You begin with a deliberately grainy movie, as if you're watching a historical film. Then you, the chosen warrior, head forward. A navi like white light calls you in to the tutorial level.

First you learn how to read messages - little red / pink glowing neon scribbles on the floor. You read them with the X key. Messages are key in this game, especially if you're playing while connected online. I *highly* suggest you play with your PS3 connected online. It's not even that you have to play with ANYONE else. It is solely that other people's helpful messages will show up on your game to give you some nudges.

You learn about L1 for guard and other standard options which are all in your manual anyway :)

You'll see how to attack things and how when they die a flow of "souls" goes into you - you get multiple souls per enemy slain. The more powerful the enemy, the more souls you get as a result. You can bash barrels and such, but they don't "hold things" like other similar games offer. Sometimes - very rarely - something might be revealed beneath a pile of bashable stuff.

Ghosts will run by you - if you're online these are "other people" who happen to be playing the same level you are. A cool concept! You can't interact with the ghosts. You can only watch them. Sometimes if you watch them, you can see them do interesting things like go into a secret door, to give you an idea.

Glowing yellow spheres on the ground are indications of treasures to pick up.

OK so move along the path, learning and killing, until you get to a wall up above a swampy area. It looks like a long jump - but do it. Jump off the wall, kill a few more enemies and then go touch the archstone to warp to a new area.

You'll notice here that overhead beams block the vision sometimes. Yes, it's annoying. Get used to it, and learn to lure enemies to a more clear area in order to deal with them.

Blue eyed guys are *tough*. Do your very best to circle around these guys to get behind them.

Go slowly, appreciating the sounds of your footsteps, how they sound different on different surfaces. Also note your shadow. You won't have either of these features once you become a ghost. Which will be soon.

Ignore the red-eyed guy. He is TOO TOUGH FOR YOU.

Fog might seem like a checkpoint. It is NOT. When you die you go all the way back to the beginning. You keep all your possessions, but you lose all of your souls. You can return to your corpse to get those souls back - as long as you don't die again in the process. If you die while going to a corpse, a new corpse is created and it only has on it the souls it had when it died. Your first corpse (and its souls) are lost forever.

So anyway, fog is just for when you're playing online. If you are online as a live character and have one or two ghosts with you, those ghosts cannot go through a fog barrier. You must release it before they can pass through it. That helps to keep your group together.

Soon you're at the "final boss" who slays you with one hit. Don't worry, this is how it goes. You now enter the Nexus.

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