Demon's Souls Review - Worts and all

[CriticalGaming]

What is a Remake truly? Is it meant to be an exact recreation of the original game, down to every single letter effectively recreating the original experience for a new audience? Or is it a chance for developers to not only bring the game to a new audience but to also fix past mistakes for the old audience as well, effectively providing a more polished and refined experience for the original audience as well? Maybe it's something else entirely, like we saw with the Final Fantasy Remake.....quite literally a remake, a recreation of the game in every aspect providing a almost completely new experience for everyone.

Whatever your definition of a Remake might be, and whatever you prefer a remake TO be, the Demon's Soul remake is unbelievably faithful to the original game in just about every aspect that i can tell. Admittedly, I didn't play the original game on Ps3, and by the time i got into the Souls games it was too late to go back and play it outside of bad emulation. But I did go watch several let's plays back in the day and actually for this review I watched another let's play and a retrospective video to try and compare the original with what i played from the remake.

And the remake is crazy close to the original if you cleaned up a few things that I'll talk about later. But map design, item placements, mechanics, AI, all of the core things you would consider the Demon's Souls experience are there.

So in Demon's Souls you play an adventurer, you passes through a mystical fog to the kingdom of Boletaria to find and destroy the source of this fog which has unleashed an army of soul consuming demons. I think. Much like the previous games the story here is a bit obtuse, though admittedly not quite as hidden as the later games. Early in your adventure you die, and your soul gets trapped in a hub called the Nexus which acts as your Firelink Shrine in this game. With your soul trapped, you are basically in it to win it as that is the only way to free your soul. In the nexus you have five Arch stones which take you to several different portions of the world. (I'm not sure if these are different worlds, or just different sections of the same world. It feels like the same world but im not 100% on that).

From there Demon's Souls plays a lot like the other Dark Souls, and their inspired games, as it should because this is the game that basically started it all. So you have your basic stamina management action game where you can hack, slash, block, parry, backstab and of course die, your way through.

The first change I want to point out here is that they've definitely cleaned up the controls. Demon's Souls looked very janky and sluggish to control, as did Dark Souls. I feel like FromSoft didn't wuite get gameplay control to a good place until Bloodborne. Thankfully BluePoint Games didn't keep the outdated control feel. Your character feels very tight and responsive. Plus they've added omnidirectional rolling, instead of the four point rolling in the original. This makes Demon's Souls the best feeling Souls game to play yet.

However with that control change comes a negative. Bluepoint did not change the enemies AI at all, as far as I can tell. Their pathing is a bit better, but they still use the same moves the same way as they did in the original. In fact because the game looks and animates so incredibly well, the enemy attacks are a lot easier to notice and react to. The animation is so good that you'll have no trouble telling what attack the enemy is doing at any given time. But when you combine this with how much better the controls are, you have a Souls games that's really really easy. Because they've kept the original attacks on every enemy, you can see how sluggish and simple the original game actually was.

For example the Vanguard Demon. This is big guy is much like the Asylum Demon in Dark Souls 1. He isn't exactly a fight you are supposed to win right away. In Dark Souls you are supposed to run away and gear up before fighting him. In the original Demon's Souls you are supposed to die, because that's how the game gets you to the Nexus and "traps" your character's soul within thus giving the play the motivation and story reason for why you deal with the rest of the game. The problem is, the Vanguard Demon's AI and move set are very very simple and anyone with any sort of Souls-like experience should have no issues smoking this dude. Stand behind him and he literally will just mindlessly swing at nothing in front of him, or occasionally do a ground pound that you can avoid by backing up five steps.

This brings me to another point. You can tell that this game is the very first Souls game, and that they were very much testing the waters on what they could have enemies do. Where enemies in other Souls games have some degree of hit tracking, Demon's Souls appears to have none. Which is why once Vanguard's wind up begins you can walk right under the swinging arm and the boss with make no attempt to turn or adjust his aim in any way. No enemy in the game does. The direction the attack begins is the direction it will go. This makes backstabs insanely abusable, and puts what should be very tough enemies to shame. The red knight you fight early on is supposed to be a wall to new players, but simply strafe around him and backstab him and he'll fall without ever touching you.

