Demon Soul - a prologue...very

After finishing my essay assignment last week, I'm thinking to switch to another game instead of the one that I currently played (Valkyria Chronicles). There's several options to choose, but eventually I decided to try Demon Soul, since I've been informed about how great the game is by my housemate, while Rid also asked to play. Hence, I spent a few hours to try the game (game owner is the said housemate of mine).

Developers: From Software, SCE Japan Studio
Platform: PlayStation 3
Genre: RPG
Release date: February 5, 2009

Well one sentence to describe how I feel after playing about 3 hours into the game: "awesome but somehow frustrating". Why?

Demon's Souls (デモンズソウル) is a fantasy action role-playing video game developed primarily by From Software (with assistance from SCE Japan Studio) exclusively for the PlayStation 3. It was released in Japan on February 5, 2009 and published by Sony Computer Entertainment; in North America on October 7, 2009 and published by Atlus and in Europe on June 25, 2010 and published by Namco Bandai.

Set in a dark fantasy medieval Europe-inspired world, players take control of a custom hero who has journeyed to the fictional kingdom of Boletaria, which is being ravaged by an accursed fog that brings forth demons that feast on the souls of mortals. The game has been described as a spiritual successor to the King's Field series,[4] a previous series of games from the same developer. The gameplay involves a character creation system with emphasis on gathering loot through combat with enemies in a non-linear series of varied locations. It also has a unique online multiplayer system integrated into the single-player where players can leave useful messages and warnings for other players' game worlds.

Upon its release in Japan and North America, Demon's Souls was met with a positive response from critics, winning numerous awards. Praised for its dark fantasy art design, variation in combat choice and integrated online multiplayer, the game is particularly notable for its high difficulty level with many critics praising it as a genuine challenge.

I think the above quote from Wikipedia pretty much summed up my impression toward the game so far.

• Really nice graphic. Not the best for a ps3 game, but was appealing enough for me. Remember PS2's Shadow of Colossus? I remember the graphic was awesome during those era, and Demon Soul brought me those memories again.There are some flaws in the graphic, but overall I'm pretty impressed with it.
  

• One thing I like about the game is the realistic environmental interactions. You hit a wood and they broke. You slash a stone wall and you'd pretty much get repelled. Very realistic.

• The combat system was cool, although it took me time to get accustomed with the default key. Your attack combo is limited by your stamina gauge, and in certain place with limited place, you need to be careful with your weapon of choice because you definitely don't want your spear to get stuck in the middle of narrow hallway.
  

• Great customization. I haven't reach that far into the game to comment much about this aspect, but so far I'm pretty satisfied with the customization in the game. In the beginning they give us several class to choose, ranging from your average tanky, nimble and magic classes with several weapons available to wield. Then later in the game, your options widened vastly with much more weapons and skills for you to customized.
  

• Nice online features. OK I admit I haven't reach that stage yet...
  

• Now the rather"bad" thing about the game. It's extremely challenging and sometimes make you frustrated. Seriously. You upgrade your character stats, weapon etc by using "souls" that you amass by killing them demons. But if you die, all your hard earned souls are gone. Well you have one chance to reclaim all the collected souls, but all the enemies you killed were also revived... To make things worse, you can't pause in the middle of the battle so you really need to always be prepared. Challenging, in a way. But the difficulty is not limited to that, of course. Well, good thing there's this "trick" that you can use to avoid unnecessary death.
  

• Demon Soul online community sucks. Or so I heard. At low level/stage, it's easy to find good players to help you out to pass the challenge, but as you go further, you'll find more and more douchebag that love to PK you, depending on your luck. And dying in Demon Soul "is" a big deal.
  

That's all I could comment about the game. I have to say overall the game was quite awesome and fun to play, and there'll even more exciting features to greet me once I reach further stages of the game (sign of other player's death, online chat etc). But for now I want to focus finishing Valkyria Chronicle first before I can continue with this game :3