It's been a long time since I played something like Demon's Souls. I couldn't pause. I died a lot. It took me roughly six hours to beat the first real level of the game. I died some more. The game's mood constantly made me feel uneasy and jumpy. I kept on dying. And yet, I continued to play it with relish because I knew from the moment I started the adventure that this action-RPG was something special.

The game, created by From Software, is a pain to learn, terrifyingly difficult, and downright eerie a lot of the time. It's an unforgiving adventure that will probably turn off many gamers, primarily those who are used to easier titles; if you like games that coddle their players, this isn't for you. But, if you are willing to put up with the insane difficulty and like to actually work at playing a game, you'll discover that Demon's Souls is an incredibly rare gem.

Title Demon's Souls

Developer From Software Publisher Atlus Price $59.99-$69.99 Shop.ars Platform PS3

The game's intro paints a pretty bleak picture: in the kingdom of Boletaria, a king obsessed with power figured out a way to channel souls. For a while, this knowledge paid off and brought a brief age of prosperity to the land. After a while, though, a strange fog settled around the country and cut it off from the rest of the world.

Eventually, someone broke through the barrier and informed the country's neighbors that it had been invaded by the forces of the Old One, a powerful demon that was less-than-thrilled at the idea of someone horning in on its spiritual turf. Naturally, countless adventurers ventured into the fog, hoping to save the kingdom, but were never heard from again. The player-character is like the rest of the ill-fated heroes, but with one ace up their sleeve: they've been granted aid by the mysterious Maiden in Black, who rescues them from the jaws of death.

The premise of Demon’s Souls sounds like it’s straight out of a tired fantasy novel, but it soon becomes apparent that this game is anything but ordinary. From the moment you begin your one-person war against the forces of darkness occupying Boletaria, you’ll quickly realize that the country is completely overrun by demons, dragons, soulless soldiers, skeletons, and zombies (of course). There are no NPCs to help you, no friendly characters to offer you aid or succor; everything out in the world is howling for your blood. In other words, it’s just you against the monsters.

But overwhelming odds are just the start of the ass-whooping that Demon’s Souls will hand to you many, many times. It’s not uncommon to die as you progress through a level. A lot. This is especially true when you first try to pause the game and then realize that it won't actually pause. Instead, a menu will appear over the screen, but the action continues in the background at full-speed.

It requires a lot of strategy to conquer a section of each province, and the only way to figure out which strategies work is to try something, (usually) fail miserably, and then try something else until you stumble across a winning approach that will let you inch a little further along before you have to repeat the process.

New armor, items, and weapons can be purchased at the Nexus, a sort of safe-haven for tortured souls. Nexus is the one place where nothing will try to kill you, and you'll have to backtrack here constantly if you want to store your items or pick up new ones. Purchases are made with the souls of fallen enemies that you collect. As a result, you'll often find yourself backtracking through a level to get to a warp point and return to Nexus in order to make a purchase before you are temporarily removed from the gene pool.

The backtracking is necessary because, when you die, you're taken back to the beginning of the section you were in. You also are left in your "phantom form," which sports a reduced amount of health than your character's physical body would. Finally, you'll also lose all the souls you've managed to accumulate up to that point. If you can fight your way back to the spot that you died and touch the bloodstain you left behind, you can regain some of the souls you lost. If you die three times before you get to it, though, the souls are lost for good. The only way to regain your physical form is by winning a boss battle, which is never an easy task.

In most cases, this would be maddening. But there is never a dull moment during this constant trial-and-error gameplay. Enemies are quite varied throughout levels: even though they look the same, they'll use different tactics and weapons, which means that you have to adjust your play style accordingly. While the bastard sword might be useful for crowd control on an open field, reduced numbers in tighter spaces might require something smaller and faster like an assassin's dagger.

Characters will eventually learn how to use magic and gain new skills, which deepens the gameplay experience significantly. Up to that point, though, players have to be extremely cautious while they creep through ruins and try not to become dinner for the next thing that goes bump in the night. It's often a nerve-wracking experience, checking every shadow and rounding corners as carefully as possible, hoping against hope that you won't be caught off-guard while you continue to inch through the world.

Part of Demon's Souls eeriness is also due to some great production decisions. Visually, the unease stems from each level's epic scale and the dreary coloring, but it's the audio that really manages to pull this off. There's practically no music to be heard as you go through a level, which makes every piece of background noise all the more noticeable. Like Hitchcock believed: things become rather intimidating when music isn't popping in to regularly remind the audience that what they're watching isn't real.

Finally, the title's online mechanic is unlike anything you are likely to experience in another game. The game will automatically connect to the PSN when you start it up, and players can indirectly contact each other by leaving messages throughout the world offering tips, hints, or warnings about upcoming obstacles. Later on, you'll gain the ability to travel into other players' games and either help or hunt them, depending on how you've progressed your character.

Your actions will actually affect the way the world works for others: if you choose to help other players, aiding them on a difficult quest or battle, the Character Tendency of the world will shift towards a white setting, meaning the game is easier and enemies aren't as tough. Hunting other players down, killing them, and stealing their souls, on the other hand, shifts the world towards a black setting and makes enemies a lot tougher. While you can put out a message asking other players for help, the events when others come into your world to hunt you down is random, so you'll constantly be on your toes for new threats after a certain point in the game's story.

Demon Souls is unlike any other RPG you're likely to play. While there are plenty of elements from other titles in the game, this title is so difficult, stylish, and incorporates enough original ideas that it manages to stand apart from — and well above — its competitors. Unfortunately, this challenge and depth is likely to turn off a number of gamers who prefer something easier. If you're willing to stick with this, though, Demon Souls will provide you with one of the greatest RPG experiences on the PS3.

Verdict: Buy