old man ansem, mansex, etc), and he’s missing his /primary aesthetic gimmick/ in that fight entirely because of that shitty twist.

3. Go back to Fallout: New Vegas.  I was having a lot of fun with my initial play though back in the day, but puttered out due to a mix of putting too much effort into the written out liveblog entries and letting the game play get too far ahead of the blog, something the demon’s souls run was also starting to suffer from and that contributed at least as much as the jaying of my save file to taking a break from it.

I think a timer could help with the last thing.  Keep gameplay segments to manageably blog-about-able chunks.  Or maybe just record and upload or stream a play through, and skip the liveblog part?  I can run OBS and new vegas at the same time.  Main thing stopping me from streaming or lets-playing is that I’m not much for in-the-moment commentary, especially when I’m playing a game by myself.

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Some Games in 2020, Maybe

and perhaps even blogs about them, if only a very little bit.

My Gaming Laptop is working again.  It’s been out of commission for over a year, due to what I thought was a broken power port, a fix not too expensive to repair, but also not cheap enough that I got around to it until just last week.  Turns out it was actually just a bad power supply, something that I had ruled out after getting a replacement power supply, but actually it turns out that one was bad, too.  Anyway, with a new working power supply I can finally play PC games again, albeit maybe not the most recent or graphically taxing ones, and there are several that I mean to try this year...

In particular, there are a bunch of classic crpgs that I never got around to back in the day due to being more a console gamer, and a couple that I’ve since tried but never got around to finishing, Namely Baldur’s Gate I and II, Planescape Torment, and Fallout 1, 2, & New Vegas.  I also have a hankering to replay KotOR 1 & especially 2.  I haven’t run through those in quite some time, and Rise of Skywalker, despite being far from my favorite Star Wars film (about on par with Revenge of the Sith for me), has put me in a bit of a Star Warsy mood.

I doubt I’ll do any especially effortful liveblogs.  The amount of bother I put into writing up New Vegas posts was a big part of why I got bogged down and stopped playing it the first time around, despite quite enjoying the game itself, but I’ll certainly post some thoughts here and there.  Regardless, I’m quite open to suggestions for other classic computer games I should try, or for what individual games I should play first from the ones that I’ve already listed.

As for console games, I’m also going to try Demon’s Souls, after playing Dark Souls for the first time on the switch last year - something I meant to blog about at the time time, but, well, the gaming laptop was *also* my blogging laptop.  That and depression is a hell of a drug.  Anyway, loving Dark Souls, and being intrigued by Matthew Matosis’s “lost soul arts” video, has given me a desire to see the souls series roots.  Sadly the servers have been shut down, negating the online features that were so innovative for the time, but I’m still excited to give what’s left of the game a try.

There were a lot of elements of Dark Souls that were fine in themselves, but didn’t really land with me, things that felt a bit shallow or didn’t seem to quite fit with the rest of the game that I’ve since come to understand were references to characters and set pieces from Demon’s Souls - stuff like the Crestfallen Knight or Patches or the Bridge Dragon, so it should be cool to fill in the gaps on some of that stuff.

#sception plays #like a few things maybe #and hopefully posts a bit more this year

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 10 - Knight and Spider

After visiting the other worlds and coming back much stronger, I run past the dragon bridge, dodge the strafing dragonfire, make short work of those pesky archers & blue eye knights at the end of the bridge that got me the first time around, and pass through the fog door to meet the second proper boss of Demon’s Souls, the Tower Knight.

In addition to being huge, the main gimmick of this boss fight is that the arena is surrounded by crossbowmen who fire down at you.  The intro cutscene puts a ton of emphasis on these guys so you absolutely know they’re there.

So the obvious thing to do is dodge past the giant knight, climb the stairs, make a circuit around the walls surrounding the arena taking out all the archers, then head back down into the arena to take on the big guy.  This process is slightly complicated by the tower knight shooting some giant magic lances at you while you’re up on the wall, but there’s a lot of cover and they’re not too hard to dodge, so that process goes pretty quickly.