I only died in this game to gimmick bosses which took me a couple of tries to figure out what exactly i should be doing, and the environment like pits and shit that i wasn't familiar enough with the level to see coming. Otherwise this is a pretty easy experience overall.

But that makes it so much fun. The game will surely punish you if you drop your guard, but the ease of everything if you are paying attention and putting on your Souls Experience to use, means you get to enjoy what Bluepoint made here. Every level looks absolutely insane, every enemy is well not really beautiful but kinda, every animation is brutal and awesome. The backstabs and parries in this game are unfuckingreal. Every weapon has a different animation for parrys and backstabs and discovering them all became it's own little mini game for me. There is no denying that if you are a Souls fan, you are going to have a blast with this game even if you aren't challenged very much. And new players will finally get to see what people love about these games with the best looking best controlling game in the series to date.

Bluepoint even kept in some of the level glitches that let people who really know the game, still speedun and skip content if they want. Though I dunno if wall clipping and running through under the map and such is still in place.

They did an incredible job making this an insanely faithful remake. However that does come with some bad things. Everything shitty about Demon's Souls on PS3 is still shitty here. The bad, simple, and stupid AI. The unexplained mechanics like world tendency are still left unexplained. Many of the items are still overpowered as fuck. There is a shield, ring, and spell combo that makes your health regen so stupid that you become almost impossible to kill without taking big hits very quickly.....or falling, there's lots of places to fall. The NPC's all have new detail and facial animations, finally looking like they are talking to you when they are talking to you.

The only other really change of note that i can tell which also helps make the game easier, is once you character is overburdened (yes there is a weight system in this game and it sucks) you have the option of sending the extra items to a storage box much like how Bloodborne worked. This means you no longer have to be careful about what you pick up and when, which is great because the weight system is stupid and there is a reason it never appears in any other Souls game ever.

All in all, the game is great. It's that same greatness with most of the quirks that made it such a cult hit back in the day. Sure it's not all that hard, but most of us who are interested in this game to begin with are far more experienced with the genre and I don't know if Bluepoint could have done anything to fix that. Maybe add better AI in NG+ or the special fractured mode?

I'd say this was easily worth picking up a PS5 for alone, and Spider-Man is also looking like an awesome bonus too.

 

[meiam]

It feel like the change to dodge just made this gameplay the worst of both world (new and old). I hate the insane hit tracking in newer soulborne because it means the enemy attack direction/reach is utterly insignificant, it all come down to timing the i-frame to the hit (in effect, playing dance dance revolution). It get so ridiculous that you're often better off dodging into the enemy attack than around them, the exact opposite of what a dodge is supposed to be. Demon soul had much less focus on i-drame in its dodge and a lot more of it was dedicated to actually moving out of the enemy attack path, but in exchange dodge was clunkier and i-frame less generous, ie the combat was less about learning timing and pure reflex and more about learning the attack direction and moving out of the way of the attack. But it seems like they fixed the clunky dodge and didn't increase tracking, imo they should have just removed i-frame if they were going to make dodge less clunky, but that's what I think about every soulborne.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Spoiler

What is a Remake truly? Is it meant to be an exact recreation of the original game, down to every single letter effectively recreating the original experience for a new audience? Or is it a chance for developers to not only bring the game to a new audience but to also fix past mistakes for the old audience as well, effectively providing a more polished and refined experience for the original audience as well? Maybe it's something else entirely, like we saw with the Final Fantasy Remake.....quite literally a remake, a recreation of the game in every aspect providing a almost completely new experience for everyone.

