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Review: Demon's Souls
By Edge Staff
October 6, 2009
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MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
For all the stacked odds, you’re not alone in Demon’s Souls’ world. Other players can leave messages on any empty piece of ground, warning of impending dangers and pitfalls. A sort of in-game system, these messages prove invaluable when breaking new territory. ‘Beginners Should Try This Area Later’ warns one helpful player’s note. ‘I Want To Go Home Now’ pleads another, echoing your own sentiments exactly. As you place your trust in these words of strangers, shoots of kindness sprouting through the game’s bleak cobblestones, so you find hope and help in a world otherwise bereft of it.
Format: PS3
Release: Out now (US, Japan), TBA (Europe)
Publisher: Atlus
Developer: From Software
The disorientation you feel during the first few hours of Demon’s Souls is unprecedented. It’s not that you’ll be in any doubt about the mission: with a sword in one hand, a shield in the other, and a horde of approaching undead, the challenge is one of gaming’s most familiar. Few, however, will be prepared for the relentless setbacks heaped upon their miserable bones in facing it.
Here, a few metres of gained ground represent giddying triumph. For mollycoddled modern players, whose gaming muscles are atrophied from so many any-comer-mustsucceed titles, Demon’s Souls’ unforgiving mechanics border on abusive. But stick it out, and with acclimatisation comes the realisation that From Software is trying to change the nature of dungeon crawlers, and that its uncompromising vision is nothing short of revolutionary.
Despite the foreboding visuals, all hulking stone castles and impenetrably dark caverns, the game has more in common with Geometry Wars than Lord of the Rings. In this world, failure is inevitable, success won by repeating areas time and again, perfecting technique to level up your real-life skills rather than merely onscreen numbers. It’s not that the game’s necessarily unfair – the monsters you come up against are often no faster or more powerful than you. But every careless move is punished in the extreme, the result being a stiffening of resolve and redoubled commitment to caution. Fools rush in, Demon’s Souls is quick to teach, for fools end up squished under the boot of a 50-foot-tall shining knight.
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The need for trepidation is compounded by the game’s ingenious economy. Fallen foes release soul points, the game’s only unit of currency, used to purchase and repair ever-degrading weapons and armour as well as upgrade base character attributes. But die in the field and all soul points are dropped on the spot, recoverable only if you can make it back to the point of death from the level’s start. Dying has the added drawback of turning your character into a ghoul, a weakened state from which you can only recover by defeating one of the game’s colossal bosses or, alternatively, using a rare item.
These punishment systems ensure that life has far greater value than in most games, especially as the incessant autosaving ensures restoring from a back-up is impossible. As such, you inch forward, shield up, knees-a-knocking. Demon’s Souls is the antithesis of the fashionable approach to gaming. It encourages mastery over mere perseverance and every reward is so hard won as to make it almost unattainable. But if gaming’s ultimate appeal lies in the learning and mastering of new skills, then surely the medium’s keenest thrills are to be found in its hardest lessons. For those who flourish under Demon’s Souls’ strict examination, there’s no greater sense of virtual achievement. [9]
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
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Nice to see Demon's Souls get a good review. Just finished it and I have to say it is the best JRPG this year. It does have a couple of issues, such as the beatles who get stuck in the caves, but overall an excellent game. Yes, it is difficult; but if you have the right equipment you can do it. When I finished it I started again with the same character, and low and behold, I met 'Miralda' :) The game still has some surprises up its' sleeve. Recommended game.
Totally agree about Fable II and it's dreary dumbed down combat for the masses, but then Peter Molyneux always talks/spins a better game than the actual reality of his so called 'revolutionary' games.
I'm not into hardcore old-school high score arcade games or the God of Wars kill 30 enemies in a second chaos but from the reviews I have read so far, this game sounds like a challenge I may actually enjoy and the imaginative online functions sound like a breath of fresh air in this era of the immersion shattering obligatory voice chat that developers are so keen to thrust upon us, something that I'm sure many of us have no desire for.
Now I'm wondering whether to buy it on import for £40 via Hong Kong or wait to see if a UK release may be forthcoming.
on difficulty: ON THE COVER OF THE BOX IS YOU, DEAD, DEAD DEAD DEAD IN A DUNGEON. That should be enough warning for anyone hahah.
I'm a big fan of Phantasy Star Online, Monster Hunter, those action-sword swingy games, and the gameplay vids of Demon's Souls is great.
