Well, I completed my third From Software game and all I can say is that I really enjoyed this one. The PS5 remaster of Demon's Souls was so much fun. It was a lot easier than Sekiro or Elden Ring, but I still loved everything about it.
I never played the original Demon's Souls that came out in 2009, but the remake that was made in 2020 for the PS5 is such an amazing remaster. Bluepoint Games did a really awesome job at giving this game a fresh coat of paint.
Throughout this game, I played as the Royalty class, which is basically a magic class, but I ended up playing majority of the game as melee with a sword that scaled with my magic attributes.
In Demon's Souls, the world is pretty linear and you don't really have a lot of freedom in exploration, which took me a little bit to get used to. There were five different worlds that you can go to and each one had 4 different zones or levels.
One of the things that I ended up doing was going through and beating the first zone in each level and then went to the next zone of each level. If you try and complete all the zones in one level, you will have a very hard time because each zone increases significantly in difficulty.
Some of the zones were horrible to play through. There really isn't a checkpoint system like the other souls games where you can rest at bonfires and if you die, you go to the last checkpoint. Instead, if you die in Demon's Souls, you have to restart at the very beginning of the zone, so keeping an eye out for ways to open shortcuts is key to not going completely crazy if you die.
One of the things that really pissed me off during my early time playing this game was that the only way to get full health is to be in your human form and if you die, you go into soul form and only have 50% of your health bar. The only way to get your body back is to defeat a boss, or use an item to bring your body back. So on top of being a difficult game already, you are punished more when you die by only having half your life to try and beat a boss. Plus if you die too much in your human form, it changes the world tendency to black, which makes enemies even harder.
Luckily there are items you can equip that can make things a bit easier. Like a ring that gives you 25% more health in spirit form, so instead of only having half your life, you have 3/4 of it. Not optimal, but it sure does help. One of the most overpowered items in the game is the Thief Ring that makes it harder for enemies to detect you. I spent most of the time playing with the Thief Ring equipped because it made things so much easier. It even works on bosses and can even break their AI so they have a really hard time seeing you.
The Dragon Lord boss is one that the Thief Ring is pretty much required to wear. This fight involved sneaking around different pillars to shoot the boss with huge arrows. This was such a stupid fight and it seemed hit or miss when you were actually in stealth. I was so glad to finally get past this dumb boss.
This game was a visual masterpiece. I really love From Software's style in their games. They go all out creating these crazy worlds and they really draw you in and make you want to explore every inch of them.
One thing that is cool about these games is that there are multiple endings that you can get based on the path your chose in game. The main goal in the game was to basically collect the souls of these demons to appease the Old One and put him back to sleep.
After you beat the last boss, you bring your blind girlfriend down to the Old One to have her put the Old One back to sleep.
I figured this would be the best time to stomp her head into the ground and bring the Old One back to life instead of saving the world.
So now, the Old One and I will kill everything in the world and rule as an evil god.
So now that I am done with Demon's Souls, I just bought the remaster of Dark Souls 1 and I will be playing through that game. I heard Dark Souls 2 was not that great, so I am not sure if I will get that one since there is no remaster and it is pretty old. I do have Dark Souls 3 that I will be playing eventually, but I am hoping to make it through DS1 and have some understanding of the story.
Hopefully Dark Souls is as good as the other From Software games that I have played. From Software is probably one of the greatest gaming companies out there. If you haven't played any of their games, I would highly recommend checking them out. They aren't for everyone, but if you give them time, I am sure you will enjoy it.
