Atlus finally released Demon's Souls for the US last week. It's one of those RPGs that beats you rather than you beat it, in a manner of speaking. You learn by dying and you die a lot. But the game has a lot of interesting and fun mechanics. Like when other people die their deaths are recorded and you can view their deaths to see what they were doing to get an idea of what not to do. It can also give you an idea of enemies in the area if you just see them drop from surprise. It is also fun to see those that go diving off ledges to their death.

But in addition to that you can also leave messages to people. They'll be on the ground and other people passing through the same areas as you can read them. You can be helpful or a jerk depending on your mood. So you can alert people to an ambush or leave hints to some puzzle or confusion. Sort of like a living walkthrough and people can recommend the hints which will then restore life back you to when it happens. Which is a nice plus to being helpful. If you don't want the help then you can just ignore them, but you'll probably get a little edge on things with the blood of the dead, you can turn that off though. So you can play completely free.

I haven't gotten too far into the game, but you can invade other people's games and if you wish hunt them down and kill them. The main reason you would want to do this, besides being evil, is when you die you come back in Soul Form. The Soul Form has less HP, but if you kill another player in soul form you can return to your living body. You can also join other people's games and provide assistance to them as well.

So there is a fun little balance between things.

Anyone else pick up this game? I got one shot'ed by the tutorial boss. Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Die a lot so far? If we're lucky we might be able to play together. I haven't done it yet, so I don't know how it all works.