Another thing, the VISUALS! You are a dude in plate armor (pauldrons without spikes or chains or eagles or books or whatever you can possibly fit/notfitbutfitanyways on a man's shoulders), with a sword (a sword that is not chained to your wrists or chainsawed to a gun, but a plain ol' sword)
A warrior, an archer, a wizard. The characters have a distinct lack in GRIMGRIMACEGRIMACINGgoateeGRIMACEHATEMUSCLE faces, no TRIBALTATSSOCOOL, no angstingrevengeragesodeep, just dungeon crawling. This is a game that doesn't tell you to open wide as it rams in twelve inches of plotplotplotmotivationthisishowyouresupposttofeel, telling me the climax is coming and to swallow it up. It hands me a miniature of a warrior and the gridmap to a giant expansive dungeon and says "WELCOME, TO YOUR DOOOOOM"
I really love this aesthetic, it's like my Dungeons&Dragon's books and warhammer miniatures took a time machine from the 80's and reappeared as a next gen game. This kind of 'classic' (well, to me it is, hahah) fantasy is something I enjoy, but don't see often any more.
This is a niche game, I'm glad stuff like this can still be made in this generation of HD and all that stuff.
My comments have nothing to do with the review itself but games of this nature. I just wanted to toss out my pet peeve of developers (typically Japanese) who seem to see it as a badge of honor to make a game punishingly difficult (like Ninja Gaiden and apparently this game). I think this mentality harkens back to the old quarter-muncher days where developers intentionally put in cheap kills so you'd have to keep putting in quarters to continue the game at the arcade. This legacy really needs to end in modern gaming.
A well designed game lets the user guide the experience by offering meaningful difficulty levels. If I just want to enjoy the art style, story, etc. and see what the game world has to show, without dying every few minutes, I should have that choice. This game will be lucky to sell 50K copies in NA and I wonder how many reviewers (I am certainly not claiming Edge did this) gave it a high score without even getting very far because they were too embarrassed and concerned their "street cred" would be tarnished by admitting they couldn't get past the first boss. :)
>>For mollycoddled modern players, whose gaming muscles are atrophied from so many any-comer-mustsucceed titles
does this OFFEND you?
dude, you are not a grognard, hahah
Touche - you got me there (my name actually refers to my turn-based war game skills though!).
And this type of approach to game difficulty has all but died in this generation that's why people say this is like a breath of fresh air. If you're not looking for this sort of experience it's not going to be hard to avoid it since this game (and Ninja Gaiden? Haven't played the modern ones...) is the only one of it's ilk this gen. Anyway, Atlus's games have always appealed to niche markets in the US, that's why we often don't get them in the West, but this game has created a lot of interest with western audiences I think it'll sell reasonably well.
Could you list any other games released in the past 2 years that were too punishing for you?
"This game will be lucky to sell 50K copies"
Let's wait and see when the October sales NPD arrives in November.
In the end, I'm sure the copies sold won't stop people from enjoying this title.
And all these copies will be pored over and loved then sold on Ebay for ridiculously inflated prices in 2015.
I completely agree about Ninja Gaiden and quarter-munchers. In fact I've used that exact same description of them. But I have to say from what I've read of this game it doesn't have the same failings that plague the NG series. But I am not speaking from experience of this game because I've yet to play it.
Yeah, I haven't played it either. I just wanted to get up on my soap box!
Frankly, I avoid games that are described by numerous sources as extremely challenging. I have no problem with developers offering a very high difficulty option for those who are into that style of playing, but I find as I've gotten older that I just don't feel compelled to "master" any particular game. I juggle my time between many games at any given moment and don't want to devote an inordinate amount of time to learning one game to the detriment of being able to play other "less intense" games instead.
Stop whinging, you lot. Ninja Gaiden is neither cheap nor too hard. It is intense, fast-paced gameplay that requires some effort and skill to succeed in. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 has actually been dumbed down so much to please the likes of you that I am having to speed through the whole game to unlock a higher difficulty and get the kind of challenge I want. In any case in the first game the option of an easy setting was there. It was called 'Ninja Dog', remember? If you can't hack it just don't play it and stop complaining.
We're very impressed with your l33t gaming skills, Ivor (insert sarcasm here). The point is that it is foolish for a game developer not to offer consumers a CHOICE as to what difficulty they want to play. At a time when the average HD game costs $15-20+ million to make, you need to sell as many copies as possible and artificially reducing your consumer base just for bragging rights is simply bad game design. Go ahead and include punishing difficulty levels and offer special rewards for those who beat the game at that level, but give the option to play at a lower difficulty for those who prefer that style of play.