Whatever your definition of a Remake might be, and whatever you prefer a remake TO be, the Demon's Soul remake is unbelievably faithful to the original game in just about every aspect that i can tell. Admittedly, I didn't play the original game on Ps3, and by the time i got into the Souls games it was too late to go back and play it outside of bad emulation. But I did go watch several let's plays back in the day and actually for this review I watched another let's play and a retrospective video to try and compare the original with what i played from the remake.

And the remake is crazy close to the original if you cleaned up a few things that I'll talk about later. But map design, item placements, mechanics, AI, all of the core things you would consider the Demon's Souls experience are there.

So in Demon's Souls you play an adventurer, you passes through a mystical fog to the kingdom of Boletaria to find and destroy the source of this fog which has unleashed an army of soul consuming demons. I think. Much like the previous games the story here is a bit obtuse, though admittedly not quite as hidden as the later games. Early in your adventure you die, and your soul gets trapped in a hub called the Nexus which acts as your Firelink Shrine in this game. With your soul trapped, you are basically in it to win it as that is the only way to free your soul. In the nexus you have five Arch stones which take you to several different portions of the world. (I'm not sure if these are different worlds, or just different sections of the same world. It feels like the same world but im not 100% on that).

From there Demon's Souls plays a lot like the other Dark Souls, and their inspired games, as it should because this is the game that basically started it all. So you have your basic stamina management action game where you can hack, slash, block, parry, backstab and of course die, your way through.

The first change I want to point out here is that they've definitely cleaned up the controls. Demon's Souls looked very janky and sluggish to control, as did Dark Souls. I feel like FromSoft didn't wuite get gameplay control to a good place until Bloodborne. Thankfully BluePoint Games didn't keep the outdated control feel. Your character feels very tight and responsive. Plus they've added omnidirectional rolling, instead of the four point rolling in the original. This makes Demon's Souls the best feeling Souls game to play yet.

However with that control change comes a negative. Bluepoint did not change the enemies AI at all, as far as I can tell. Their pathing is a bit better, but they still use the same moves the same way as they did in the original. In fact because the game looks and animates so incredibly well, the enemy attacks are a lot easier to notice and react to. The animation is so good that you'll have no trouble telling what attack the enemy is doing at any given time. But when you combine this with how much better the controls are, you have a Souls games that's really really easy. Because they've kept the original attacks on every enemy, you can see how sluggish and simple the original game actually was.

For example the Vanguard Demon. This is big guy is much like the Asylum Demon in Dark Souls 1. He isn't exactly a fight you are supposed to win right away. In Dark Souls you are supposed to run away and gear up before fighting him. In the original Demon's Souls you are supposed to die, because that's how the game gets you to the Nexus and "traps" your character's soul within thus giving the play the motivation and story reason for why you deal with the rest of the game. The problem is, the Vanguard Demon's AI and move set are very very simple and anyone with any sort of Souls-like experience should have no issues smoking this dude. Stand behind him and he literally will just mindlessly swing at nothing in front of him, or occasionally do a ground pound that you can avoid by backing up five steps.

This brings me to another point. You can tell that this game is the very first Souls game, and that they were very much testing the waters on what they could have enemies do. Where enemies in other Souls games have some degree of hit tracking, Demon's Souls appears to have none. Which is why once Vanguard's wind up begins you can walk right under the swinging arm and the boss with make no attempt to turn or adjust his aim in any way. No enemy in the game does. The direction the attack begins is the direction it will go. This makes backstabs insanely abusable, and puts what should be very tough enemies to shame. The red knight you fight early on is supposed to be a wall to new players, but simply strafe around him and backstab him and he'll fall without ever touching you.

I only died in this game to gimmick bosses which took me a couple of tries to figure out what exactly i should be doing, and the environment like pits and shit that i wasn't familiar enough with the level to see coming. Otherwise this is a pretty easy experience overall.