Down on the ground the obvious thing to do is to try to get around behind the knight, which isn’t too hard but he does have a big ‘slam the shield in the ground’ aoe attack and does some big backhops that can make it a pain if you don’t wait around in front to bait out a big slow attack from his lance first.  Hitting his ankles doesn’t do much damage, but it makes green smoke shoot out which encourages you to keep doing that, which then knocks the knight over.  A helpful note on the ground in the arena said to attack the enemy’s head, so when he falls over I run around and gets hits in there, which does a ton of damage. 

The tower knight does eventually get back up, but I did enough damage that a few more swipes at the ankles knock it out.  If my weapon wasn’t leveled up so much, I’d probably have had to knock him down twice to take him out.

Overall, though, that was a really fun and interesting boss fight!  A lot more so than Phalanx was.  And both fights incorporated regular enemies in some way, rather than just being a straight one on one monster mash like most of the dark souls & bloodborne bosses were.  I wonder if that’ll be a trend throughout the game.

Let’s find out, by tackling that spider boss I left behind back in the Stonefang Tunnels

I didn’t manage to get any good pictures of this guy, so here’s one from the intertubes.

This fight is radically different from the previous two, taking place in a long tunnel where the spider at the end shoots a mix of sticky webs and explodey fireballs at you from a great distance.

Make it all the way over to it and it switches to stabby claw attacks, slam attacks, and big explosions.  The little chamber it’s in is covered in webbing, so if you back away from it any other direction than back down the tunnel you get slowed by the webbing and can’t roll for a bit.

I’m sure the right way to beat this guy is to careful dodge the projectiles on the run up, dodge roll the swipes and slams, and back down the tunnel to avoid the big explosions.  I don’t do any of that.  Apparently my armor and levelling are a bit op for this fight thanks to the previous world tour, so I just face tank everything, learn nothing, and chew through most of my remaining grass supply between its attacks while getting in mine as I’m able, and it just dies before I do.

The idea of this boss is really interesting, it’s a totally unique encounter compared to the bosses and combat situations I’ve seen so far this game or really most other games in the series.  A lot of bosses in a lot of games, not just souls games, have this dynamic where part way through the fight changes somehow, ususally in the form of the boss switching to stronger or more frantic attacks as its health gets low.  Armored Spider has that in a really naturalistic, non-videogamey way just by nature of its combat arena dividing the fight into a long gauntlet dodging past its ranged attacks before going head to head against its melee attacks.

It’s neat, and I kind of just cheesed it.  Whoops.

....

Not sure where I’m going after this.  You can’t go any further in the first world until you’ve beaten the last boss of one of the other worlds, so I’ll probably just keep going in world two, unless I bump into a particular roadblock.

As for liveblog updates - I’m honestly surprised that I managed to keep daily updates for this series going for over a week.  Work is kind of super busy right now, AND I have to start hunting for a new job on top of it - not that I dislike the current job, but my room mate’s going to be moving probably in the next couple months, and I’ll need to either find a new place to live or a new car that I’d trust with a two hour daily commute and I can’t afford either on my current salary.

Thinking about that kind of makes my chest tighten up as the walls close in around me, but in the long run maybe it’ll be a good thing.  I have been in kind of a rut for the last, oh, decades or so.  Even in the worst case scenario I end up moving back in with my parents for a bit and start looking for work in New York instead of Baltimore, it’s not like I’m at risk of going homeless or anything.  Anyway, I probably won’t have the free time for daily blog updates for a bit.  Will try for bi-weekly maybe?  Eh, we’ll see.

#Demon's Souls #Sception Plays Demon's Souls

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 8 - Tower & Shrine

I’m still working on that whirlwind tour of the world, stopping by each archstone while I’m in soul form just to see what’s there before returning to 1-2 to continue making proper progress.  The first stop was Stonefang Tunnel, and I actually cleared that all the way to the boss door, no problem.

The next couple worlds, though, would prove to be a bit more challenging.

The next archstone leads to the Tower of Latria.  A prison Level.  That’ll be fun.

Yikes.

YIKES.

I somehow didn’t get a picture of the dudes who jump out of iron maidens when you open them and poison you, but yikes to them, too.

There aren’t a lot of enemies here - some prisoners, many of which don’t even attack you.  If you let them out they just crowd around you as though begging for help, and eventually you can’t get past them and need to kill them just to move.  They all die in one hit, don’t do any damage and even the hostile ones can mostly be killed from outside their cells before opening the door to grab any items, but while they aren’t dangerous they’re super unnerving.

