I took Temple Knight as my character class; it seemed well-balanced in the armor and weapons department, the ability to heal was included, and attacking a demon-riven countryside seemed like something a Temple Knight would do.

Drawbacks: this character class has low luck, reducing the number of item drops. You live and die on item drops in this game, so that's a stat I'll have to pump.

Second is my main weapon. It's a halberd - a light one, more like a long-sticked light axe, suitable for one-hand-plus-shield use. The weapon itself is pretty deadly and allows for attacks in an arc, hitting multiple foes. But man, you find yourself in a narrow corridor with that halberd and you're in trouble. Sparks fly off the walls as you desperately swing and poke (or just get the hell out of dodge) your way toward a larger arena. At the end of last night I swapped for a winged spear, which doesn't have the sweep damage but does allow me to attack while my shield is up.

The fascinating thing about Demon's Souls isn't that it's hard in the classic sene. People keep saying that it's absurdly hard; that implies that progress amd individual encounters are difficult. The game's certainly challenging in that respect, but neither brutal nor unfair. Instead, it's the penalty for failure that makes Demon's Souls such an unforgiving old-skool slaughterfest. You start the game dead, and can't get back to life until you've cleared the first section of the first world. That took me about 4.5 hours. And the deeper in you go, the more dangerous things become, because if you die, you lose the souls (currency) you've picked up since you started and you begin back at the very start of the level. No checkpoints here. You can run to your corpse and pick those souls up (no one else can touch them), but if you die again on the way, the original souls are lost forever. Souls are used for purchasing goodies, leveling up, and trading for information. You get them by killing demons. So each step you take deeper into a haunted realm is one step further away from safety, and one step more you'll have to survive if you want to reach your body should the worst occur.

When you're dead, you're likely to stay dead for a while. Unlike other games, being dead in Demon's Souls isn't that big a deal; you just have half hit points (which IS a big deal). But you only become alive through a specific and hard-to-find magic item, or by killing a major demon (sub-bosses, not just scarier rank and file; again, hard when your HP is halved), or by helping or assassinating another playing in Phantom form. I haven't gotten into the phantom stuff yet, because I lack the requisite magic items, but it is a key part of the game.

The unusual multiplay implementation deserves a whole other paragraph, but I'll leave that to someone else. Suffice to say that this game is lavish to look at, incredibly addictive, and as fun as it is frustrating. Someone get a PS3!

You know, the more I play, the more I see how From has really turned the basic mechanics of dungeon grinding on its head.

Consider this, for example: items cannot be sold. You can leave them with Stockpile Thomas if you don't want to haul the weight, but there's little point in grinding for "loot." If somebody drops a shield that's worse than the one you've got, I see no reason why you'dnot just leave it on the dungeon floor. That said, quality item drops (shockingly rare) will help improve your character immensely. There is also a lot of hidden treasure, which takes some looking for. Thus Demon's Souls isn't just a go-straight-through game, as I was initially playing it; you'll find greatest success if you do at least a cursory glance into nooks and crannies. I found a lovely Cling Ring on an inaccessible balcony I was able to drop to from a broken crenellation atop the castle.

Another key point is that they've eliminated the cash flow curve: in most RPGs, you're dirt poor at first, slowly get wealthier, and then cross some invisible threshold where suddenly you have millions in the bank. Not so Demon's Souls - because if you die, you lose all the souls  you were carrying, and if you fail to get back to your bloodstain, they're gone forever. And since loot can't be sold for souls, you're broke almost all the time, even when you're heavily leveled up.

It's just really interesting for me to see how From Software has taken a play format with very standardized mechanics and revolutionized them. I wouldn't want every game to become like Demon's Souls, but the fact that something so entrenched can still be compellingly reinvented is very cool.

I just lost over 11,000 souls due to carelessness. I hate golden skeletons! And why do they have to lurk near such high cliffs?!

I've been away from Demon's Souls for a while because of Uncharted 2 and others, but intend to return at some point. I have one Archdemon down (Dragon God), another is at my mercy (Storm King), then I have to do Latria and the Valley of Defilement, both of which I've only ever visited briefly.

Gregg, if you've beaten Flame Lurker, you can trade its soul to Blacksmith Ed at the entrance to Stonefang. Just keep talking to him until he takes it. This will unlock high-level equipment upgrades. The Demon's Souls English Wiki is a great resource, in case you haven't discovered it.

The Shrine of Storms is probably the best place to farm souls. Past The Adjudicator the riches grow even more, though of course so does the danger. I did several runs through the Shrine simply to increase my soul count and bump my stats. Actually I became kind of addicted to the Shrine of Storms, to such a degree that all I was doing was running the Shrine and not making any forward progress. Eventually I broke myself of it.

Sparkly the Crow wants shiny objects of any kind - leave them by her tree and if she wants it, she'll thank you and fly off with it. You can either reload right there or leave and come back, and she'll have left a gift by the tree for you. What you get depends on what you gave her, but almost all of it is far more valuable than what you gave up. Ostrava of Boletaria should have given you a brass telescope - that's something you can trade. Mercurystone too, I think; jewelry, that kind of stuff.