[This post contains spoilers for the tutorial and first section of the first world of Demon's Souls]

This face was the face of my introduction to Demon’s Souls. Then I made him normal again and we got on well.

Life One, Soul One
I took my more normal character and walked through the tutorial, adhering to the various concise messages plastered throughout. I walked, I rolled, I sprinted, I thrust, I parried and riposted. Then I learned about strong attacks and I enjoyed running up to various enemies and strong attacking them in the face. I then laughed as they crumbled to the ground. I felt strong and in charge of this video game. I knew the score. I was then ushered into a room with the biggest, scariest demon ever and he killed me with what I assume was actually a fairly cordial hand shake gone wrong. Or a violent paw swipe. This was the end of what the game considered to be my tutorial for Demon’s Souls.

Soul Two
I was resurrected in a chamber in soul form in “The Nexus” (game hub). I was glowing and half of my health was inaccessible. I was not sure whether or not I failed the tutorial or if my death at the hands of mega-paw was intentional. I still don’t know, but I like that. I wandered around the Nexus for a bit, reading what messages the game had spread around for what I presumed to be a running tutorial and introduction to the world. Some of these messages had some awkward wording and mysterious positioning, but I chalked this up to a quirky level designer convention.

When I had enough of the Nexus, I tried to figure out what the first “level” was. A message told me that the obelisk I happened to be standing near was good for beginners, so I entered that and was transported to a bridge near the front gate of an enormous castle. I saw transparent white auras running around the area, engaging in air fighting. After watching these auras for a while, I realized that these were my game’s representations of other human players in these area. Watching these player ghosts flail about I was able to figure out where enemies were coming from, roughly how many the ghost was fighting, and where I could go from my current position. I fought through the enemies in my starting area and proceeded along the most readily-visible trails through the beginning of this area.

As I walked through, I noticed some blood splatters every so often. When I activated one, I saw a red aura appear and enact a set of actions before, ultimately, disappearing around a corner I hadn’t gone to yet. I decided to follow this ghost, as I was working off the assumption that it was another player guiding my way. When I rounded the corner, a group of enemies jumped me and beat me to a pulp. Their initial attack was so powerful that it drained most of my health, and the one-two combo attack the duo of enemies had going never gave me a chance to get off a counter-attack. It was around this point when I remembered a quote from Atlus: Demon’s Souls has the goal of remedying all of the bad RPG habits that players have gotten used to over the years. The game has the goal of enforcing the full set of possible player interactions: defending, parrying, evading, attacking, and counter-attacking. If players attempt to get through areas solely by hacking-and-slashing, they will die.

This was the first step in my RPG rehabilitation.

Soul Three
Taking my new knowledge of this game and working off of my assumption that the white ghosts were active players in my area, I now decided that the red ghosts were “replays” of other players who died in this given area. When I saw a white ghost, I was likely watching a player experiencing the same part of the level in the same way I am: blind to what is going to happen when moving to the next room. Now, though, I can activate a red ghost and properly determine what not to do. And when I got back to where Soul One died, I watched the red ghost more carefully, prepared for the enemy ambush, and quickly dispatched them with my systematic use of a parry-riposte and then a defend pose into a strong attack on baddie number two.

Then I realized that this was the first time the game didn’t have a message in the area to warn me about an imminent ambush. Crafty little game, I thought, it’s ramping up the difficulty slowly.

I proceeded through a bit more of the level and eventually came to a message that said “Trap!” I looked around the area and noticed nothing of the sorts. It was simply a hallway with no triggers anywhere or anything. The message had a number attached to it, 16, which I assumed meant it was for a certain difficulty level or for a certain ordered play-through of the area. I kept walking assuming the game screwed up. Moments later, I heard a “Clink” and a bunch of iron spheres fell out of a chute in the ceiling, traveled a small distance, and knocked my character on his ass. I didn’t die in this scenario, I just lost most of my health. It was a hilarious moment to me. I wasn’t sure if the game tricked me or if I’m completely blind. Neither was really out of the question.

I then was thinking about what strange placement that particular message had in the level. I went looking around at a few other messages in the area and discovered they all had different numbers attached to them. I messed around with my controller to see if there were any buttons I hadn’t really used at the time and, eventually, discovered that the SELECT button gave me the option to “Write a Message” or “Recommend a Message.” This was when I discovered that all of these messages I had been reading throughout the level were, most likely, all created by other players who learned the level’s tricks the hard way.

Huh. Clever.

I healed my character up and progressed a bit further in the level. I ended up on a narrow walkway on the outer edge of one of the castle walls. It had no barrier, so I clung to the castle wall as I carefully moved towards the door at the other end of the walkway. I came upon a blood splatter, activated it, and then watched the red ghost as he walked as carefully up the walkway as I did. He eventually struck an attack pose and then moved backwards (as if pushed) and fell off the edge of the walkway. “Haha, moron fell down,” I said aloud to my cat who was watching the game. Or sleeping. Probably watching, though. I finally made my way to the doorway and an enemy jumped out at me. I parried, as I was working off the assumption that something made that red ghost I watched earlier strike an attack pose on the walkway. I failed my counter-attack, though, and the enemy pushed me back. I didn’t feel comfortable at such close-range, so I moved backwards a bit to give myself a bit more room to operate — Oh, okay. So, I just fell to my death. Okay.

Sorry random gamer, I didn’t mean to laugh at your replay. The more you know, and all. Onward we go, Soul Four.