Demons Souls

AnCapaillMor

SK1979 wrote: »

Nope just got the normal talisman in 5-1 (thats as far as I went in that level). Talisman of God? I just got it to use the evacuate miracle, and only have a Faith level of 10 I think.

I've been leveling mainly and not doing any multiplayer, but every time I try to drop a Blue stone I cant. I'm picking a level where I've killed the boss and am in soul form. What else is there to do? I'm definitely online as well as I can still see the bloodstains / white phantoms. Also, I've never been able to use a black stone (not that I feel confident enough yet to take someone on!). What am I doing wrong?

Talisman of god, you never picked up the on 4-1 then. Can trade one of them with crow for a colorless demons soul. Talisman of beasts is the one you want, allows you to cast magic and miracles. there's 2 to be got, 1 from the black phantom scirvir(he's by the quick way to flamelurker in 2-2, in the ledge where the 2 gecko's are) and world 2 tendency has to be pure black, another one can be gotten by doing assasinaion quests. Insanity catlyst allows to cast miracles and magic too but it halves your mp, apparently it does the best damage in the games.

As for the bluestones, Look for soul signs that says you can summon here, they're usually around the start of the levels, some are just before the bosses.

SK1979

AnCapaillMor wrote: »

As for the bluestones, Look for soul signs that says you can summon here, they're usually around the start of the levels, some are just before the bosses.

Oh my god, are you serious about those messages being the only place you can use your blue stone? I just thought they were other players being funny or something!

AnCapaillMor

You might come across some smart ass who'd place them in a daft place and there'd be places where you can summon and there'd be no sign. But 99% of the time if you see the sign, drop your stone.

johnny_ultimate

http://kotaku.com/5449482/2009-game-of-the-year-finalist-debate-demons-souls

Pretty fascinating multiple opinion piece on Demon's Souls, which covers extremes from the passionate fan to the harsh critic. Not sure who I agree with most though, or if I even fully agree with any of them. As much as I appreciated the time I spent in the world (except world 5, which can go to hell) there are certain elements - the lack of a pause button or the sometimes clunky interface, for example - which, while adding to the game's somewhat unique appeal, are left-overs of a more punishing era. I'm sure I'm not the only one who cursed when I got a phonecall or the doorbell rang at a vital moment - does not having a pause button really benefit the game in this situation? I do like sometimes having to keep moving while choosing a new weapon, but other times I was angered by the inability to pause the action when I really needed to.

I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that the atmosphere and challenge presented by the game are fantastic achievements. But does anyone else have any major problems with the game, because I'd have to agree with the opinion that the old-fashioned, merciless design can alternate between rewarding and frustrating.

GothPunk

What a surprise that Kotaku's resident dimwit, Luke Plunkett, hated the 'elitist difficulty' of Demon's Souls. I very rarely break this one out but... :rolleyes:. I like everything about Demon's Souls, including the lack of a pause option, but then again I have no life to interrupt me playing the game.

My PS3 has returned from repair and have transferred my data over to the slim. I can now resume playing Demon's Souls - damn I've missed this game. I'm like a crack whore for it. :pac:

noodler

Hey I haven't got Firestorm yet as I haven't rescured Yuria, tempted to use the Dragon Soul for God's Wrath? Would that be a waste?

I am not inflicting anything on Maneater, killing me in one go as I fall and he hits me before I get up.

I I leave a summonign stong on 1-1, can I still be sumoned to 1-1 if I am on a different level?

L31mr0d

I also appreciated the lack of a pause option. It added to the game for me, it meant you were immersed in the world right from the second you logged on until you quit the game.

It's as close to a perfect game for me that I can imagine. I really can't think of anything that I had even the slightest problem with.

johnny_ultimate

GothPunk wrote: »

I like everything about Demon's Souls, including the lack of a pause option, but then again I have no life to interrupt me playing the game.