There are different definitions to "hard-core gamer". If you only buy one game every month or two you have the luxury of mastering that game and playing it constantly. I've purchased over 100 games already this year (for my family, not just me), and don't have the inclinination to spend the time needed to play games like this.
If From Software had offered a meaningful Normal difficulty I would have bought this game on launch day, so this is their loss. I really enjoyed their Otogi games and was inclined to pick this up, but their choice to limit this strictly to those who enjoy stressful gaming is costing them money and I suspect they are going to take a bath on this title. Don't be surprised when you read a news article in 6 months announcing that From Software has joined the long list of game companies now out of business.
Ha ha! Thanks, mate. I am able to detect sarcasm without the need for sign-posting; I am not American :-). Your argument about Ninja Gaiden is irrelevant since there always has been an easy difficulty setting. As for Demon's Souls: can't you just accept that the experience the developer was trying to create required an uncompromising difficulty setting? What you're proposing is ridiculous. It's like saying all movies should aim for an 'all ages' rating so that everyone can experience them. If it's not for you it's not for you. I commend From Software for not cowing to the prevailing mentality of making everything as easy as possible to be inclusive. That's what the Wii is for.
Have you ever stopped to think that maybe the games arent "too hard" that maybe you might just suck at gaming in general? Its ppl like you that make games like Halo and COD and even the Wii so popular. what happened to the days when youd have to learn the game and how to play it and when you finally did make it past that level or boss you felt a great deal of accomlishment bc it was actually a challange. Games nowadays take you from setpiece to setpiece without much diffuculty and frankly its just not fun to play. No where in any of this games reviews did anyone say anything about cheap kills just that if you dont play smart youll die its based on realism that actually puts you in the game its not a game where you can chop through 30 ppl at once in the course of 3 seconds every enemy is a challenge to be mastered.
Did you ever stop to think that developers shouldn't be spending tens of millions of their investors dollars to cater to the statistically insignificant portion of the industry you represent? This is a business and it is a bad business decision to lock a game at a difficulty level that will ensure it losses money.
How is it in their best financial interest to have a devoted gaming site like Destructoid refuse to review the game because it was too hard for their full-time game journalists to complete it? Adding additional difficulty levels doesn't take anything away from your ability to play at the higher difficulty. Why do you find it so offensive that most games offer an easier difficulty level - are you that insecure? It takes literally less than a day's work for the programmers to buff the characters health/damage inflicted and reduce the enemies health/damage and increase sales by several hundred thousand copies.
Can we keep this friendly please guys?
I go back to my point below. Should all games automatically have to have mass appeal? And if a developer chooses to serve a niche market, is that not actually a good thing?
Edit - thinking about this as well, if you are someone who has purchased over 100 games this year, then that is a huge amount of titles. I live in a house with 4 guys, and we've not come close to that. I'd suggest you fit into another niche, just not the one that From Software are targeting.
No and yes respectively. If that's not the case, games like Abe's Odysee, Ico and Psychonauts would never have gotten made.
Gaming by its sheer competitiveness invites l33t-ism ; ) Gamers take pride in their abilities and take it real hard when they find a much-hyped game is er- not their cup of tea (read: too hard).
I found comparing Halo on easy setting, then on legendary, requires totally different gameplay and tactics. Whereas one allows you to blast gung-ho through a level, the other requires you to become more circumspect and tactical. Taking that into account, shouldn't developers be allowed to release a game that, by default, requires the player to adopt a specific mindset for that game?
Doing this creates a certain marketing image for a game, it lays down a gauntlet. But, at the end of the day, it's really how a gamer reacts when he can't wear the same t-shirt as another.
Developers often get it wrong, but that shouldn't be a case for the tail wagging the dog.
To be fair, even if Ninja Gaiden or whatever game is too hard, is that automatically a bad thing?
Sure it might mean that the game won't be for you, but why should every game have to appeal to everyone? If a developer wants to focus on a niche market, surely we should be congratulating them for serving that market despite limited profit there, rather than diluting the experience for the sake of mass appeal?
Yes, it is a bad thing. See my comment above for the reasons why. Making bad game design decisions results in going out of business in the current environment. It takes very little time and money to offer different difficulty levels, so why not do it?
Atlus have been around for over 20 years with a record of bringing niche titles to the US. You might as well ask why Rockstar don't make more family friendly games.