But that makes it so much fun. The game will surely punish you if you drop your guard, but the ease of everything if you are paying attention and putting on your Souls Experience to use, means you get to enjoy what Bluepoint made here. Every level looks absolutely insane, every enemy is well not really beautiful but kinda, every animation is brutal and awesome. The backstabs and parries in this game are unfuckingreal. Every weapon has a different animation for parrys and backstabs and discovering them all became it's own little mini game for me. There is no denying that if you are a Souls fan, you are going to have a blast with this game even if you aren't challenged very much. And new players will finally get to see what people love about these games with the best looking best controlling game in the series to date.

Bluepoint even kept in some of the level glitches that let people who really know the game, still speedun and skip content if they want. Though I dunno if wall clipping and running through under the map and such is still in place.

They did an incredible job making this an insanely faithful remake. However that does come with some bad things. Everything shitty about Demon's Souls on PS3 is still shitty here. The bad, simple, and stupid AI. The unexplained mechanics like world tendency are still left unexplained. Many of the items are still overpowered as fuck. There is a shield, ring, and spell combo that makes your health regen so stupid that you become almost impossible to kill without taking big hits very quickly.....or falling, there's lots of places to fall. The NPC's all have new detail and facial animations, finally looking like they are talking to you when they are talking to you.

The only other really change of note that i can tell which also helps make the game easier, is once you character is overburdened (yes there is a weight system in this game and it sucks) you have the option of sending the extra items to a storage box much like how Bloodborne worked. This means you no longer have to be careful about what you pick up and when, which is great because the weight system is stupid and there is a reason it never appears in any other Souls game ever.

All in all, the game is great. It's that same greatness with most of the quirks that made it such a cult hit back in the day. Sure it's not all that hard, but most of us who are interested in this game to begin with are far more experienced with the genre and I don't know if Bluepoint could have done anything to fix that. Maybe add better AI in NG+ or the special fractured mode?

I'd say this was easily worth picking up a PS5 for alone, and Spider-Man is also looking like an awesome bonus too

.

Kudos on getting a PS5. Must say, your blunt review is appreciated but also severely lacking in possibly the most intriguing aspect of this game or possibly any PS5 game: dat controller!

Mind sharing a few details about how the feedback/triggers feel vs the meh-y DS4?

 

[CriticalGaming]

Kudos on getting a PS5. Must say, your blunt review is appreciated but also severely lacking in possibly the most intriguing aspect of this game or possibly any PS5 game: dat controller!

Mind sharing a few details about how the feedback/triggers feel vs the meh-y DS4?

Actually I was planning on doing a Playstation 5 review in which I will talk about the controller over the four game i have been testing it on.

Spoiler: It's good.

 

[stroopwafel]

The biggest appeal of the remake for me is really just the graphics and the lighting. It really looks like a step up from what we had before. It is the first game Miyazaki really designed and directed so the remake could never be as good as what came after, considering it's still the exact same game. It is the project that was given up on when the maestro took the reigns and made it what it would eventually become because no one at From Software/Japan Studio cared anyway. The game Yoshida thought was 'trash' and which had a poor reception at E3 2009, a game Sony didn't even want to publish(Atlus and Bamco did) and which would years later turn into the 'Souls craze' and Yoshida greenlighting Bloodborne to correct his mistake.

Personally I loved it back in late 2009. Literally couldn't stop playing it for months on end. The game really felt like a return to form to what makes games so fun in the first place; intimate engagement with mechanics and the satisfaction of overcoming challenge. The deliberate combat that was tight and responsive never stopped being fun. The bleak world and sinister atmosphere that carried a signature style of environmental storytelling. It really broke with the 'games should be like movies' trend with games pretty much playing themselves. Japanese developers were also struggling with the HD era and western devs seemed to mostly produce brown military FPS.

To appreciate Demon's Souls you must really consider the time when it came out. Though even after many improvements and refinements in succesive games it's still an iconic game in it's own right. A modern classic.

