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ThornBrain
Jan 25, 2011

Hi. I forgot your name. Whatever.
My... point is...
Hi. Your head's on fire.


Demon's Souls is a cult-classic Action RPG by Japanese developers FROM Software. It was directed by Berserk fan Hidetaka Miyazaki and takes inspiration from FROM's older franchise King's Field. You're most likely more familiar with its spiritual successors, Dark Souls and Bloodborne, or its remake Dark Souls III. :v:

Demon's Souls is a Japanese take on the Western RPG. In a break from the usual frenetic pace of most action games, Demon's Souls doesn't like when you rush into combat willy nilly. The game demands a slower, more methodical pace where you carefully take in your surroundings and learn how to survive an area long enough to reach the boss. Killing enemies nets you souls, which you can cash in to increase your stats or upgrade your weapons, but if you die, you lose your souls in a bloodsplatter on the ground that you must survive long enough to recover, lest you die again before you reach them and lose them forever.
To mitigate this somewhat, the game includes creative spins on online cooperative play: players can leave messages on the ground to warn other players of traps, enemies, or a hidden item, but most often it's to simply ask you to rate the message so they can get health back. You can also summon other players into your world as spirits to aid you, or vice versa, which benefits both players as the guest also earns souls from enemies. However, there's also the possibility of players invading your world to kill you instead.
The difficulty is punishing, you will die a lot, and the game relishes in killing you.
This turned many a gamer off early on, but those who stuck with it found a gorgeously grotesque series of worlds dripping with dark atmosphere and ghoulies to stab in the rear end. It's an old-school game design philosophy that manages to be rewarding with every hernia-inducing victory, and it helped the game go from an obscure, awkwardly translated import to one of the PS3's most iconic sleeper hits. Even despite its age and the multiple gameplay improvements implemented by its successors, Demon's Souls still remains a fresh and interesting dive into the futility of life.

The story is such:
The Kingdom of Boletaria has been engulfed by the Deep Fog. King Allant XII's greedy use of an ancient, dark ritual to channel the power of souls has awoken the Old One, a giant tree slug living underneath the mountain temple The Nexus. With the Old One comes demons, death, and a whole lot of Allant's allies getting corrupted.
Wei Shen and King rise from the ashes of Travis's Sleeping Dogs LP to brave the Deep Fog and save Boletaria... and promptly get killed in the process. Now they are bound to the Nexus and must kill the many demons across five worlds, make their souls their own, and beckon the Old One either back to sleep or to their will...


--About the Co-op LP--
BigTUnit1 is my co-op partner for Parts 1-11, and he had to step down afterward. YamiNoSenshi takes over on Part 12.

Yami and I are reasonably experienced at the game and have beaten it a few times. Travis played it when it came out for about ten minutes and then never touched it again. Thus I serve as the informative one against Travis as the new guy experiencing everything for the first time. With Yami, he and I are both the knowledgeable types who still die to every little stupid reason.
I play Wei Shen as a dex build Thief with secondary magic, while Travis and Yami play King as a strength build with secondary faith. That way we can show off the majority of weapons and spells in the game. We'll be showing off as much of the game as we can, save for maybe world tendency.
Both Travis/Yami and I will be recording our gameplay. Most often one of us will be summoned into the other's world, but there will also be cases where we simply play the same level at the same time, and one's footage will either be periodically overlayed onto the other's, or the POV will swap between us if one gets ahead of the other or has something more interesting going on.

We didn't get invaded nearly as much as we wanted to, but there's a bit of fun with that in the Tower of Latria.

It's been done
Yes, TheWanderingNewbie also did a co-op LP of this game with Taoto, but that was at NG+4, while this is at the base NG, and Taoto didn't also record footage. Plus this is only the first installment in a possible Co-op LP series of the Soulsborne games.


:siren:THREAD RULES:siren:
  • Keep story or item spoilers tagged. This isn't Dark Souls's level of vague storytelling, nor is it an especially complex story, but at least tag until we've addressed in the LP itself what it is you want to discuss.
  • If we're leveling our characters and weapons in a way that might be a hindrance in showing something off, that's one thing, but we don't care if you think we're generally "doing it wrong". If you're one of these cunts nobody likes, leave it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



With BigTUnit1

Tutorial


Boletaria Castle 1-1




Shrine of Storms 4-1



Stonefang Tunnel 2-1



Tower of Latria 3-1




Tower of Latria 3-2 (Pre-Boss)



With YamiNoSenshi

Valley of Defilement 5-1


Shrine of Storms 4-2



Stonefang Tunnel 2-2


Stonefang Tunnel 2-3


Tower of Latria 3-2 (Boss)


Boletaria Castle 1-2


Valley of Defilement 5-2


Valley of Defilement 5-2 & 5-3


Shrine of Storms 4-3 & Tower of Latria 3-3


Boletaria Castle 1-3 & 1-1 Pure White World Tendency


Boletaria Castle 1-4 & Mausoleum


The End - Good and Evil

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ThornBrain fucked around with this message at 23:26 on May 12, 2017

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Judge Tesla
Oct 29, 2011

:frogsiren:
Though later games have made vast improvements over Demon's Souls, you have to admit that this game does things that no other game in the Souls (and Bloodborne) series does, maybe its just down to the fact that this is the First in the franchise so it get more of a free ride.

