I was finally able to make it through the first area of Demon’s Souls, it took me in the ball park of 4 hours between 2 characters (I wanted to try a couple different classes to see the differences). I must say, beating the first demon was genuinely satisfying after putting so much time in, but it seemed like the boss itself was much easier than the path to get to him as he really wasn’t that hard. At the conclusion of the first area you unlock the ability to use the souls you’ve managed to keep in getting through the first stage to improve you character, either by stats or upgrading equipment, although in testing it’s not overly clear that I’ve done myself any good in doing so. I found that my Temple Knight while wielding his halberd was too slow for my taste and certain enemies were getting the better of me because of it. The wanderer I was playing had burned through so many items that were found in the first level, and subsequently found to be pretty important to kill Phalanx, so he’s been deleted and replaced with a Knight. The Knights run through the Boletarian Palace was much smoother, and his progress into the second area has also been much better.

The level design in this game so far has been excellent, while it is unforgiving in the sense that you are constantly dying, when you do succeed over a particular stretch, you are rewarded with a lever or switch of some kind that opens a gate, or enables a lift that will act as a shortcut for your next trip though. It certainly doesn’t eliminate all the fodder between the zone entrance and your blood pool and lost souls, but it sure beats completely clearing your way through.

I eluded to this earlier but I’m not a big fan of the leveling system thus far. You spend your souls to buy stats, each point to one of 7 or 8 base stats, improve various other related skill stats and theoretically make you better. The stats are fairly expensive to buy, I was only able to get 3-4 after clearing the first level. You can also upgrade your gear with souls and reagents that you find in the zones, but it’s not entirely clear to me yet about the lifespan of the weapons in this game yet so I haven’t really done a whole lot with it yet.

The message system is fairly effective, I’ve got some good tips that way but I haven’t had the full multi-player experience yet, my game has yet to be invaded, I hope that happens sometime, it sounds really neat.

So a couple tips for those just getting started:

Be Patient, wait for the right time to attack.
Don’t hesitate to do some backtracking to get your foe into some open space so you can operate.
Get behind slow movers, most foes can be taken down in one shot back there.
Read, Leave and Recommend helpful messages.

Next week is going to be a big week! Stay Tuned!