Then there are the mind flayer guys.  They also go down quickly - just a couple hits from my halberd, but they’re much more threatening, spamming soul arrows and a paralysis spell followed by a very damaging grab attack, and with those things together they’re super intimidating.

As I poke about the place, there are a bunch of dangerous drop offs, in some places I can hear someone sane yelling for me to help them, but I can’t find them.  And there’s also a sound of someone singing in the distance.  And it’s super dark here.  It’s not all that much more dangerous than stonefang tunnel, but it’s a whole lot creepier and more unpleasant

I do not get very far here before deciding to put the tower off till later.

Ok, Tower’s a no go.  Next up is the Shrine of Storms.

Main enemies here are these armored skeleton guys.  They’re fast, and they roll around a bunch, and they deal a lot of damage.  They’re probably the most dangerous regular enemies yet - even moreso than the mind flayers, but they’re a lot less scary than the mind flayers, probably thanks to being in a well lit, open, outdoor area.

And as this message helpfully informs me, they’re super vulnerable to parries.  The timing is a bit awkward - they do the common Souls Game thing of holding the windup for their attacks for like a half second longer than you’d think, so I do screw up a bunch and take a lot of hits, but it’s not too bad, and a single riposte from my +5 halberd drops them.  And they drop like 300+ souls apiece, which is actually pretty good.

A short way into the stage, the tutorial boss makes a reappearance.  I don’t feel quite up to that, so I explore around the sides instead.

And bump into a ‘red eye knight’ version of the skeletons with dual swords.  I don’t feel confident enough to riposte it, but it turns out to be very vulerable to just sidestepping it’s long lunging attacks and getting a backstab in.  It’s got a ton of up, taking several backstabs to drop it, but it’s actually not that bad.

Was guarding a “+1 crescent falchion”, but I’m pretty happy with my Halberd.  Maybe I’ll try it out later.

I still don’t feel like taking on the tutorial boss again, so I back out of the stage at this point, but it seems like a decent spot to grind some souls if I feel a need to do that later, since the skeletons aren’t that bad and drop a lot more than any other enemy I’ve bumped into so far.

Or, well, I say that, but I do take a lot of hits trying to get those parries, and ended up burning through a ton of my grass healing in the process, so in terms of overall resource gain I probably need to get a fair bet better at the game before it would actually be all that efficient.

#demon's souls #sception plays demon's souls #mind flayers #skeletons

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 6: More Dragons

Leveled up and ready to go, time to try the next zone.  Sounds like we’re getting more dragons!  I already thought the dragon bit was a little better handled in the first area than the crimson helkite was in Dark Souls.  Seeing that it was just a preview of a game concept that would be expanded on is neat.

Right away there’s a few more of the phalanx type enemies.  These guys can drop the small upgrade materials, so I might come back here a little later to farm up my weapon a bit.

Friendo’s trapped *again*.  I can see this is going to be something of a running gag.  Sort of like Onion Knight actually - though friendo, as the son of the king, is a bit more central to the plot.  I should probably actually learn his name then.  Ostrava.  Freind’Ostrava.

Anyway, OK Ostrava, I’ll help you out.  Maybe unlock this gate as a shortcut in the process?

Out onto... Another, even longer bridge?  Is this entire stage just one long dragon bridge?

It is!  That’s... a little simple and linear compared to the previous zone, but also kind of cool, and again it is neat to see a dramatic, attention grabbing concept like crossing a bridge while it’s strafed by dragonfire expanded rather than being a one off reference that’s never used again in the game.

The bridge is divided into segments with guard towers between them, and the guard towers have stairs down to a lower floor with more enemies but no dragons.  Clearing backwards in the tunnel helps Ostrava out.  Unfortunately no lever to open this gate, but in retrospect I don’t think it would be much of a shortcut actually.

Take the tunnel to the far opposite direction, past some dangerous dog enemies, and the merchant guy from the first area is here.  Cool.  Unfortunately, there’s no stairs up from this end, so you have to cross at least the last dragonfire strafing segment.

Up on the top of one of the watchtowers there’s a shortbow.  I probably won’t have the stats to deal much damage with it, but it could be useful for drawing pulling individual enemies out of crowds.