Anyways my PS5 also just shipped so I should be able to play the game and try the controller myself soon. *high five*

 

[Catfood220]

I never played much of Demons Souls, not because its bad or anything but because I have so little time to play, dying and losing all my progress is a deal breaker. Especially if the level is massive.

Anyway, that's not the point I'm here to make. I just want to know if the enemies still do that sort of nodding dog thing when you kill them. That always used to amuse me.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I never played much of Demons Souls, not because its bad or anything but because I have so little time to play, dying and losing all my progress is a deal breaker. Especially if the level is massive.

Anyway, that's not the point I'm here to make. I just want to know if the enemies still do that sort of nodding dog thing when you kill them. That always used to amuse me.

Lost progress isn’t really an issue in SoulsBorne games, only the currency of souls but even that’s mostly just if you’re not careful.

Rag dolls? Pretty sure that’s mostly intact, but not nearly as exaggerated.

 

[Dalisclock]

I never played much of Demons Souls, not because its bad or anything but because I have so little time to play, dying and losing all my progress is a deal breaker. Especially if the level is massive.

Anyway, that's not the point I'm here to make. I just want to know if the enemies still do that sort of nodding dog thing when you kill them. That always used to amuse me.

Honestly, it's not nearly as bad as any given Rouge-lite/Rouge-like. I have little patience for most Rouge-type games because of the whole "Oh, you died and you lost almost everything if not actually everything" whereas Souls-like games I can finish a gaming session and feel like I've made at least some progress, even if it's only gaining a few levels, getting a few items, opening up a new shortcut/area or taking down a tough/non-spawning enemy.

 

[Catfood220]

Honestly, it's not nearly as bad as any given Rouge-lite/Rouge-like. I have little patience for most Rouge-type games because of the whole "Oh, you died and you lost almost everything if not actually everything" whereas Souls-like games I can finish a gaming session and feel like I've made at least some progress, even if it's only gaining a few levels, getting a few items, opening up a new shortcut/area or taking down a tough/non-spawning enemy.

Lost progress isn’t really an issue in SoulsBorne games, only the currency of souls but even that’s mostly just if you’re not careful.

Rag dolls? Pretty sure that’s mostly intact, but not nearly as exaggerated.

Last time I played Demon's Souls I got a little way through it by following a guide and was in some mines or something. I got quite far into these mines and was taking on some pretty easy flying enemies but wasn't paying close enough attention to my health and was killed by a random prod. My fault, I should have healed and was sent right back to the start and everything I'd achieved in an hour and a half of my 2 hours a night playing time was wasted. It was at that point that I realized that this game was not for me. I liked it, its pretty decent. But I just do not have the time to commit to something that eats my time and I could end up no further along than when I started. I mean, I can play a 100+ hour JRPG in tiny time installments as I can make some progress. I don't know if the other Souls games have better checkpoints so you can play in smaller sessions, but this game put me off checking them out further.

 

[Silvanus]

Honestly, it's not nearly as bad as any given Rouge-lite/Rouge-like.

Did you mean rogue-like, or is there a whole genre of Moulin Rouge RPGs nobody's told me about?!

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Last time I played Demon's Souls I got a little way through it by following a guide and was in some mines or something. I got quite far into these mines and was taking on some pretty easy flying enemies but wasn't paying close enough attention to my health and was killed by a random prod. My fault, I should have healed and was sent right back to the start and everything I'd achieved in an hour and a half of my 2 hours a night playing time was wasted. It was at that point that I realized that this game was not for me. I liked it, its pretty decent. But I just do not have the time to commit to something that eats my time and I could end up no further along than when I started. I mean, I can play a 100+ hour JRPG in tiny time installments as I can make some progress. I don't know if the other Souls games have better checkpoints so you can play in smaller sessions, but this game put me off checking them out further.

In terms of beating a whole level (from arch stone-to-arch stone) yeah it can be unforgiving; the most out of the series since all the other games have several bonfires scattered about and often shortcuts to them between bosses. I guess when comparing it to rogues/lites though is more what I meant that whatever you found along the way gets saved instantly.

