2. The Gameplay
There is a lot of fighting in Demon's Souls. A lot. And it's all assigned to the trigger buttons. L1 raises your shield. R1 swings or fires your weapon of choice. And R2 unleashes a heavy attack that'll almost certainly deplete the stamina bar of all but the mightiest of heroes. That's it... all there is to it. But it never gets old, never gets repetitive, and it never, ever gets boring, either. In those three single buttons there are a wealth of tactics to be found and utilized that rely as much on weapon choice as they do on what you're up against, how many of them there are, and how brave you're feeling at the time. You'll spend much of Demon's Souls crawling through the dankest of dungeons with your shield firmly pressed against your chest, waiting for something to lunge out of the black, screaming at the top of its rotten lungs.... and when the beasts come, each one has to be handled differently. Will a flurry of quick blows finish them off? Do you have enough oomph left in your tired arms to bring them down in one almighty blow? Do you need to turn and flee? The answer is almost always: "Yes, probably." The options are endless. Almost as endless, in fact, as the hours of pain and misery that will both fly by in the blink of your game-playing eye and drag on and on until you're squinting at the TV, realizing that two weeks have gone by and you still haven't managed to fell the ridiculous spider in Stonefang Tunnel. And that brings us nicely to my top reason why gamers everywhere should at least try Demon's Souls once.