The last strafing run drives me straight into an ambush with like four crossbowmen and a blue eyed knight.  Ouch.

I think that’s the boss door in the back there, though.  If I just run through the strafing sections, it should be a pretty quick return trip... but I’m not carrying /all that/ many souls.  Maybe now would be a good time to check out the other zones, see what there is to see?

#sception plays demon's souls #demon's souls

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 3: Here There Be Dragons

Introduction to the Nexus done, it’s off to the first “real” stage of the game, the gate of the Boletarian Palace, starting with an intro cutscene teasing this dragon here.  As with the Crestfallen Knight, the Bridge Dragon is another element of Dark Souls that felt kind of shallow or out of place to me, that I later learned were mostly there as references to Demon’s Souls.  So I’m excited to see this dragon so soon, and am looking forward to seeing what the game does with it.

After the cut scene I’m dropped on a bridge leading up to the gate.  Environment overall feels very cool and imposing, and I absolutely do not die to literally the first enemy while trying to take pictures.

Enemy AI/pathing has some issues.  Two enemies in this area jump straight into this weird blue glowey death pit while I’m pinned down by a third guy with a crossbow.  In the very next room I’m caught by surprise by a guy hiding by the doorway and attacked by another guy while I try to deal with the first.  The two of them zone me back into this area, and the both of them jump straight into the pit as well.

I died in this narrow wooden scaffolding area more than I’d like to admit, with enemies throwing firebombs at you from above and behind while you try and rush up to take out the enemies throwing firebombs at you from the front.  Definitely an area that a strong ranged attack would trivialize, though.

Part of this section extends outside of the walls, and you can see an item on a balcony that I’m sure I’ll have an opportunity to return to later.

Towards the end of this section an enemy knocks a big ball down some stairs at you, like in the tutorial level of Dark Souls.  And just like in Dark Souls it breaks open an area behind you with some items to get, in this case a Bastard Sword.  The sword is too heavy to wield one handed, but I can two hand it.  I’ve been two handing the halberd for a while, so I decide to give it a try.

After that, I’m on top of the walls

After that, I’m on top of the wall.  There’s some undead crossbow enemies and this tougher glowey blue eye knight who was a pain in the but.

He’s guarding a fog door, but there’s two directions to check out on the wall and I decide to explore each of them first, just in case this is a boss and one of those paths leads to a shortcut back to the bonfire archstone.

One rout leads to this glowy red eye knight.

This guy right here.  You see this guy?  this guy right here?

This guy killed me like three times, costing my souls, and eventually I just give up.

Fuck this guy.

The other route leads to a stairway down to a wood balcony.  I had thought this would be the balcony with the item from before, but I must have gotten turned around, because this is a completely different balcony with some chains to break.

the stairs go further down to a shortcut back to the starting area.  Which was great to find after fighting my way through the whole level like three times only to get killed by that red eye guy each time losing all my souls.

Frustration is quickly forgiven based on picking up the cling ring, though, which reduces the HP penalty for soul form.  NICE.  Being bad at gideovames, I’m pretty sure I’m going to spend most of the game in soul form, so that strikes me as a pretty critical piece of gear.

The broken chains from earlier dropped a couple bodies with a jade ornament and an outfit to wear.

Better than nothing, I guess.

No boss, or follow up appearances from the dragon, but an opened shortcut seems like a good enough break point

So far, the stage has been very solid.  The wall itself feels freaking huge, and a bit more like a naturalalistic place than the Undead Burg.  I’m enjoying my time quite a bit so far, but if I had played this game back in the day, without the benefit of having played Bloodborne and Dark Souls I probably would have bounced off by now, especially with the frustration of the Red Eye knight who I guess is the predecessor of the Black Knights in Dark Souls.

As it is... I’ve died a few times, especially trying to take pictures, but it hasn’t felt especially hard, even with the reduced max health and occasional ambushes, and even with me dying probably more than I did in the Undead Burg already.  The main difference here being that Demon’s Souls gives you effectively unlimited healing, with enemies dropping healing grass left and right.  There are a bunch of long videos and think pieces praising the Estus Flask in Dark Souls, and I am beginning to see why, because you don’t feel as much tension when you can just heal up after every mini encounter.

But otherwise yeah, having fun so far.