I highly doubt that Atlus decided to publish Demon Souls in the US based on the idea they would sell millions. They know their market well, and will plan their finances accordingly. Sure they could have asked From Software to add in different difficulty levels, but obviously decided that the best way of serving the market they have done for 20 years was to leave it as it is.
I actually was refering to From Software whose previous game also did not meet expectations - developers rarely get more than one pass these days. I agree that Atlus appears to be doing just fine and this title is neither make nor break for them.
Get up on your soap box all you like because you're preaching to the converted. Let it be known Demon's Souls is hard and if your a n00b and need help defeating the first boss I'll murder your ass to regain my human form. Unless you leave friendly emoticons on the ground for me.
Case and point as to why many games are losing that classic substance, shareholders and the mass market. Everyone wants to be let in, difficulty levels act as a barrier to entry but making it so anyone can have a go and do fairly well without much effort does in the end dilute a part of the experience in my opinion. Then there are some games which do ramp the difficulty to high in a bad way. But Ninja Gaiden nor Demon's souls come to mind. Games like Battletoads do however (But it was still sweet).
Developers like Atlus rule.
The flip side of 'too difficult' games isn't just dilution, it's irrelevance. I played Fable 2 which simply lacked any challenge, and there just didn't seem any point in bothering as a result. And regardless of what Molyneux says about it constituting some new game experience where you care about the world and your character, it actually left the game out of the experience, which only drew attention to how average the experience was. When there isn't a challenge there's so little gratification in overcoming the objectives - it's more like ticking boxes on a shiny list.
Obviously some people can't be bothered to learn and engage with difficulty, which is a matter of taste or choice, and they shouldn't be excluded for liking different games. But I'd be interested to know if any more people are finishing these 'easy' games than were finishing games when they were thought to be harder. There's many more gamers, so maybe it's proportionate, but I bet people simply give up on games for reasons other than difficulty, which leaves us exactly back at square one.
I've always loved a challenging rpg, one of my proudest moments (in recent roleplaying history) was completing the hunts, and spending time perfecting my compiled AI routines in Final Fantasy XII. Not that it was particularly hard, but the experience involved a lot of thought as I couldn't simply grind through the levels to be awesome (marginal advantage would have been gained but not as much as with previous FF's). My girlfriend was going to buy me Demon's Souls recently as a present and told me about it after she decided not to get it because I told her it doesn't have a pause function and it's already hard enough to talk to me when I play games :-). Gutted, but I want the localised version anyway.
I just listened to a publisher interview, some guy from Atlus America. Over on gamecritics they're crazy about this game. I've played some of this game already (friend with asian import) but not enough to truly gauge how much I will enjoy it in the long run (the 3+ hours I spent were great though), the class system is great too and to top it all off the tutorial is about 5 minutes long and barely scratches the surface on anything to do with the game. There have been a couple complaints about this but it can't be worse than the original Zelda. Show THAT to the old woman.. I've been playing nethack at uni (a rogue like) and I really enjoy it despite the very oldschool system. Demon's Souls feels like it's built on this old school foundation (Well everything rpg is) of using your commonsense to navigate a dangerous dungeon where unforeseen demons may annihilate you at any turn whether you have the ultimate mythril +100 super mail, and it forces you to understand your class limitations.
Anyway Atlus are happy providing games for a niche market. They're a very conservative little company (in terms of distribution) that's been around for two decades and don't plan on changing their business model anytime soon. I can imagine Demon's Souls being one of those games which remains pricey throughout the PS3's lifecycle because of the inevitably low amount of copies given to stores.
I never understand this, the only time you ever see a long thread on the Edge site is when people are bitching about a review. Like quietIdentity said, there are so many other sites that give more descriptive analysis so why come here just to moan? If you actually read the magazine the reviews really aren't that much of a focus.
This is the only game-related site I can access at work :D That's my excuse, and a good one at that.
There is only this game, Digaea 3 and valkyria chronicles that i would like to play on ps3.
Less jerks on PSN is a bonus.
I made an honest comment and you come at me, it seems that you are the jerk.
...okay...
Errr, after reading that review I still don't know much at all about the game at all, apart from "success [is] won by repeating areas time and again" and "Demon’s Souls’ unforgiving mechanics border on abusive" and its a linear dungeon crawler. Great.
So where are all the outraged people who take issue with the so called bias?
scroll down lol :D
Goddamn edge and their 360 bias!!!
...oh, wait....
Edge Fanboys, Unite!!!
