I got a PS5 for my birthday this year and so I bought the Demon's Souls remake right off the bat because I wanted to experience the first game in the Soulsborne franchise.
Uhhh what can I say? I think the game is pretty good and I liked seeing a lot of the origin points of the series, what carried over and what was left behind (thank god they dropped World Tendency), it's like playing the skeleton of Dark Souls, seeing where all the trends in the series comes from but that doesn't come without faults.
A lot of people have described this game has archaic and I can definitely understand where they're coming from, a lot of the mechanics are so vague and don't tell you exactly how they work that playing it for the first time can actually just be frustrating.
The world isn't like Dark Souls, it's more like worlds in a Mario game where you have a hub that goes to other worlds. Each of these worlds have a World Tendency which can Black, Neutral or White. World Tendency affects how things in each world work and what spawns in it.
Soul Tendency is also a thing but I don't know what that does, I think it locks some quests and affects your max HP in spirit form?? I don't know, this is an eldritch mechanic. Help.
There's also the Body system where you have a Human and Spirit form, when in Human form, you have full HP and if you die, your World Tendency is reduced, after dying you get turned into your Spirit form which halves your max HP and death doesn't affect your World Tendency. Sounds simple right? Except the game doesn't really do a good job of telling you that and a lot of important/good content is locked behind achieving a Pure White World Tendency which you can only achieve by beating every boss in the area without dying :) So if you want to get everything in the game you need to do every area with your HP halved which can be a pain in the ass depending on your Soul Tendency.
This game also just doesn't tell you when something irreversible is going to happen. I remember finding Yurt in the Tower of Latria and after playing the game and killing a bunch of bosses I come back to the The Nexus (the hub) and find out that he killed EVERY NPC THERE AND LOCKED ME OUT OF REATTUNING MY SPELLS AND GETTING NEW ONES (I picked a Wizard as my starting class). So this game is something you'll probably want the wiki open for a lot of the time.
The smithing system is also archaic as fuck because it requires so many different types of Demon Souls and smithing stones to upgrade your weapons with and you can only get so much during one playthrough, so if you want to use a weapon in a playthrough you'll have to commit to it because you're not getting a lot of upgrade materials for weapons. One of the upgrade materials, a Colourless Demon Soul you can only find a couple of these in each given playthrough unless you fuck yourself by plunging a world into Pitch Black World Tendency so a Primeval Demon spawns and you can harvest the drop from it. Some weapons need multiple of these to even fully upgrade.
The game is needlessly punishing especially whenever you want to do the online stuff, PvP is actively discouraged because it can affect your Tendency level and I hate that! because one of my favorite things to do in these games is partake in invasions. One of the bosses is literally made for that!
Either way, playing this game blind was probably the most authentic way I could get to experiencing the way people played Demon's Souls back in the day. It's an interesting little game.
Also I didn't mention it at all but I hate how much Bluepoint tarnished this game's artstyle and aesthetic with their version.
Uhhh what can I say? I think the game is pretty good and I liked seeing a lot of the origin points of the series, what carried over and what was left behind (thank god they dropped World Tendency), it's like playing the skeleton of Dark Souls, seeing where all the trends in the series comes from but that doesn't come without faults.
A lot of people have described this game has archaic and I can definitely understand where they're coming from, a lot of the mechanics are so vague and don't tell you exactly how they work that playing it for the first time can actually just be frustrating.
The world isn't like Dark Souls, it's more like worlds in a Mario game where you have a hub that goes to other worlds. Each of these worlds have a World Tendency which can Black, Neutral or White. World Tendency affects how things in each world work and what spawns in it.
Soul Tendency is also a thing but I don't know what that does, I think it locks some quests and affects your max HP in spirit form?? I don't know, this is an eldritch mechanic. Help.
There's also the Body system where you have a Human and Spirit form, when in Human form, you have full HP and if you die, your World Tendency is reduced, after dying you get turned into your Spirit form which halves your max HP and death doesn't affect your World Tendency. Sounds simple right? Except the game doesn't really do a good job of telling you that and a lot of important/good content is locked behind achieving a Pure White World Tendency which you can only achieve by beating every boss in the area without dying :) So if you want to get everything in the game you need to do every area with your HP halved which can be a pain in the ass depending on your Soul Tendency.
This game also just doesn't tell you when something irreversible is going to happen. I remember finding Yurt in the Tower of Latria and after playing the game and killing a bunch of bosses I come back to the The Nexus (the hub) and find out that he killed EVERY NPC THERE AND LOCKED ME OUT OF REATTUNING MY SPELLS AND GETTING NEW ONES (I picked a Wizard as my starting class). So this game is something you'll probably want the wiki open for a lot of the time.
The smithing system is also archaic as fuck because it requires so many different types of Demon Souls and smithing stones to upgrade your weapons with and you can only get so much during one playthrough, so if you want to use a weapon in a playthrough you'll have to commit to it because you're not getting a lot of upgrade materials for weapons. One of the upgrade materials, a Colourless Demon Soul you can only find a couple of these in each given playthrough unless you fuck yourself by plunging a world into Pitch Black World Tendency so a Primeval Demon spawns and you can harvest the drop from it. Some weapons need multiple of these to even fully upgrade.
The game is needlessly punishing especially whenever you want to do the online stuff, PvP is actively discouraged because it can affect your Tendency level and I hate that! because one of my favorite things to do in these games is partake in invasions. One of the bosses is literally made for that!
Either way, playing this game blind was probably the most authentic way I could get to experiencing the way people played Demon's Souls back in the day. It's an interesting little game.
Also I didn't mention it at all but I hate how much Bluepoint tarnished this game's artstyle and aesthetic with their version.