Has anyone played it? It's a action RPG for the PS3. For EU and NA it's being released in a few months time and has been out in Japan and China since February. The Chinese version has the option to change text and lanuage to English, which I picked up a few weeks ago. The closest comparison I can make is a mix between Baldurs Gate and Elder Scrolls IV. You start with being able to customize your character's apperance and pick one out of ten character classes. These range from the usual western RPG classes like thief, knight, soldier, barbarian and hunter. Picking a class doesn't really determine much aside from what stats you start with, since everything in the game is usuable to each class as long as the character reaches the weapon/armour requirement.
The story of the game isn't overly inthralling. A King seeking to better his Kingdom used the power of souls to make things all right and nice, and that worked for a while. Until the King unwittingly awakened the Old One (the Big Bad of the game) and a fog settled over the Kingdom, with it came soul devouring demons. The Kingdom being pretty much fucked, rightly became a large pissing contest for whomever wanted to venture into the god forsaken land and become its savior. Only thing is a lot of people have tried this and have never returned. This is where your character steps up to the plate and is given the choice to be the Shining Knight, to make things right and nice again.
Souls are a major part of the game. Kill a demon/human and you get so-many souls. These can be used for basically everything. Boosting stats, buying/repairing/upgrading weapons and learning magic.
The major thing about this game is that it's hard. Really goddamn frustatingly hard. Because you will die, then you'll die some more after you've died 10 times only to think you've got shit sorted out only to die some more after all of that. When you recieve souls they are kept on you throughout the game. If you die though, a bloodstain is left in the place you died and you'll be teleported back to the nearest level entry. If you were a fully living human before facing death you will become a wandering soul with your HP reduced to 75% of what it normally is and find that all the souls that you had are now with the great big bloodstain that you now have to travel back to. If you die before you can get to your bloodstain your soul count will be bought back down to zero. Making it all the much annoying when you're a few strides away from where you died only to be cut down again by what originally killed you.
Being a fully living human doesn't mean much, apart from having 100% HP. Because the only ways to resurect yourself is to kill a level boss or use a rare resurection ore you will mostly spend the game as a wandering soul. The game has a few neat online features. Such as leaving notes around the place for players to take heed of something coming up that may be difficult, hailing other players into your game to help you out if you're having throuble, play co-op with two other players and even invade players world and be a right dick by stalking them and collecting their souls.
This is a really fun game, the dying becomes so much of a common occurance that it just becomes apart of the game and being able to pick up any weapon/armour that any character can use is a great way of not making the gameplay feel narrowed.