...because in numbers there is strength. Or something.
Actually, on that subject, is this the first time when there's more than 2 posters on a forum about Edge, and they're not arguing about the number at the end of a review...?
The reviews on this site/magazine are just so BAD. You really need to cut on the rhetorical crap and talk more about what the game offers. It's like this with every review, good or bad (except the bad ones tend to be a considerably longer rhetoric-ridden piece of crap rant). Get yourselves good reviewers will you? To quote one of the few lines in this thing : "But stick it out, and with acclimatisation comes the realisation that From Software is trying to change the nature of dungeon crawlers, and that its uncompromising vision is nothing short of revolutionary" that sounds so "literate" but it says very little about the game. And you don't say much about the game at all anywhere in between all the aesthetics. Seriously it's like your whole reviews are made from "introduction and conclusion remarks" , but not much of the content a potential consumer is really looking for as advice to consider playing a game.
I couldn't have said it better myself. I've never once read a review on here that left me with a better understanding of whether or not I'd like a game. I always have to leave here and go to 1up. It's not enough to know "Hey I liked it" or "Hey I didn't like it" but we need to know why the reviewer feels one way or another in quantifiable terms because opinions are like buttholes and all this "eloquence" or however you want to phrase it just comes off as pretentiousness.
I think this criticism is perhaps excessively harsh. The sentence you quote is meaningful: it explains that the game is 'innovative' and 'complex, but worth persevering with' in less cliched, more readable terms, as well as concisely stating the name of the development team and their project aims.
That said, I do agree with your essential point that Edge reviews under the current administration often state a conclusion without developing a strong argument supporting it. I would like to see much more detailed exposition and analysis of how a game's mechanics and systems function, enabling the reader to judge whether that conclusion is logical or fair. The reviewer's perception of the overall game experience is valuable, but a more developed explanation of how that experience is produced would be much more so.
Note that I think Edge is still head-and-shoulders above the majority of other major game reviewers, who often don't even try to achieve insight into the game experience, instead writing overlong reviews full of superficial, generic or irrelevant information.
One of the meanings of rhetoric is to do with the art of writing or speaking effectively. So it's not really an insult, much like 'academic' didn't mean 'irrelevant' until anti-intellectualism devalued the idea of learning.
Anyway, it's clear that you're not a fan of the style of the reviews here. The obvious point is why you bother to read and comment on them if you know you don't like the writing - there's hardly a shortage of reviews available online. It's like the recent FFXIII article which attracted loads of people who went out of their way to comment on how much they hated the series, when if they really hated it they might have saved themselves the time spent reading about it.
But don't you think all that rhetoric is trying to achieve is the experience of the game, of what Demon Souls is trying to achieve and how it does it? The line you quote says that in some ways it might be mistaken for being familiar, which wouldn't need explanation, before going on in the rest of the article to say why the reviewer thinks it feels different to play. So I'd consider that pretty effective, not that Edge needs me to defend its reviews. I dunno, I'd much rather have a review that engages in the game as well as describes it, and I don't think that means it's just style over content. Clearly they're impressed with the game and get over a sense of just why that is from the way it plays.
I suppose it just comes down to preference. So I'd be interested to read a review that you think does this game, or consumers, more justice.
So I'd be interested to read a review that you think does this game, or consumers, more justice.
Well, I wrote this: http://stupididioticramblings.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/demons-souls-crit...
and this: http://stupididioticramblings.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/demons-souls-crit...
both of which are not necessarily reviews, but MIGHT give more insight into the game that some other reviews I've read. Basically, I allege that the game itself is not all THAT hard, and that overcoming human nature is what makes the game difficult. Comments?
They definitely give more insight to the game, so thanks for posting your links. To be fair to Edge's review, your first article (which I really enjoyed) is a full article rather than an editorially-limited-word review, and so has time to discuss what the game does, and how it does it, covering the experience of the game far more fully; what you write did that really well and i liked the idea that it's human nature that creates the difficulty, rather than punishing artificial mechanics. I haven't played the game yet, so I can't talk about how your opinion ties with how I'll experience playing the game but it made me want to play it, in some kind of masochistic, self-frightening way. The second addresses a specific question, which while it isn't a review is still a question I wanted answering.
Edge doesn't do first person, which is probably more suited to experiential reviews than the deliberately anonymous reviewing voice here. But your review wouldn't have been out of place somewhere like Edge - I guess whether you take that as a complement or not depends on how much you like Edge. It's meant as a complement, for what it's worth.