I personally think only Bloodborne comes close to capturing this game's atmosphere and style.

Probottt
Dec 15, 2013
Demon's Souls is one of those games that I'm always interested to see LP's of. I basically have Dark Soul ingrained into my mind but Demon's Souls seems to have its' own themes and "feel" if that makes sense. Will be following this one with interest.

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Oh you darn contrarian hipsters :allears:

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
Yeah alright then

frozentreasure
Nov 13, 2012

~
People who say Demon's Souls is the real hard one probably started with it and moved on to Dark Souls, where almost all of the systems were the same.

And yes, you do indeed get extra souls for super murdering an enemy.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

frozentreasure posted:

People who say Demon's Souls is the real hard one probably started with it and moved on to Dark Souls, where almost all of the systems were the same.

And yes, you do indeed get extra souls for super murdering an enemy.

I'd argue DeS is the hardest pre-BB Soulsborne game, as someone who played it after DS1. It just so happens to also be the game with the largest number of ways you can completely cheese the difficulty. Magic, bow, big heavy weapons, polearms, remaining in body form, Vit gouging, probably others I'm forgetting.

KeiraWalker
Sep 5, 2011

Me? Don't worry about me...
Grimey Drawer
Strawhat LPing Demon's Souls? Where do I sign up?! This is going to be a great watch. Looking the hell forward to it, gentlemen. :jerky:

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
So who is King anyway and is Travis going to stop doing that voice because uuuh

Spudd
Nov 27, 2007

Protect children from "Safe Schools" social engineering. Shame!

Crane Fist posted:

So who is King anyway and is Travis going to stop doing that voice because uuuh

He mentions it in the video

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

Spudd posted:

He mentions it in the video

Yeah but obviously I missed it and I'm not going to watch the whole video again to find out whether Travis is going to stop doing a real weird black guy impression

Highwang
Nov 7, 2013

No Pineapple?
No Thank You!

Crane Fist posted:

So who is King anyway and is Travis going to stop doing that voice because uuuh

Old gag from their Sleeping Dogs LP. King was a NPC in that which became a long-running joke.

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Spudd posted:

He mentions it in the video

Would you tell us what he said for a burger?

Azoth
Feb 29, 2016

RareAcumen posted:

Would you tell us what he said for a burger?

That he won't keep doing it.

George
Nov 27, 2004

No love for your made-up things.

Crane Fist posted:

Yeah but obviously I missed it and I'm not going to watch the whole video again to find out whether Travis is going to stop doing a real weird black guy impression

He said he'd stop, but then it kept happening. It would be super amazing if he cut this poo poo out forever and ever.

George fucked around with this message at 21:29 on May 21, 2016

SgtSteel91
Oct 21, 2010

If it's a coop LP I kind of hope you could fight each other when it comes to the Old Monk

wargames
Mar 16, 2008

official yospos cat censor
will you have a punchy fist coop partner?

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Azoth posted:

That he won't keep doing it.

Ah, I see. Well you get the burger then! :burger:

George posted:

He said he'd stop, but then it kept happening. It would be super amazing if he cut this poo poo out forever and ever.

Yeah, they're a funny group but I would never suggest advertising an LP based on a running gag being a thing for the entire thing. If it happens every now and then, sure, but it's the same as the TeamFourStar playing games as 'character' thing in that I'm certainly not gonna watch that.

George
Nov 27, 2004

No love for your made-up things.
I really enjoyed their Grimrock 2 LP, so I know they can do it right.

EponymousMrYar
Jan 4, 2015

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.
I knew it would happen so I'm cool with it.

'Which way is Wei' is the level on what I was expecting :allears:

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




EponymousMrYar posted:

I knew it would happen so I'm cool with it.

'Which way is Wei' is the level on what I was expecting :allears:

I personally don't mind it, it's just the way it's advertised in the title made me think that'd be how the LP would go 100% of the time. Every once in a while is fine. I'm sure Vycevoice saying 'Moonstone cannon' still slips in every now and then too.

King, don't lose you Wei.

BigTUnit1
Jul 10, 2012

Well seeing as everyone is literally telling me that the vocal impression of King from Sleeping Dogs is bad, I'll stop. Can't make any promises that I might unconsciously do it on a rare occasion seeing as I tend to kind of BE the characters when I play them but I'll try. Also since we recorded a good chunk of it in one run, I can't say I remember doing it a whole lot the more we played. Pretty sure I get distracted flinging myself against the red eye knight to worry about any form of wakka-wakka level goofiness.

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




BigTUnit1 posted:

Well seeing as everyone is literally telling me that the vocal impression of King from Sleeping Dogs is bad, I'll stop. Can't make any promises that I might unconsciously do it on a rare occasion seeing as I tend to kind of BE the characters when I play them but I'll try. Also since we recorded a good chunk of it in one run, I can't say I remember doing it a whole lot the more we played. Pretty sure I get distracted flinging myself against the red eye knight to worry about any form of wakka-wakka level goofiness.

