Demon's Souls is a hard game. It is an unforgiving game. At least that is the traditional and common stand point. Death in Demon's Souls is unforgiving of mistakes and punishing of non-careful gaming. But, I've found that death in Demon's Souls is used as more of a mechanic of the game in order to teach you how horribly awful you treated that last enemy. Most gamers that I have watched playing this (no matter how "good" or "bad" at games they are) do not play with as much caution or foresight that I feel is needed. This increases the difficulty of the game tenfold. The game to me is more forgiving than the old "hardcore" games with extreme difficulty such as Contra or the original few Castlevania games (especially Simon's Quest). This is admittedly due somewhat to those games' tendency towards very difficult and unexplained puzzles. But that's why I chose to mention them. Demon's Souls has no unexplained enemies. What you see them do is all they can do. I also mentioned Contra because of the one-hit death mechanic. Demon's Souls is much easier than that because it is so easy to get hit.
This is not to say that Demon's Souls is an easy game. But only that it is easier than current gamers want to admit. Current gamers are flooded with a multitude of very good games to play. These games are compelling and gorgeous, but they are not difficult in a traditional sense. Some have said that Demon's Souls makes you a better gamer, but I tend to disagree. I think that Demon's Souls makes you an older gamer. Older in the sense that you become a more traditional hardcore gamer that is willing to run his or her head into a wall for a while in order to finally find the solution to the problem. Newer gamers are unused to having to fend for themselves in so straightforward a way.
Many have posited that the pull of Demon's Souls is the pull of a game that makes you feel better about yourself when you do well. It makes you feel better to have beaten it, because it is hard. I think that it makes you feel better because you are becoming better at playing games. Demon's Souls not only teaches from the school of hard knocks, but teaches us to be better at the game the we're playing. It teaches different skills and, more importantly, a different mentality in gaming than, say, Call of Duty. I would say that Demon's Souls in not a very difficult game in the right mentality. If approached from the right way, the game is not hard, but merely taxing. By that, I mean that it becomes a long game. When death is inevitable and unavoidable, why punish yourself for dying? It is a learning situation and mainly shows us what not to do. If death inside the game is a guarantee when faced with something that you haven't seen before, why is it considered hard? Say that I die four times on average when faced with an enemy that I have never seen before; after those four deaths, I will theoretically never die to that enemy again. Why is this hard? Is the skill of learning an enemies attack patterns and where and when to attack so difficult? I believe that the amount of deaths in Demon's Souls is merely game lengthening rather than truly difficult. I believe this because after you have defeated an enemy five times, I've almost never seen myself or any of the people that I've watched play this game die to that enemy except by acts of extreme stupidity.
Then does this make a difficult game? The Demon's Souls team wanted three things that would return to the core of why a game is fun: challenge, discovery, and accomplishment. Takeshi Kajii, the producer of the game, said that, "People commonly say Demon's Souls is hard because of this, but we never made the difficulty needlessly high for the sake of being hard, nor did we intend for it to be a selling point." Frequent deaths may be frustrating, but does it make it a difficult game? I would say that the difficulty of the game is in the approach. If I know and accept that I will die x times in this level and then do, I won't be frustrated because I already knew that I would die. People may argue that it is hard to regain your blood stain or that the game becomes harder after you die. These are both partially true, but if you are already a soul, what is the downside to death? I would say nothing. If a player dies, then they should be able to make it back to their blood stain because they have already learned about the enemies preceding it. The game becomes easier and easier to progress towards your death point because your knowledge base about the enemies increases.
Progress in this game is very easily felt. Playing the first level again on my second playthrough, I never died. In fact, in my second playthrough, I died a total of three times. This is partially because I knew what to avoid and partially because I already knew the attacks and timing of all the enemies. "Progress" and "advancement" whether in terms of the player's skill or the character's relative skill is incredibly important in a game. This is partially why I found Borderlands so enjoyable. The narrative was nice the first time through, but during the second playthrough, I found myself just wanting to get newer and better equipment. After I reached level fifty (the highest attainable) I continued to play because I enjoyed getting newer and better equipment. One of my friends pointed out repeatedly that there was no real point in continuing my fool's errand quest of making my character better because I could already beat the game. I argued that that wasn't the point. The draw of the game was not to truly "beat" it, but rather the fun of advancement. Demon's Souls really draws the player into the game with the concept of progress.
This all is not to say that Demon's Souls was an easy game, but rather to open eyes and discussion about what makes a game difficult. Is it the amount of times you die? Is it the playskill required? I would say that a game is difficult for the amount of time that it takes to become proficient at it. For example, Demon's Souls was a fairly difficult game, while Borderlands was fairly easy. Diablo is very easy while Starcraft is very hard.
I would love comments or e-mails of opinions, and if you would like more perspective on the topic of difficulty as it relates to Demon's Souls, please check out Leigh Alexander's piece for Kotaku, In Praise of Hard Games.
Thanks for reading.