Oh but I don't mind the rhetoric. It's just their reviews are so empty I felt I needed to say something about this one, because it's a RPG (one I love btw) and I was expecting more. A writer may try to convey their own feelings about the game and that may or may not sell you an accurate idea of what the game offers for you in particular. Don't get me wrong here, Edge has good WRITERS but what gamers need are good REVIEWERS.
Wrong website, if you want a blow by blow breakdown of the game there are many more conventional magazines/websites which happily do this. This site gives an opinion of a game when they review, IGN, Gamecritic, 1up, Destructoid, N4G they're all places you can go and get more 'informative' news bud. Nobodies keeping your whiny self here.
Not wrong website then, it's wrong reviewing. If you're gonna review like this, then don't stamp this "opinion" with a "score" at the end of it, without letting the reader know where the hell did they pull it out of? their collective ass? So it's revolutionary, punishing and in the end rewarding, and obviously the reviewer liked it because of that. How does that translates to a "9"? What's so revolutionary about it? its mechanics? how's the gameplay? Will I even give a peanut it's a revolutionary game if, for example, I find out the button layout is badly designed, can't be configured and it's a pain in the ass?
Wouldn't I be more interested about this game If they tell me I can take any class provided in the game and shape my character the way I want and that radically changes my approach on the game? The weapons I use change the gameplay in a VERY meaningful way so it's very helpul for me the reader to know the game's system is HEAVILY based on weapons upgrades and the STAMINA system in which armor take a significant toll, and you have the freedom to find your own balance between weapon and armor that suits your character (combat style, and his melee-range-magic aptitudes).
If Edge wants to review a game as some critic would review a book or a movie, that's alright. And I come here to give my 2 cents as any of you replying to me, if anyone don't like my opinion , whatever best of luck to you. I don't come here to whine about "my game didn't get the score I think it deserves" or yell bias like many of the regular posters here (and everywhere), I'm here very seriously bringing the attention on the quality of the reviews here. They are poor and I've explained myself why I think it's like that. Am I supposed to read this review which basically tells me nothing about (the game) take a look at the numerical score and go "oh, well-reputed magazine Edge thinks this game is great, so that's it, I'm giving it a try" What's the point of reviews anyway? isn't it to encourage people to try things? maybe appreciate it a little better, and buy it? Isn't this site and magazine funded by advertising? How can anyone tell me "if you want a more "complete" review go to another site/read another magazine? lol, I wonder what the advertisers and Edge magazine would think of that.
I don't need anything spelled out to me. The writers for Edge express the way they feel about a game, and they often don't list or need to list the features a game has presented them if any. Unless they're particularly groundbreaking, which there are arguably none of in Demon's Souls, apart from the execution being near perfect for what a dungeon crawling fanboy will drool over, the revolution being their 'uncompromising vision' , punishing the player but at the same time making the reward oh so sweet, want to find out how they reward you and how great the game was to warrant such a high score, buy the game. (Edge were opposed to scores for a while, and even removed them once but this pissed off so many people they brought it back, I think they should definitely drop it). Which Edge makes rather clear.
I feel as though Edge write like this because their publication is aimed at discerning gamers who probably understand a lot about the games in question already or people who enjoy reading about games as something more than just a list of good and bad points to chip away at. Imo there are few other sites that bring this level of respect and class to the game media.
Again I think you're on the wrong website, it's ignorant to come on a website and try and force some universal game review code down their more than competent throat. Peddle your wares elsewhere, the plains are vast.
Edge have there own style of doing things. It suits some, other not so much. To each his own... You should take all reviews with a pinch of salt, maybe look around in other places. Trying to get a broad range of opinions to formulate your own, although there is still nothing like playing a game for yourself and making up your own mind.
Whether they are broken down into the why's and wherefores is besides the point. Reviews are only meant to be a guide not the gospel to be followed completely. The number is what qualifies the overall demenour of the review.
Maybe not many get represented online, but from the magazine review section you get some games with the lower scores, low numbers like 3's and 4's. Usually in the review they'll give you a pretty good idea what is wrong with them and what justified the score given.
Your argument does seem a bit nonsensical. Edge are well respected, established and have a good base readership. Surely if anyone is to be trusted talking about games it is Edge. You don't have to agree with them all the time just take what you want from the magazine, any magazine, then put it down. If your still not convinced about what you are reading, go find some other source that is more suited to your palatte.
Like you said "If you don't like the opinion....."