DEMON'S SOULS A GAME FOR SONY PLAYSTATION 3

I watched some gameplay, because I was curious, and the better graphics were so smooth that nothing seemed to have any weight to it.

Playing the re-make on PS5 and it’s spectacular. Looks gorgeous, sounds and feels great, A+ production all around. Serious props to Bluepoint, immaculate, diligent work. I might struggle playing a From game at less than 60 FPS after this, the pleasure of that smoothness can’t be overstated.

Beyond that, the game just fucking holds up. I’ve always contended that Demon’s and Dark Souls 1 were the peak, but wondered if that was some rose tinted glasses thing. I don’t think it is, those games had a pace and sense of place that was kind of lost along the way.

I watched some gameplay, because I was curious, and the better graphics were so smooth that nothing seemed to have any weight to it.

I'm playing the remake. Never played the original but I love everything about this. I think I prefer it to Dark Souls and Bloodborne - it's just so perfectly satisfying.

I don't know what happened to Ostravo (is that his name?) I resuced him from 1-1 but he never turned up in 1-2 after I killed Phalanx. Bit annoying!

https://demonssouls.fandom.com/wiki/Ostrava_of_Boletaria

Yep, did the first bit but he never appeared where he was meant to in 1-2 The Lord's Path. No biggie, this sort of thing happens a lot in Souls games. Maybe he got killed on his way there or something.

The upgrade system is pretty complicated, but I'm just about getting my head around it. Despite upgrading my Falchion to +5 I realised I'd be better off using the Crescent Falchion as it deals magic damage, so I spent a while on Storm of Shrines just farming skeletons (I completed 4-1 early) and then buying stones from the merchant at the end and upgrading them with Blacksmith Ed. It's a lot to keep track of, which geezer does what, and I'm glad they kind of centralised it all in Elden Ring. Still, it's a challenge in itself to work all this stuff out yourself

Yeah, hence my "math is hard" comment on the "Armored Core" thread. Even after hundreds of hours of the Souls etc. games, at my best and most experienced I often feel like I am just barely grasping the mechanics, let alone the plots, and that's even while generally following guides. Some of the Souls nerds, they get so granular with the builds, but for me (as a one and done player) I always looked at the stats as means to an end. This boss is weak to fire, and in order to use fire you need x points in y attribute while wearing z helmet. Thus, boost those two stats and find the helmet to help with the boss.

I'm still slotting this remake in for winter gaming, along with TLOU2, though whether or not I start in on The Witcher 3 first will possibly impact my loose schedule.

Really loving this game. Definitely my favourite below Elden Ring. I've done the first level of each Archstone now and I'm currently trying to beat the Flamelurker.

Impressed at how well balanced this game is.

Dark Souls 1 has so much going for it but seems especially cruel in the way you can't fast travel from bonfires, currently landing me in Blightown with a rusty main sword.

Bloodborne, too, is great but also a bit fiddlesome, sprawling and kind of linear in a way.

Demon's just seems to get the difficulty juuust right. It's challenging, I'm always having to think very hard, there are some really tough parts, but I never feel stuck. I also enjoy the way the bosses so far haven't been tooooo difficult, which is useful as there's often a long run to precede them.

I enjoyed the design and pacing of Demon’s Souls and rate it highly considering that it was “the first of its genre”

I got frustrated with the oddly unsatisfying scaling crossed with extreme difficulty of subsequent playthroughs

Played this all day today. Beat the Dragon God and the boss that's two massive gargoyles. Managed to get pure white tendency on two archstones and grabbed some neat power ups. Still a bit miffed about Ostravo. I have a feeling I'm not going to be able to get PWT on Boletaria

I know so little about "Demons Souls" that literally nothing in that post rings a bell. Psyched to dive in, eventually.

Oh blimey I've played so much of this now, I'm surprised to find I'm getting to the last stretch already.

My friend got this at the start of the weekend and she's already beaten the Tower Knight and Armoured Spider. It took me much longer to get that far

I think I'm diving into this as soon as I finish "Guardians." Now, I've never played a From game blind, because there is soooooo much shit I would miss or mess up that would I think negatively impact my enjoyment (and for that matter, they're generally hard enough even with guides and other help). But this being the first Souls game, is that true even from the start? Like, if you kill the thing at the place in the other place, that will affect whether or not you can do the thing at the other place much later in the game?

lol, I think this may be the hardest to play blind, at least if you don't want to miss too much. It's been awhile, but my memory is that they were happy to be esoteric on this one. On the other hand, I didn't really bother with 'world tendency', but the difficulty and knowledge curve still felt pretty steep without looking up a few things. Haven't played the remaster though.

