Years ago, I remember watching my friend play Demon's Souls once while we were hanging out at his place. As anyone who is familiar with the game and the entire SoulsBorne series can attest to, I got used to the words "YOU DIED" flashing on screen over and over again. I also clearly remember thinking to myself "How in the world can anyone find this fun?" Afterall, I've been known to curse, yell and contemplate chucking my controller against a wall after one too many deaths in a game, yet this is a game seemingly designed by sado-masochists doing everything in their power to make you suffer.

Something else I remember thinking at the time? "I would never play these kinds of games. They're just not my kind of thing."

Fast forward a few years to now, and i have since watched the Game Grumps Bloodborne playthrough, and am currently watching their Dark Souls 3 playthrough, which was enough to make me go back on my word and ask my friend if I could borrow his copy of Demon's Souls.

And now, over a week and 60+ hours of gameplay later, I can safely say I've cut my teeth on the Souls series and ready to give the rest of the games a shot. Well... after I play a few less miserable games first that is, but that's besides the point!

Anyway, so the Souls games have a reputation for being immensely difficult, leading to countless number of deaths one after the other. Which is true, considering I'm pretty sure if I saw the words "YOU DIED" flash on screen one more time, I would have started seeing it in my sleep. However, whereas in most games this would lead to frustration and anger (which it does at times, but I'll get to that in a minute), there are several things working in Demon's Souls favor that helps mitigate this frustrations.

1) It almost never feels unfair.

A lot of times, losing a life in a game or even getting a game over can feel really unfair. The controls are unresponsive, you slip and fall into a pit, or the game inexplicable decides to crank up the difficult curve without warning, pitting you up against a boss leagues above anything you've faced up to that point, or expecting you to complete a challenge with pin-point accuracy in a time limit that gives you only the tiniest margin for error.

In Demon's Souls however, the difficult is established from the offset when, at the end of the tutorial, you are mercilessly cut down without resistance by the Vanguard in one shot. Even if by sheer skill you defeat it, you end up dying anyway to a cutscene. Plus, the game doesn't pause like most game when you access the menu to swap out equipment, so unless you know an area is safe, stopping to rest can quickly lead to you getting struck from behind.

Playing through the game, you'll be weary of every corner, slowly inching your way just waiting for something to pop out at you. This is not a game you can rush in and expect to mow down enemies willy-nilly, since that is the quickest way to add yet another death to the tally. No, Demon's Souls instead favors strategic planning, learning how to face each enemy and adapting to suit that, timely dodges and not keeping your shield up at all times but instead only when you need it. Because of this, most deaths aren't attributed to the game cheating, but purely due to your mistakes.

Note however that I said 'almost", because there are still a few moments where it feels like the game was unfairly stacked against me compared to the rest of the game. One of my most memorable moments in fact wasn't due to my triumph, but to my failure because of this unfairness.

I was up against the boss of World 3-2, The Maneater, considered by many players to be the hardest boss in the entire game and the very rare boss that feels unfair for a multitude of reason, not the least of which is he's the only boss to be fought in an open arena, meaning it is very easy for him to knock you right off the edge into a bottomless chasm, killing you instantly. Anyway, so after a half dozen attempts, I was the closest I'd ever gotten. My heart was racing, my palms were sweating, my adrenaline was pumping and I had Maneaters health down to 20%. Plus I also had the spell "Second Chance" active, which would have instantly revived me with half health if he ever managed to do so. For a brief moment, I got hopeful that I would finally win.

Big mistake. Seconds later, I was knocked right off the stage, letting out a cry of pure anguish as my character plummeted to his end.

2) It challenges you to get better.

For the most part, death is a slap on the wrist. Which it needs to be a given considering how often it'll happen. You'll die, get greeted to the "You Died" message and then get sent right back to the start of the level, all the enemies respawned and ready to go. The only real punishment is the loss of your souls.

Souls are everything in this game. They're used to buy items, repair your equipment, pay to upgrade your stuff and what you'll need to level up your stats.

I guess you could say they're the "soul" currency of Demon's Souls. (Sans would be proud!)

However, your souls aren't gone forever when you die. Not yet anyway. Whenever you die, you leave behind a bloodstain that shows your newest demise. If you manage to get back to the bloodstain without dying, you can reclaim your souls. Should you die again though, then they're gone for good.

In this regard, the game is actively challenging you, basically saying "Yeah, I know you died again, but do you think you're good enough to get back there again?" It encourages you to learn from your mistakes and actively improve, otherwise you lose out on possibly several levels worth of souls.

3) It's expected you'll die

In many games, dying breaks the flow of the game, especially if you're greeted to a Game Over screen and booted back to the main menu afterwards. In the Souls games though, dying again and again is part of the game, as you slowly inch your way through the level, learning its tricks and traps and (hopefully) getting better and better each time. Not only that, you can pick which level to take on, so if you're having trouble with one, you can leave it for later and take on another one instead.

Plus, there are plenty of ways to make the game slightly easier, such as forging weapons, or using magic. Two of the most useful spells I found were the previous mentioned Second Chance and Evacuate, which allows you to escape a level with all your souls, making grinding much easier.