Surely you must urinate like us other mortals :pac:

I'd agree that elitist difficulty is a phrase that makes it hard to empathise with an opinion though - value judgements are an unfortunate element of criticism in general. I'd say Owen's was the most interesting take on the game, but then again I disagree that games should default boil down to fun - comparing it to movies say, many of my favourite films (take Bergman for example) are decidedly not fun. While I disagree with saying that a 'not fun' game (and let's be honest, Demon's Souls isn't instantly gratifying - a friend of mine started playing last night and had to stop midway through 1-1 because he was too tired to tackle it), I think the analysis of the game as something that rewards a time investment is a very apt description. At the same time though, accessibility isn't always a big bad, and can make a game more user-friendly (again, not a bad thing). While I found Demon's Souls brutality refreshing, what would the game lose by letting the player pause when something unexpected comes up? Should it punish you for a phone call? A book or a DVD wouldn't! As I said, I like the fact that in the midst of combat not being able to pause and choose your next weapon was welcome, at the same time I cursed the designers when the sometimes infuriating inventory wouldn't let me cure the plague the first time I caught it, as I flicked through items trying to figure out which one was right.

Retr0gamer

If I needed to pause the game I just left the game running. The enemies come in wavesand don't take that long to finish off. Only very difficult enemies and bosses I would see people having a problem with, for me if the doorbell went or i got a phone call it could wait.

Asfor people complaining about the elitist difficulty I seeit as no fault of the game but a fault of the player saying this. Sure demons souls is tough but it's also constantly rewarding. It's also very manageable. People are just expectedto have thier hand held through games and want combos to be performed with one button and when something comes along that requires patience and dedication there's an uproar from people that think they can't handle it but really just didn't give it a chance. For me it was the furthest from infuriating bad design. For me it was old school game design genius. It was tough but as you kept playing it you kept getting that little bit further and if yuo died it was always the players fault either for poor judgement or not being prepared (other than a few deaths from traps resetting after being a blue phantom :mad: ). Too many games these days pass off challenge as having infuriating sections or respawning bad guys but making it tolerable with a stupidly lenient health and checkpoint system. Demon's Souls did challenge right.

Saying that 1-4 totally chewed me out tonight. Bloody dragon

noodler

I think it is made twice as hard by being dark and leading to stupid falls of cliffs etc. Sometimes these falls are through no real fault of your own.

Sometimes you just don't block (yes even if you have stamina).

Just did everything on 1-3 there bar the boss as I contemplate a better Maneater strategy - what an absolute gent of a level. So satisfying, 30,000 in souls, about 40 herbs. Excellent.

johnny_ultimate

The later 1s are fairly decent levels alright. 1-4 gave me a bit of trouble, but sorted out the dragon problem with good fire protection. Wanted to defeat it, and summoned others to help out. One was killed by the fire, other was pretty gun-ho and ran straight for the elevator. Never defeated the dragon, but had a wonderful coop fight against the archdemon in the end - me on soul arrows in the distance, other guy distracting him with melée. Or vice versa when we needed to heal up.

noodler

Pentetrator...penetrated.

What a piss easy boss considering I am stuck on Maneater, went up 10 Soul levels in about 2 hours tonight, Have firestorm now but lack the slots so I will have to grind a bit before I take on Maneater again.

Grayditch

Killed the Maneater, Leechmonger, King Doran and The Gray Demon from 4-1 yesterday. Very productive day.

AnCapaillMor

GothPunk wrote: »

My PS3 has returned from repair and have transferred my data over to the slim. I can now resume playing Demon's Souls - damn I've missed this game. I'm like a crack whore for it. :pac:

You did'nt transfer the ds save unfortunately, its locked to the system, i lost about 200 hours of saves when i went my launch model died and i transferred to the slm.


Can't pause, thats what evacuate is for, evacuate back to the nexus, the only time you can't is the 3-3 boss fight and when playing coop or invasion.

Noodler did you fight penetrator after releasing Biorr?, he's very easy then, never actually fought by myself always had blue phantoms or biorr was freed.

SK1979

To be fair, I think that the two complaints that some of the guys in Kokatu have are barely valid to be honest. The "lack of a pause button" is really the same for all online games. If you're playing an MMO you cant pause. If there was a pause button, people would just end up exploiting it somehow to prevent them from being killed in pvp. Also, the clunky menu's, while I admit I've been killed many times trying to select the right herb / weapon etc, its a drawback of all games on consoles that there are simply not enough buttons to assign everything to one. Not like on a PC where you have about 100 hotkeys to use. Most console games use dials to select multiple options and they have their own inherent problems.

Demon's Souls is definitely a great experience in my opinion and gains from the challenge it poses.

noodler

I have 4 shields at my disposal right now, a solider's shield, steel shield +1, the Purple Flame shield +4 and the Tower Shield (the heavy one - just found it).

