Demon's Souls (From Software, 2010, PS3)

As I mentioned a few times before on this blog, I was pretty bad at games when I was a kid.  The games that I liked were the ones, like adventure games, that gave you access to cool content without much work (or at least without much work that couldn't be outsourced to a walkthrough).  When it came to JRPGs like Final Fantasy VIII, I could only tolerate the gameplay because it held the promise of another sweet, sweet CGI cutscene.

Demon's Souls nicely inverts this mentality.  Most of the beautiful content comes early in the game.  Incredibly detailed vistas, giant fire-breathing dragons majestically flying overhead, mysterious characters, and a spare, but not meaningless backstory - with a few notable exceptions, all of this can be found in the first quarter of the game.  But the real content, the real reward for investing yourself in this setting, is a series of challenging, but rigorously fair boss battles.  These bosses run a wide gamut.  Most of them require a great deal of practice with the core mechanics, as well as a not unreasonable amount of leveling.  A few of them feel more puzzly, where simple pattern memorization is more important than your level.  And a couple of the later bosses will feel quite easy, compared to what has come before.

By the time you get to the final boss, you will be so good at Demon's Souls that it will be not be nearly as challenging as you were prepared for (in my case, I didn't even realize that the final boss was final).  The ultimate reward of Demon's Souls is your own great skill at playing Demon's Souls.  There is no accidentally beating this game - you will feel no more or less than the great demon hunter that your character is.