However, despite all that, this game is not without its problems.

1) Impossible to 100% on a single playthrough.

This is a minor nitpick, but if you're a completionist like me, then it may bug you to know you can never get everything in this game on your first run. See, every time you beat a boss, you get its Demon's Soul. These souls can either be spent to give a huge amount of souls, or more likely you can either use it to forge a special weapon or learn more magic spells.

Problem is that more than a few Demon Souls have multiple uses, meaning you have to pick and choose between either making a sweet weapon, or learning a magic spell. The worst is the Spider Demon Soul, which can either be used to forge a bow that grants fire damage to all arrows, or choose to learn one of two different magic spells. Even if you'r trying to learn all the magic, it'll take at least two playthroughs to do so. Which is made even worse by...

2) World/Character Tendency

By performing certain actions in this game, the "Tendency" shifts in both the world and your character from Neutral, to Pure White or Pure Black. This Tendency affects things like the amount of health enemies have, what items drop more frequently and even block off certain areas and equipment that require a certain Tendency to reach.

However, while it is really easy to shift to Pure Black Tendency, it it far more difficult to shift to Pure White, which blocks you from getting some of the best weapons and armors. One of the only ways to shift to White is to kill a boss, but should you run out of bosses and not have reached Pure White yet, then you're S.O.L.

3) Penalties between Soul and Body Form.

Whenever you die, you respawn as a spirit, which allows you to deal slightly more damage, take less damage from falling, quiets your footsteps to allow for more stealth kills and doesn't affect your World Tendency. You regain your body either after defeating a boss, or by using a limited item. Chances are, unless you're really good, you'll be spending majority of the game in Soul Form.

The problem is that Soul Form has a steep penalty of cutting your current health total in half. So if, say, you have 750 health normally, then in Soul Form your max health is now 375, in a game where enemies can inflict hundreds of points of damage in one shot. Luckily, you hopefully find a ring called the Cling Ring in the first level, which mitigates this penalty to only losing about a quarter of your health. However, that wastes one of the two rings slots, so you either have to choose between having more health, or equipping multiple rings.

Worse, dying in body form shifts your World Tendency to Black, which makes enemies harder and harder and can make it impossible to get anything needing a White Tendency. (It used to be dying at all shifted Tendency before a patch if you can believe that!)

4) The stupid item burden

Being based on more old school RPGs like D&D, Demon's Souls has both an Equip Limit amount and a Carry Limit. These can be raised by leveing up your stats, and obviously determine what kind of equipment you can use at once, since if you go over 50%, your dodge roll becomes encumbered and slow and if you try and equip more than you can carry, you'll be forced to slowly waddle everywhere until you lessing the load.

That's not too bad, since it stops you from decking yourself out like The Juggernaut without the proper set up and I spent most of the game in heavy armor anyway so my roll was slow from the start, but the Item Burden is an entirely different story. Everything you keep in your bag from your armor, to your weapons, to your items, to your arrows has weight and it is far too easy to end up overloaded with stuff, needing you to run back and drop everything off at storage.

Worse though is if you should find an item that you can't pick up because of weight. You have to stand there and empty out your bags, since if you leave the world after checking the item, finding out it was too heavy to carry, but then not picking it up, it'll disappear forever. You could miss out on entire suits of armor because you couldn't carry them.

Even worse, you can't drop arrows! I can't tell you how many times I stood there, firing off dozens and dozens of arrows into the either in order to bring the weight limit down so I could pick up an item because everything else was too important to drop. This is so bad and was so unpopular with fans that every other game in the series after thus one ditched the inventory weight entirely, instead giving you a hammerspace inventory like most RPGs.

And, lastly...

5) The online components

The Souls series has an interesting online component. While playing, you'll periodically see ghostly images of other players on the same server, playing alongside you. You can also check their bloodstains to give a heads-up for danger and you'll see notes scattered throughout by players offering advice like what an enemy is weak to, traps ahead, or that a treasure is nearby. Unfortunately... not all of them are trustworthy, like messages telling you to jump off a cliff to reach treasure (which sometimes there is) only to plummet into a pit to your doom.

While in Body Form, you can also summon Blue Phantoms of players who put down a summon sign to help you through a level or boss, or even invade or be invaded by Black Phantoms out to ruin your day. However, likely due to the fact that I'm playing this game years after its release, none of these last two mechanics ever really mattered. I only ever encounter one Blue Phantom sign in the entire game and not once did I get invaded. I know that'll change once I get a chance to play Dark Souls, but it felt like I was missing out on a part of the game.

Watching The Game Grumps play Dark Souls 3 makes me realize how many things were improved to be less frustrating over the course of the series. Come Dark Souls, I'm playing a more nimble magic user, probably a Pyromancer.

Still, I was invested enough (or crazy/stubborn enough, take your pick) to out over 60 hours into Demon's Souls, so I obviously now understand the appeal to a series that prides itself on making you suffer. Hilariously, this game was published by "We-bottle-your-tears" Atlus, who also produce the equally as hard Shin Megami Tensei series. Coincidence? I think not!