It's fine, do it whenever, I just don't want the LP to be a voice acted roleplay 80% of the time. Every now and then is cool, the title just didn't set a good precedent.

ThornBrain
Jan 25, 2011

Hi. I forgot your name. Whatever.
My... point is...
Hi. Your head's on fire.


We have yet to be able to enter each other's worlds, so all of 1-1 (parts 2 through 4) will be swapping between our POVs.

KeiraWalker
Sep 5, 2011

Me? Don't worry about me...
Grimey Drawer
I half expected Travis to die to that blue-eyed knight. He can wreck your poo poo this early in the game. Granted, the red-eyed knight is significantly more of a threat, but he's not meant for you to deal with at this point anyway. He's just kind of there, something to make the player take notice of the area he's in.

SWMadness
Jul 16, 2011

Excellent.
Man it's been ages since I watched Squint's LP of Demon's Souls, this seems like a fun gimmick and I can't wait for more videos.

RasterPunk
Aug 24, 2015

Digressing, now that I'm seeing more interest in Demon's Souls it'd be neat to eventually see even more people playing King's Field, Eternal Ring, Shadow Tower, Armored Core, and Metal Wolf Chaos. Despite From Software rekindling the fire that Capcom and Konami once kept going, they were always around.

Shadow Tower being the most interesting; it's almost survival horror rules with fragile weapons feeling similar to Resident Evil's limited ammo.

With that said I look forward to brushing up on some Demon's Souls tales in this LP.

RasterPunk fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jun 1, 2016

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFMwgOfdG_M&t=7s

ThornBrain
Jan 25, 2011

Hi. I forgot your name. Whatever.
My... point is...
Hi. Your head's on fire.


Forgot to upload this yesterday, and then caught a few editing mistakes I needed to fix anyway.
We take on the Red Eye Knight early and kick his rear end. After he repeatedly kicks ours. Then we save a shimmering idiot.

KeiraWalker
Sep 5, 2011

Me? Don't worry about me...
Grimey Drawer
If I remember correctly, the red-eyed knight never respawns. It's one of the only enemies in the game that doesn't.

frozentreasure
Nov 13, 2012

~
Nah, Red Knights respawn the same as everything else.

Only named characters/their black phantoms, crystal lizards kind of, and anything that drops a non-standard soul (bosses, primeval demons, dragons, vanguards) don't respawn.

Also, Thorn, the message about jumping off near Ostrava is referring to the very contextual ability to climb up waist-high ledges. You can just push forward at that wall and climb over to Ostrava.

frozentreasure fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Jun 5, 2016

ThornBrain
Jan 25, 2011

Hi. I forgot your name. Whatever.
My... point is...
Hi. Your head's on fire.

frozentreasure posted:

Also, Thorn, the message about jumping off near Ostrava is referring to the very contextual ability to climb up waist-high ledges. You can just push forward at that wall and climb over to Ostrava.

Ah. I knew that was a mechanic in later parts of Boletaria. I never put together it would be there too. I just always rolled off like every phantom player I've ever seen in that area.

Highwang
Nov 7, 2013

No Pineapple?
No Thank You!
This update:

Molly Millions
Jan 27, 2011

It's not like bullshit, more like poetry.
Why did people come into a BigTUnit1 thread and complain about him doing voices? That is absolutely baffling to me.

KeiraWalker
Sep 5, 2011

Me? Don't worry about me...
Grimey Drawer

frozentreasure posted:

Nah, Red Knights respawn the same as everything else.

I stand corrected. For some reason I thought that one in particular didn't respawn, but it has been quite a while since I played through the game.

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Molly Millions posted:

Why did people come into a BigTUnit1 thread and complain about him doing voices? That is absolutely baffling to me.

Well, I personally complained because I just wanted to be sure it's not going to be a full LP like that. Seems a bit too roleplay-ish for me.

I like the jokes and stuff, I just don't want it to be the entire LP 100% of the time. Like how I wouldn't want to watch slowbeef or Diabetus do a Metroid LP that was just Ridley voice all the time.

BigTUnit1
Jul 10, 2012

Molly Millions posted:

Why did people come into a BigTUnit1 thread and complain about him doing voices? That is absolutely baffling to me.

Its pretty much the package deal when it comes to me, as part of my income comes from my ability to do that.

That or say jokes that only logically make sense to me.

...what do they keep me around for again?

bman in 2288
Apr 21, 2010

BigTUnit1 posted:

Its pretty much the package deal when it comes to me, as part of my income comes from my ability to do that.

That or say jokes that only logically make sense to me.

...what do they keep me around for again?

You're the great glue that keeps it all together.

One could even say you were the... King of glue.

George
Nov 27, 2004

No love for your made-up things.
I just don't think it was funny.

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RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




BigTUnit1 posted:

Its pretty much the package deal when it comes to me, as part of my income comes from my ability to do that.

That or say jokes that only logically make sense to me.

...what do they keep me around for again?

Ha! Good question!

...

Moonstone Cannon.

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