First of all: if you're thinking of playing this, please immediately go experiment with filters while looking at screenshots of the original up on another screen. The #1 problem with this game's presentation is its horribly cold and bland color palette and the developers give you the tools to fix it and mimic the otherworldy haze and janky glow the PS3 version had. Make use of it! After doing that, I honestly think it's a gorgeous new take on this game's world that often feels even more alien and disorienting than it did before. My favorite example that kept wowing me through to the end is how magic looks in HDR, popping in a way that truly makes it look like it's being conjured from another world entirely. Environmental detail sticks very close to the source material, with just enough extra flourishes that it doesn't look odd in these higher resolutions. The new facial animation is goofy in a manner that I find pretty charming but certainly isn't ideal. Combat animations are excellent, feeling super scrappy with hits that produce satisfying whacks that are sold perfectly by the rumble. Most of the vocal performances are fantastic but a few fall short of the original, most notably the dregling merchant. The relatively subdued presentation of the PS3 game is mostly replicated faithfully, but when this version chooses to pop it REALLY pops.

Of course, the flaws of the original run too deep to be addressed by a remotely faithful remake. You can still eat through everything after the first few levels. The strict gamey level sectioning is limiting. The boss design is still about as dry as ever and there's still only a couple that don't just fall over the moment you figure out what their deal is. This is why some of the new developer ground messages bug me a bit...I do think DeS was too obtuse for its own good in some places and explanations were in order, but putting "Hey here's how you beat this boss" messages in boss rooms is both inelegant and unnecessary in most cases. World tendency is mostly left mysterious and you can still totally fuck up your game if you don't figure out how it works quickly enough, no clue if that's a good thing or not. That was certainly the main mechanic which made my first attempts at playing DeS feel so dynamic and like I would never be able to wrap my head around the damn thing, so I suppose it's good that it's left intact.

This game can be made out to represent a lot of things that people feel strongly about, because despite the popularity of the series it spawned, OG Demon's Souls remained something of a mysterious cult game, something which a big expensive remake like this can never be. Combine that with people understandably being fed up with AAA gaming, poor commercial availability of old games, bland colors out of the box which need to be manually corrected to have any character, and this version being stuck on a machine that was impossible to find for the first two years and that is still quite expensive, and it's no surprise a subset of fans of the original would hate this. But the reason I still like fancy new gwafix here and there isn't that I want ultrarealism in everything or just because fast computers are cool, it's that they allow the realization of artistic visions that couldn't come to fruition before. This take made me see and feel things the original did not (and to some extent could not), and I welcome the opportunity to experience something I like in a new and dazzling way.

The quiet, twisted beauty of Demon's Souls is still there to be found, trust me.

I love both versions of this game and I'm glad they both exist, though as the other reviews here mention, the continued accessibility of the original is not Sony's or FromSoftware's doing. Let this be a reminder that the emulation and piracy scenes will always be the ones taking on the job of preservation. Seed your torrents, kids.