I am using the purple flame shield atm, should I have something better by now?

(done 1-1,1-2,1-3
2-1,2-2,2-3
3-1,
4-1
5-1

EDIT: Yes Biorr helped me and consequently Penetrator was a piece of the piss. His health seemed to fly down as well though.

AnCapaillMor

Purple flame shield is good, too heavy for my liking tho, if you find it too heavy, there's a dark heater shield in 2-2 near where the dirty beggar sits in 2-2, dark blocks magic. Once you finish world 5 you should have a shield that you should never take off, it has 100% block on magic. Getting shields to dark(upgrade with cloudstones) ups they're magic defense.

Retr0gamer

Just finished it! Now I can finally get back to Persona 4... well if I can stop playing new game +

SK1979

Just have 5-3 left too. All other levels completed. Am I right in saying though once I go through that level and kill the boss, the end game starts and I cant increase soul level till after I start new game+??

I'm soul level 104 atm, is that high enough for NG?

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Just finished it! Now I can finally get back to Persona 4... well if I can stop playing new game +

Its much easier to quit New Game+, especially when the minister in 2-1 ****ing destroys you.

Just have 5-3 left too. All other levels completed. Am I right in saying though once I go through that level and kill the boss, the end game starts and I cant increase soul level till after I start new game+??

I'm soul level 104 atm, is that high enough for NG?

I'd personally recommend quite a bit of grinding before you take on the last boss (if you want to grind, just don't talk to the Maiden in Black once you've defeated your last arch-demon). My limited experience with New Game + suggested that I should have been quite a few levels higher (don't know what level off the top of my head, think the early 100s too). 1-1 in + lures you into a false sense of security by being surprisingly handy to breeze through. Then they bring the pain.

Chairman Meow

Flips sake. This still hasnt arrived. ****ing renchi.com...

Kazuma

Finally getting around to getting this game, it pretty much tipped the console balance for me and convinced me to buy a PS3...
So my question now is, Asia or US? I know that the translation in the US version is a little better...but what other differences are there? Are you guys all on the Asia version or the US?

Retr0gamer

You'll get less lag on the US version and there seems to be more players on that especially on boards. Communication is very limited in the game, all you have is gesturers so there's no language barrier. Also the asian versions manual is all in chinese with only a small inlay giving the controls in english, the US manual will explain things better. If I had the choice I'd go with the US, I only went Asian because I was convinced there would be no western release (which there nearly wasn't).

L31mr0d

Retr0gamer wrote: »

You'll get less lag on the US version

Did someone in Europe do a comparison or something? I didn't notice any lag at all?

I don't think anyone in this thread either complained about lag in the Asian version

SK1979

I played the US version also. I never noticed any lag at all while playing. To be honest though you could certainly play either version as the online component doesn't need any language. Its either someone you have to kill or they are here to help!

Finished it off the other night as well. Started new game + though!

So funny in 1-1 again, I think that I got invaded 5-6 times but I had a good samaritan blue phantom who helped me kill them all so I didn't lose all the souls I carried over!

L31mr0d

SK1979 wrote: »

So funny in 1-1 again, I think that I got invaded 5-6 times

Yeah I read that it was recommended to unplug your network cable for that due to the sheer number of griefers trying to get you in NG+, I think I played it offline because of that.

Lucious Sweet

Lads I'm selling my copy of demon's souls in adverts if anyone is interested.

Ta,

noodler

http://kotaku.com/5459310/which-games-and-consoles-had-the-best-resale-value-in-2009

Excellent! My deluxe edition will end up making me a profit, w00t!

thorbarry

noodler wrote: »

http://kotaku.com/5459310/which-games-and-consoles-had-the-best-resale-value-in-2009

Excellent! My deluxe edition will end up making me a profit, w00t!

hmmm, im heading over to San Fran in a couple of weeks. Do ya reckon they're is any chance of me getting the deluxe edition over there? or would it be sold out?

Retr0gamer

noodler wrote: »

http://kotaku.com/5459310/which-games-and-consoles-had-the-best-resale-value-in-2009

Excellent! My deluxe edition will end up making me a profit, w00t!

Rule no. 1 of videogame collecting: Buy anything Atlus publish because the print runs are so small and the games have such a hardcore following that they always end p costing a fortune on the second hand market.