 

[Dalisclock]

Did you mean rogue-like, or is there a whole genre of Moulin Rouge RPGs nobody's told me about?!

The former.

Though the idea of a genre of Moulin Rouge RPGs is something I find disturbingly intriguing. I might be going insane from lockdown.

Last time I played Demon's Souls I got a little way through it by following a guide and was in some mines or something. I got quite far into these mines and was taking on some pretty easy flying enemies but wasn't paying close enough attention to my health and was killed by a random prod. My fault, I should have healed and was sent right back to the start and everything I'd achieved in an hour and a half of my 2 hours a night playing time was wasted. It was at that point that I realized that this game was not for me. I liked it, its pretty decent. But I just do not have the time to commit to something that eats my time and I could end up no further along than when I started. I mean, I can play a 100+ hour JRPG in tiny time installments as I can make some progress. I don't know if the other Souls games have better checkpoints so you can play in smaller sessions, but this game put me off checking them out further.

Well, technically, any shortcuts you open stay open, any items you find stay in your inventory(In demons souls this is actually a bad thing), any levels you gain are yours.

You do lose all your souls upon death and any progress since the last arcstone/bonfire, which is a bigger deal in demons souls then the later games(the distance between bonfires is shorter in later games). Also, if you were human/embered, then you go back to the default hollow/ghost state when you die(this really isn't as big a deal as you'd think, since the items you need to go back to human/embered can be farmed or found in hypothetically infinite quantities).

You do make progress, just not quite in the same way as many other games.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

The former.

Though the idea of a genre of Moulin Rouge RPGs is something I find disturbingly intriguing. I might be going insane from lockdown.



Well, technically, any shortcuts you open stay open, any items you find stay in your inventory(In demons souls this is actually a bad thing), any levels you gain are yours.

You do lose all your souls upon death and any progress since the last arcstone/bonfire, which is a bigger deal in demons souls then the later games(the distance between bonfires is shorter in later games).

You do make progress, just in the same way in many other games.

You can still drop items if needed. Not the best case, but a reasonable and essential compromise. I recall getting rare items from Ostrava and needing to ditch some other random crap deep in a tunnel where I knew I wouldn’t survive the way back having to fat roll past those damn dogs.

 

[Dalisclock]

In terms of beating a whole level (from arch stone-to-arch stone) yeah it can be unforgiving; the most out of the series since all the other games have several bonfires scattered about and often shortcuts to them between bosses. I guess when comparing it to rogues/lites though is more what I meant that whatever you found along the way gets saved instantly.

Yeah, it really varies from game to game how bad this can be. Some games the bonfires/archstones/lamps are either reasonably close to each other/bosses or there are shortcuts to open which mitigate this significantly, but in some cases there's a long/linear slog between the last bonfire and the boss.

Dark Souls 2 ironically let you bypass this by allowing you to clear the path with enough effort and time(the enemies eventually stop respawning). No, I didn't abuse the hell out of that in certain areas *LOOKING AT YOU, IRON KEEP*

 

[CriticalGaming]

I will say, I think it's fucking dogshit that someone can invade you literally the moment you beat a boss and become human. Which traps you in the world and if you die you fuck up your white tendancy in that world. Like you don't even get a chance to warp at all, you can be invade the second the boss dies and then you are locked out of warping and the game doesn't immediately tell you you've been invaded. Especially since you literally just beat a boss, you might have no healing left, a fucked up weapon, or whatever.

Pvp is dumb and bullshit and I get that it's part of the experience but it is unreasonable that you can get ganked without any control over the situation.

 

[stroopwafel]

I will say, I think it's fucking dogshit that someone can invade you literally the moment you beat a boss and become human. Which traps you in the world and if you die you fuck up your white tendancy in that world. Like you don't even get a chance to warp at all, you can be invade the second the boss dies and then you are locked out of warping and the game doesn't immediately tell you you've been invaded. Especially since you literally just beat a boss, you might have no healing left, a fucked up weapon, or whatever.

