The PS5 unboxing has begun!

hanselthecaretaker

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I can’t wait to see what they did with Leechmonger for the remake. If there’s one thing Demon’s Souls did outright better than Dark Souls it’s boss design; from both visual and gameplay perspectives.
 

CriticalGaming

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I can’t wait to see what they did with Leechmonger for the remake. If there’s one thing Demon’s Souls did outright better than Dark Souls it’s boss design; from both visual and gameplay perspectives.
I never played the original, as I said, so I will have no clue one way or the other. It's exciting for me because it'll be a whole new game that should hold up to FromSoft's quality. Which is nice considering they're done with the soul formula.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Speaking of this. Playstation just dropped a new gameplay trailer.

I hope the lack of poise damage against normal enemies is just for the trailers though. Guessing that’s the case as the HUD is absent too. Also what was that magic that basically one shots everything except bosses (again for demo only)? I only used Warding and some basic Soul Arrows as a melee build, but damn.
 

CriticalGaming

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I hope the lack of poise damage against normal enemies is just for the trailers though. Guessing that’s the case as the HUD is absent too. Also what was that magic that basically one shots everything except bosses (again for demo only)? I only used Warding and some basic Soul Arrows as a melee build, but damn.
Hard to tell, the fire boss seemed to be able to hit the guy a lot before he died, so I would assume it was a special character for gameplay showcase. I doubt it'll be that easy.
 

SilentPony

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Okay am I the only one who would like to see a stripper doing a floor routine about unboxing the PS5? If these guys are gonna moan, groan and eye-hump the thing and talk about its curves and how much it can take and how fast it can go, just cut to the chase.
 

CriticalGaming

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Sounds like they’re straddling the line very well with this one.
I wonder if it will be a much easier Souls game because of how smooth and reactive it seems to be. Part of the magic and difficulty from souls games has been that little bit of jank with everything right? The weird animations (and abusable cancelling), the kind of unpolished feel of the game added to the magic i feel. But this looks so good, so polished that it might ruin it for some.

Not me of course because i never played the original. But still..... it's going to be an exciting play.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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I wonder if it will be a much easier Souls game because of how smooth and reactive it seems to be. Part of the magic and difficulty from souls games has been that little bit of jank with everything right? The weird animations (and abusable cancelling), the kind of unpolished feel of the game added to the magic i feel. But this looks so good, so polished that it might ruin it for some.

Not me of course because i never played the original. But still..... it's going to be an exciting play.
It would be funny if one of the modes was “cult” classic, where they emulated all the jank and exploitable stuff.

My main concern as mentioned a couple posts ago is still with the physics involving combat; how it feels to attack and be attacked. Like a dance of sorts where every action felt like it had consequences, big or small and good or bad. That was what drew me in originally, so it’s penultimately critical that those nuances remain intact here. It can be 60fps but there needs to be that push and pull kinda flow to the action. I’d feel a lot better knowing at least if poise will be as it was. Not sure if Havok is being used here, but I think that also added so much to the feel.

If there’s one gameplay improvement I wouldn’t mind having in here it would be that of traversal mechanics. The vaulting is nice, but how about also making good use of the haptics stuff where you feel the kind of surface you’re on. The Valley of Defilement is ripe for a ton of variation here, whether it’s the wet wooden planks early on, sludgy muck further down, dirt, etc.

Interview with the creative director -

 

Dirty Hipsters

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I wonder if it will be a much easier Souls game because of how smooth and reactive it seems to be. Part of the magic and difficulty from souls games has been that little bit of jank with everything right? The weird animations (and abusable cancelling), the kind of unpolished feel of the game added to the magic i feel. But this looks so good, so polished that it might ruin it for some.

Not me of course because i never played the original. But still..... it's going to be an exciting play.
Demon's Souls itself is already easier than all of the other Souls Games. As the games went on the enemies and bosses got significantly faster, more aggressive, and generally harder to fight.

Demon's Souls has the largest number of "gimmick" bosses which aren't actually hard.

People only talk about Demon's Souls being hard because it was the first souls game and people weren't very good at approaching it and figuring it out. With a decade of Souls experience it isn't exactly a walk in the park, but it's far from difficult. The hardest boss in Demon's Souls would be middle of the pack in Dark Souls 3.
 
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Dirty Hipsters

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hanselthecaretaker

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Yay, they're rebalancing healing!

Boo, they're rebalancing it by making grass heavier, which means weight limits are still in the game.

Booooooo, they aren't changing world tendency at all.
Just play in Soul form with Cling ring, or play offline whenever wanting to control world tendency. I really only did that for trophies though, as it’s more fun to just let it go.
 

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Just play in Soul form with Cling ring, or play offline whenever wanting to control world tendency. I really only did that for trophies though, as it’s more fun to just let it go.
Or they could have just made it so that world tendency was only tied to your character and had nothing to do with the overall tendency of the server. Seems a hell of a lot easier to program and a lot more convenient to players.

I never understood why they thought that having the players' world tendency tied to the average world tendency of each player on the server was a good idea or what that was supposed to accomplish.
 

Ezekiel

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Boo, they're rebalancing it by making grass heavier, which means weight limits are still in the game.
Good! One of the things I preferred in Demon's Souls over Dark Souls. Not having a weight limit overpowers you and also makes durability worthless, since you can just carry a bunch of other upgraded weapons. In Demon's, you don't, because you want enough left for loot and consumables.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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Or they could have just made it so that world tendency was only tied to your character and had nothing to do with the overall tendency of the server. Seems a hell of a lot easier to program and a lot more convenient to players.

I never understood why they thought that having the players' world tendency tied to the average world tendency of each player on the server was a good idea or what that was supposed to accomplish.
When has SoulsBorne ever been about convenience lol?
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Good! One of the things I preferred in Demon's Souls over Dark Souls. Not having a weight limit overpowers you and also makes durability worthless, since you can just carry a bunch of other upgraded weapons. In Demon's, you don't, because you want enough left for loot and consumables.
I’m torn on it. On one hand it makes gameplay and looting more tactical. I recall several times finding rare items only to be out of “room”, and needing to sacrifice some other lesser loot to get the better loot out of the field and into Stockpile Thomas’s stash. Felt tense and interesting, especially after surviving a tough fight and having to backtrack to an archstone safely to avoid losing out.

On the other, it’s an odd design conundrum where like many other games, your burden rate isn’t physically represented by what’s on your character, making it lose practical sense feel more like an arbitrarily imposed limit. Maybe I shouldn’t take it this seriously though, as the rules can be bent more with fantasy settings and the genre would seem too constrained otherwise.

It’s good that the grass is being tweaked though, because it got to be excessive sifting through all the variations during normal gameplay, and was too easy to abuse. It would be cool if you could combine lesser types or *craft* them into better ones with a uniquely learned ability or item later on though; kinda like RE but with a Souls-like twist. Like two half moon grass could be converted into a full moon, or that into dark moon with some type of magic or consumable item.
 

CriticalGaming

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People only talk about Demon's Souls being hard because it was the first souls game and people weren't very good at approaching it and figuring it out. With a decade of Souls experience it isn't exactly a walk in the park, but it's far from difficult. The hardest boss in Demon's Souls would be middle of the pack in Dark Souls 3.
I play a shitload of souls games, so I'm excited to see how "easy" I'll get through it.