#Sception Plays Demon's Souls #part 3 #demon's souls

[gamesception]

Sception Plays Demon’s Souls, part 2: the Nexus

After getting killed by the tutorial demon, Sception awakes in “the Nexus”, revived by this yet unnamed eyeless firekeeper type lady.  I’m already aware from various internet discussions & videos that Demon’s Souls has a separate area that you have to teleport to via bonfire/lamp/i guess archstone in this game in order to level up, Like Bloodborne’s Hunters Dream and decidedly unlike Dark Souls where you can level up, repair items, and access your storage box at any bonfire within the world itself.

In particular I’m aware that Dark Souls 2, which I haven’t played yet, gets a lot of flack for this, even though literally every other game in the series except Dark Souls did it this way.  Personally I agree that the Dark Souls system, was probably better, what with avoiding loading screens taking you out of the experience, but it does strike me as unfair that DSII specifically gets a lot of hate for not measuring up to DS1 in this regard when the other games get a pass.

Anyway, yeah, this is the Nexus.  Not sure where the lady went, but might as well have a look around.

The very first thing I notice is that my health has been cut in half.  Yikes, that’s right, Demon’s Souls cuts your health in half when you die.  I’m pretty sure it comes back when you beat a boss, not sure if there’s an item to do it or if you can get it back after a successful corpse run.  On the one hand, that’s exceptionally harsh, but on the other hand it does give you an actual reason to open yourself up to invaders even when you don’t intend to summon help yourself.  Not that that matters for me, since the servers have been shut down so I can’t get invaded to begin with.  Oh for a Demon’s Souls remaster!

The game gives you your Dark Sign / Hunter’s Mark / Nexial Binding, to abandon souls and return to the checkpoint.  I don’t think using it counts as ‘dying’, so it seems much more relevant in this game as a last ditch effort to maintain your human form with its full HP bar, where as in Dark Souls or Bloodborne there’s not much point to it since you can just die for basically the same effect.

Anyway, looking around I immediately bump into my old buddy, the Crestfallen Knight.  He gets an elaborate cinematic introduction speech that I utterly fail to get a reasonable picture of, which both does a much better job of telling you exactly what you’re supposed to do next and - hopefully - establishes him as a somewhat important character who will maybe matter a bit more to the story this time around.  As this guy is one of the particular ‘references to the previous game’ in Dark Souls that I mentioned last time as a reason I’ve been excited to play Demon’s Souls, I’ll try to keep a pretty close eye on him.

For now, he’s kinda bluey glowey, which might mean to imply that he’s in ghost form and has died fighting the demons?  But then again I’m in ghost form and I’m not bluey glowey, so maybe not.

The other NPCs here aren’t bluey glowey either.  There’s Blacksmith Baldwin - sort of a gruff blacksmith.  It’s nice to have a blacksmith right off the bat, but I don’t have any upgrade materials, and don’t have the souls to grab anything from him besides a piece of healing grass.

And there’s Stockpile Thomas, who I is mournful and guilt-ridden after abandoning his family to flee the demons.  Kinda shitty of him, but he’s apparently not much of a fighter, so I’m not sure what else he could have done besides die with them.  Definitely sets the dark tone of the game.

There’s also this currently nameless lady despairing around the corner.  She thinks the demons are a curse from god for the people not showing King Allant enough respect.  Considering the plot narrator at the start of the game already told me King Allant is personally responsible for this mess, she’s on track for a bit of a rude awakening later on, assuming she’s an actual character and more than just window dressing. 

There’s also a bunch of dev notes on the floor awkwardly info dumping whatever the tutorial failed to teach you.

“Archstone of the Small King” is I guess the warp to the first level proper.

There are four other Archstones, and one broken one, but they’re not accessible yet.  I thought you could do the Demon’s souls levels in any order?  Maybe there’s an intended intro stage and the rest open up after that.

Actually, I can’t find the... I don’t know what to call her, the firekeeper lady either.  I assume you have to talk to her to level up?  Hrm.

Heading upstairs there’s an impressive view of the giant statue that overlooks the rest of the Nexus, but no other characters or anything.  Not much else to see or do for now, so I guess it’s off to the “Archstone of the Small King.”

#sception plays demon's souls #part 2 #demon's souls