Pvp is dumb and bullshit and I get that it's part of the experience but it is unreasonable that you can get ganked without any control over the situation.

To be honest it kind of was designed with that feeling of dread in mind when a phantom invaded your world. It wasn't really intended as pvp, that is what the community made from it(and later games because it got so popular). Often players warped back to the nexus in human form and suicide to prevent black world tendency. The tendency system in general is just really archaic. But orcourse this is also part of the game's charm.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Yeah, it really varies from game to game how bad this can be. Some games the bonfires/archstones/lamps are either reasonably close to each other/bosses or there are shortcuts to open which mitigate this significantly, but in some cases there's a long/linear slog between the last bonfire and the boss.

Dark Souls 2 ironically let you bypass this by allowing you to clear the path with enough effort and time(the enemies eventually stop respawning). No, I didn't abuse the hell out of that in certain areas *LOOKING AT YOU, IRON KEEP*

Yeah, there were two areas in that DLC like that. First the crazy tunnels and gauntlet to...was it the Blue Smelter Demon? Then another gauntlet and tunnels to Sir Alonne. Other than that the DLC was great, but it’s partly why I have better memories of the other two, even though they also had some annoying parts (poison spitters in the Sunken King and invisible dudes in the Ivory King. I absolutely loved the level design in the former as it reminded me most of classic Souls level design.

 

[Dalisclock]

Yeah, there were two areas in that DLC like that. First the crazy tunnels and gauntlet to...was it the Blue Smelter Demon? Then another gauntlet and tunnels to Sir Alonne. Other than that the DLC was great, but it’s partly why I have better memories of the other two, even though they also had some annoying parts (poison spitters in the Sunken King and invisible dudes in the Ivory King. I absolutely loved the level design in the former as it reminded me most of classic Souls level design.

I didn't do the Blue Smelter demon(well I tried the run a time or two before realizing it wasn't worth my time) but the run to Sir Alone was basically a long grind I cleared out to reach him with any estus at all. I generally really liked the DLC level design though, much more overall then the main game. The Iron King DLC, where you started at the top of the tower and worked down, was perhaps my favorite, even if the Fume Knight annoyed the crap out of me.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I didn't do the Blue Smelter demon(well I tried the run a time or two before realizing it wasn't worth my time) but the run to Sir Alone was basically a long grind I cleared out to reach him with any estus at all. I generally really liked the DLC level design though, much more overall then the main game. The Iron King DLC, where you started at the top of the tower and worked down, was perhaps my favorite, even if the Fume Knight annoyed the crap out of me.

I stubbornly did both of them, and but only bothered clearing certain enemies’ spawn limits as it just got so tedious killing all of them every time, and the bosses were the only reasons for all those attempts. There was only a couple other areas in the entire base game I’d had to do this with at all. The first was pretty early; Heides Tower and later the Black Gulch before I found the hidden bonfire doing Aesthetic runs.

Fume Knight, I thought was probably the most nerve wracking boss in the whole game and still remains one of my most memorable SoulsBorne encounters. I played the series in order of release and up to that point it really felt like he could only be beaten if you were completely in the zone, at least for a melee build.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Fume Knight, I thought was probably the most nerve wracking boss in the whole game and still remains one of my most memorable SoulsBorne encounters. I played the series in order of release and up to that point it really felt like he could only be beaten if you were completely in the zone, at least for a melee build.

Interestingly enough the areas in Demon's Souls are way harder than the bosses. Some of the zones like Shrine of Storms and Valley of Defilement are absolute assholes, but then you get into the bosses and you have a fat bastard with a bird for a head, and a bunch of slugs. Like...ok? Seems...umm...anti-climatic. I mean i literally beat the slugman with one fire sword and one stamina bar. It took like 20 seconds, but the zone took me an hour.