I'm still playing this game. I played the Chinese version all last Summer, and I've been playing the North American version since September 2009. After two Platinum trophies and doing everything there is to be done several times over, it's still addictive. It feels like I'm back in the early 1980s and playing Adventure (Atari 2600) over and over. I keep waiting for it to get old.

Stefanie wrote:
...the English dubs and subtitles are relatively well done, although some of the descriptive text suffered a bit in translation (such as item descriptions in your inventory). Hopefully, that will be tweaked for the North American release in October 2009 (currently available for pre-order).

I meant to get back to this sooner. Atlus did tweak some of the English subtitles and menus, although only about 10% are helpful tweaks that actually clarify things; the rest being a matter of style, such as renaming weapons ("Keel Smasher" is now "Dragon Bone Smasher"), spells ("Soul Light" is now "Soul Ray", etc. However, Atlus did offer a limited "Deluxe Edition" of the game, including a strategy guide, and pre-orders included an art book and a CD soundtrack.

I won't say that Atlus' release was perfect, but the company has done some cool things to promote the game (which Sony failed to do). Demon's Souls incorporates a tendency system, in which the tendencies of the five worlds, as well as the tendency of your character, can be anywhere from Pure White (enemies = weaker, you = stronger) to Pure Black (vice versa), depending on whether you're being good or evil. Normally, the servers for the online mode set the worlds to Neutral when you log in, with slight variations. Atlus turned the American servers Black during Halloween week, White during Christmas week, and there's currently a poll to vote for the world tendencies during St. Valentine's Day. Nice touch.

Anyway, if you have a PS3 and you still haven't played this game, you really are missing out on quite possibly the best game of the entire Seventh Generation. I now have four all-time favorite games: Adventure (2600), Zelda (NES), Tomb Raider (PS1), and Demon's Souls (PS3). It's that good.

RE: Demon's Souls (PS3)