I assume the remaster is otherwise exactly the same, right? I glanced at a guide already, and it outright says that apparently this one can't be 100%ed with one play, it needs multiple plays to get 100%. Of course, I never 100% anything, even though I know there are multiple endings to a bunch of them, but it implies there is stuff to be missed. Like, Sekiro, if I hadn't been following a guide I never would have known about all this late game stuff a certain path would take me, though in that case I didn't bother, because shit was getting *too* esoteric and challenging, and I'd had enough, lol.

Yeah, a blind playthrough could be fun if you just forget about world tendency and don't care about 100%-ing, only use the guide if you hit a wall (I know I banged my head on 4-1 for quite awhile, although I think I was fruitlessly trying to farm some rare upgrade material).

I've played this through more or less blind, only looking up tips and hints occasionally if I'm stuck or curious.

But recently I was compelled to go back and restart Elden Ring with a fresh game, this time starting as a Wretch

See, I'm kind of an anxious gamer, especially when it comes to these games. If I made it a substantial way through the game before realizing I'd be better off restarting, I probably would just quit the game rather than play through it all over again. I'd likely do the same even if the game crashed and I lost a save or something. I was watching some Elden Ring gameplay over the weekend, and there was so much I'd already forgotten that came flashing back that immediately put to rest any (pressing) desire to replay it. I was, like, wow, what a huge pain in the ass that part was, lol.

I think dl means replay, not restart in the middle of a playthrough. I think the worst that can happen in this game is that you leave a world in order to go farm grass somewhere else, and return when you're stocked up?

I also remember liking the structure once I got used to it, where you're meant to do the starting level of each different world when you're low level, rather than progressing all the through one before moving on to the next. That's how I remember it, anyway.

I played Elden Ring as a wretch on my first play through and it ruled. Every random drop felt like mana from heaven

@ Josh I don't recommend you play Demon's Souls entirely blind. The world tendency/character tendency mechanic is weird, frankly, and it's better you have some foreknowledge about it to spare yourself later frustration.

In a nutshell, it is attractive to "restore your humanity" (or whatever the game calls it, I forget at this time), so that your HP bar is restored. In practice, however, dying on a world while "human" has a negative effect on your tendencies, and it should be avoided. It is common practice to suicide yourself after every boss in the hub before moving on to the next world to prevent this eventuality.

Beyond that, idk, you could play blind, but Demon's Souls (more than other From games) does benefit from some guidance.

Prior to Elden Ring's release, I rated Demon's Souls far more favourably than a lot of other From enthusiasts, on the basis of Boletaria Castle alone. I still think 1-1 through 1-5 is one of From's greatest achievements and think of it as being as phenomenal as later community favourites (The Ringed City, Leyndell)

XPS yes, sorry, I meant re-play.

Demon's Souls does have a few "you should really kill this guy, he's bad news" moments. But I thought Dark Souls was a lot tougher and easier to make interminable mistakes in

I've never played the original but Demons Souls Remake turned out to be loads more fun than I expected. I rate it above Bloodborne and Dark Souls of the ones I've played.

It's strange going back to Elden Ring and thinking "You know what, this is maybe my favourite game of all time, but there are things that Demon's Souls does better or which are missing from this one". One example is the boss fights, which while none of them are especially hard, tend to be a lot more memorable

i'm playing dark souls 1 on ps3 for the first time now. i'm really bad at these games, the only other one i've played is demons souls which i ragequit after a couple days stuck on temple knight. i'm improving slowly and really enjoy it though. the battles are insane. i beat chaos witch queelag the other day and it was so satisfying. i look stuff up constantly without shame

I feel like Elden Ring got the inventory/stats mechanics down pat, finally, every weapon feels usable and worthwhile

Dark Souls has the best first half but such a tedious second half that I grind my teeth thinking about playing through it again

Dark Souls 3 remains spectacular. If I had a steampunk gene in me I might like Bloodborne more… the main game pretty much ruled but the labyrinths were annoying and bad

It’s interesting, I realized recently that so much of Elden Ring’s appeal (for me) was the inventory management stuff, which felt very much like an old school roguelike. Managing stats and optimum gear like gaming is just data processing, very appealing. I got back into ADOM as my dn might indicate

this game is the best

Seriously, DO NOT READ WALKTHROUGHS OR FAQs for this; this game is absolutely about fear and discovery and immersion. I read one thing about magic and it sorta spoiled the moment later. Just figure stuff out.

