The true Demon's Souls starts here.

Demon's Souls is a beautiful game that would have killed my interest in the whole Souls series if I had started with it first instead of DS1. People often use the term "product of its time" but this might be the first instance where I've unironically felt that a game could never be made the same way before or after it released.

Demon's Souls was formed by its extremely abnormal development conditions, and came out the other side as a sort of anti-2000's video game. In a generation that made sure to walk you through everything, Demon's Souls goes the complete opposite direction and refuses to explain core game mechanics to you. In some cases like with World Tendency, it's a bit of a mixed bag. I like the mechanic in theory but the game deliberately masks its overall significance and how you can go about raising and lowering your tendency. Honestly though, the most baffling example of the game explaining mechanics poorly is that you can fucking clamber in this game, but the game does such a terrible job showcasing it. I had no idea this was a thing until Latria, and as a result I completely missed out on Ostrava's quest line (which blows, because he's an extremely cool character). These issues aren't really a big deal because Demon's Souls is, by nature, rough around the edges. I just wish I knew the actual "roughness" of those edges instead of having to guess on the fly or Google the answer.

But Demon's Souls isn't just a game defined by its mechanics (tell that to Bluepoint though, they're still figuring that part out). The vibe of this game is just...perfection. A brutalist medieval world confronting a deeply existential, lovecraftian threat is fucking awesome and honestly a better premise than that of Dark Souls, even if the series later took its concepts in more interesting directions. The audiovisual experience of Demon's Souls is truly something special, and I now understand why people are disappointed by the remake--Bluepoint really dropped the ball in this regard.

My other criticisms are fairly basic. Boletaria is a fantastic area, Latria and Shrine of Storms are quite strong, but the other areas are pretty lame. Some bosses are very well designed, like Tower Knight, whereas others are either extremely obnoxious until you figure out their one random weakness (Armor Spider), pathetically easy (Leechmonger), or aesthetically and functionally unfinished (Maneater). It's a shame because it's clear they were experimenting and figuring out what sticks, but some of these DID stick, and I wish there were more of those types of fights in the game.

Overall I appreciate Demon's Souls for what it is, but I can also acknowledge that FromSoft's subsequent games do basically everything better, except maybe atmosphere/vibe in some instances. Worth a play but definitely don't start your Souls journey here.

Although this is supposed to be a very relaxing game, it frustrated me quite a bit due to very annoying bugs that seemingly only exist for the touch control method on PC. After I found out the game had touchscreen support, I wanted to snuggle up in bed with my foldable laptop and use it like a tablet to play. But for whatever reason, it is super easy to run into game breaking bugs with this control setup. This meant I ended up replaying a level like 4 times before giving up and just switching to mouse controls. Kind of unfortunate but otherwise I had a great time and would recommend this experience if you're looking for a chill game with nice subtle storytelling.

Dark Souls III is so beautiful and honestly profound in many, many ways, but it's also a game with a lot of flaws. For most people these flaws probably won't get in the way of the overall experience, but for me they definitely did. And since most people reading this review probably know what this game already does well (bosses, atmosphere, etc.) I want to put down my thoughts for what I found really frustrating about this game.

My god, the camera in this game is unbelievably bad. I can't remember the last time I had this many camera issues in a game; basically every play session it reared its ugly head. I never had this issue with DS1 or DS2, so I have to assume this is some weird byproduct of the new engine. Regardless, it really sucks and I can't in good conscience not mention this because it did bring the overall experience down.

Side quest design in this game is pretty dumb. In DS2 I was able to intuit a lot of what I was supposed to do for NPC questlines. Some of them were along the main critical path which made progressing these quests easier and way more fun. I ended up going into DS3 a lot more blind than in the other games, and overall that was a good idea, but I swear it is impossible to find any of these questlines without using a guide. As a result I failed basically every quest in the game due to making the wrong choice and/or not finding the next step in time. Really unfortunate because the characters in this game are great and I wanted to learn more about them.

I don't think either of these are really "skill issue" things, it's more just rough design that could have been ironed out with more time, I think. These were really the biggest issues that prevent me from giving the game a 5/5, because at times it really feels like it deserves that score. Friede and Gael gotta be some of the greatest boss fights in all of gaming, the soundtrack is now one of my favorites, and the conclusion to this series was wonderful to see.

It took 3 games but the writers finally got over their fears and wrote an actual story! There's genuinely great character moments, development of the cast and even some conflict between Lan and co. I knew this game was beloved for many reasons but yeah, story is one of the biggest areas of improvement here.

There's also some great additions to the core gameplay formula that I'm excited to see come back in 4 and onward. The main one is obviously the Navi Customizer. It's like that abilities manager thing from Kid Icarus Uprising but with even more nuanced and complex stipulations. The system just has a lot of complexity in general and that makes it very fun to optimize.

My main frustrations are still the backtracking and filler that's been in place since the first game, and also the dungeon design really falls apart in the second half unfortunately. The bosses are also kind of hit or miss, why do so many of them camp in the rightmost lane for the entire fight?

Regardless this is easily the best game of the 1-3 trilogy and wraps things up very well narratively and mechanically. Banger final boss too btw

This game was really weird because if you got rid of the insane amounts of padding and backtracking you'd have an excellent 10ish hour experience. But for whatever reason, they threw in massive sections of going back and forth through different areas just so they could pad out the length of the game. It sucks too because the Netopia and plane scenarios are easily the best parts of the series so far from what I've played, but they're sandwiched in between some of the most monotonous, boring sections I've ever experienced in an RPG. Still, this is a good game with some really funny degenerate combos like Tree Bomb + Prism, Gater, etc. Also the writing is honestly half the fun of this game, the dialogue is the perfect combination of intentionally and unintentionally hilarious.