― I AM NOT ONE TO PURSUE GAME, MY FRIEND - NO, INDEED. (forksclovetofu), Monday, November 2, 2009

Alright, here we go! (Quickly dies to first boss.)

you're doing it right!

I am not used to a From game looking this good, I'm finding it kind of distracting (is the excuse I'm going with). Anyway, unlocked my first shortcut.

Haha, yeah it does look pretty great, even compared to ER. Funny as well because most of the scenery is a variation on "grim stoney rainswept medieval fort" but somehow they manage to make it look stunning

I'm so used to a certain degree of From janky, but this is so smooth. What's wrong with my game, it's totally broken!

I was kinda sad that Elden Ring didn’t have the same extreme dialogue-following face behaviour. Patches just doesn’t hit as hard in Elden Ring!

Yeah, in my reply I'm sad Patches isn't totally demonic

*replay

So, in my totally early hours, what should I be spending souls on? Or should I be saving them up? I haven't fought any real boss yet, just getting used to fighting various scrubs and/or getting two shotted by the knight with red eyes.

I dunno. Might depend on what build you've got. I found I naturally ended up putting points into things once I had a particular weapon in mind. I wouldn't scrimp on Endurance for this game, is the thing I would say, because item and equipment load are a real thing I'm constantly aware of

Yeah, the more things change ...

Anyway, I'm so early I'm not sure I can even level up yet.

Beat the first boss, got a taste of a couple of the worlds. Gonna focus on upping my stats for a bit, at least while I get used to the gameplay. Kind of fascinating to me that From has been doing similar variations on the same impenetrably esoteric fantasy world for so long, with I guess Bloodborne and Sekiro the biggest digressions. I should look up some reviews of the original Demon's Souls release, must have blown/broken some minds.

Tower Knight down! Is every path to a boss a run? Are there ever checkpoints/bonfires in this?

There are no checkpoints, iirc? Oftentimes you can open a shortcut though. Tower Knight is such a great boss!

The big "oh" was realising that the original Demon's Souls release did not have any gear-option to make the swamp area navigable... you had to slog through and suffer. The reissue brought in a (still, fairly well-hidden) ring to make it less of a blargh. It's probably my favourite swamp level! But I can't imagine doing it without a ring

I've been playing a bit of Dark Souls 1 again recently. The boring sections seem less boring now, mostly because I guess I know just to motor on through. Blighttown is actually pretty charming this time around!

a lot of the games and levels kind of blend together for me now, lol. I bet if I played them all a second time I'd be really surprised by how much I've forgotten.

Lost my first substantial chunk of souls doing something stupid, serves me right.

Man, it took me FOREVER to get throug hto the Tower Knight and beat him. Think I bounced off and did another world first. Then someone told me you can actually run the whole of the bridge without doing all that fiddling about in the underground route

It's been awhile but yeah I think some of the 'stage 3' bosses have runbacks, but others put you right at the boss. Luckily most of them aren't too long, or have shortcuts you can unlock.

I played this on a borrowed PS3 and definitely remember Miyazaki's first poison swamp, it was almost touching how unforgiving it was. It made for some good tense moments though, trying to get some item or reach a checkpoint before succumbing. Didn't know they added a ring in the remaster!

xpost That was my belated realization, too. I was so sick of the underground route, and the dogs, and the tedium. But then I realized I can just let the dragon do my dirty work and make a run for it. And then later, in true Souls fashion, spend 15 minutes shooting it with arrows from a safe perch until I killed it.

Giant spider down! I love how from the very start, From is begging the question: is it really cheesing if they provide the means to cheese? Which is to say, if enemies can hide and hit you from range, is it wrong to do the same to them in a game that gives you bows, magic, etc? (The answer: hell no, whatever it takes, if I want to do a future naked and afraid run of any of these games, I will).

Those bloody dogs in the tunnel though

Serious Bloodborne Unseen Village vibes in the spooky prison, with lightning and mindflayers/brainsuckers and atmosphere. It would be awesome if Blueprint remade Bloodborne, but I doubt it'll happen.