This overhaul mod really frustrated me because the story, the voice acting, the art direction, and the level design are all pretty fucking great. But the boss fights are either slightly changed Fromsoftware fights, or they’re not changed at all.
I was pretty damn disappointed when I realized that only 1 fight in all of this mod so far felt new to me, and I couldn’t even be sure it was entirely new considering I haven’t fought every Fromsoftware fight.
The inclusion of Sekiro and Elden Ring boss fights also frustrates me honestly. Elden Ring fights often can rely heavily on the jump mechanic (like Godfrey) and fighting without the jump mechanic in DS3 definitely feels jarring.
Then you have the Sekiro fights. Sekiro fights are so much more quick paced than any other Fromsoftware souls like, this is fine in Sekiro where you have a very agile Wolf, super quick, can jump high, and has a very quick and reliable parry. This does not work in DS3 where you can’t jump, the parries are much slower and less reliable, and you don’t run nearly as fast.
So ultimately the boss fights end up feeling like repeats of bosses I’ve already fought, and they feel downright unfair with what we’ve been given with our character, so when I got stuck at a boss I felt no real reason to continue to fight them. I got no satisfaction from beating the Godfrey reskin or the Cleric Brady reskin, so I doubt I’d get any satisfaction from beating the Owl reskin.
And I’m only so passionate about this critique because the rest is so good.
Entirely new areas, NPCs, music, weapons, even losing screens? It’s so impressive in every way except the boss fights.

First off: My disappointment surely stems primarily from the fact that this game has been described as a Demon's Souls-like. Despite its name, Archthrones is not that.
Initially, I was optimistic. A great title screen, the armors in the character editor looked great. The game starts with a Demon's Souls reference - fantastic. However, I quickly had to realize that, apart from the superficial aspects, Archthrones doesn't have much to do with the game design of Demon's Souls. And this is definitely not „the new Dark Souls 4“. I know it's unfair to measure Archthrones against FromSoftware's masterpieces. Essentially, this is not much more than a few reworked levels from Dark Souls 3, a few new levels (which have significantly less quality than those from FS), and bosses whose movesets have been randomly mashed up from known bosses. The animations have been shamelessly taken from other games. To the point where a cease and desist wouldn't surprise me at all. (Although the recontextualization of some bosses is cool.)
Unfortunately, it's also evident that they didn't understand what makes Demon's Souls level design unique. Because this doesn't have anything to do with the shortcut-based design from Demon's Souls. The reworked Dark Souls 3 levels are at least visually well done. But gameplay-wise, not much changes aside from different enemy placement.

Tldr; Archthrones is nothing more than a level overhaul for Dark Souls 3 with randomly thrown together boss encounters from other FromSoft games. Unfortunately, very little here is based on original ideas, and there's an obvious lack of understanding of FromSoftware's game design. Those who don't expect too much might still have fun with this. However, this mod is being promoted on the official website as a new game heavily based on Demon's Souls' level design. And in this regard, Archthrones fails miserably.

It doesn't do a whole lot to really deal with my foundational qualms with Late Souls entries;- where I think the incoming damage is tuned way too fucking high. Necessitating the need to turn off the part of my brain that is capable of enjoying the cool fantasy adventure and instead allocate more power to memorising excruciating enemy movesets, and resisting the urge to fucking kill myself while looking at a blacksmith menu.

What's here is incredibly cool though, there's some serious nerve to calling what is essentially a fanmade standalone Souls game a """demo""" that is currently, playably, almost as content-rich as Demon's Souls. It leaning into the linear Archstone level structure from Demon's is such a salve to me, it's like being given five different adventure novels and being tasked to push your bookmark as far as u can thru them. Each of the worlds call to prior Souls entries to varying levels of explicitness, from a remux of Heide's Tower of Flame to an entirely new desert biome that is abso gorgeous. These locales not needing to necessarily feel beholden to eachother to have that interlinked coherence is just such a buzz of variety I love it.

In complete honesty i didn't play Bloodborne Souls 2 or 3 any more than the once (sorry sory) so my memory of the minutia of their locations and enemies are incredibly hazy. Even then, it's pretty clear at times when the mod runs a boss through something akin to the Pokemon Fusion website, Frankensteining together a funny little Radagon of the Boreal Valley or whatever.

Ultimately I'm just spellbound by the ambition here, what the mod desperately needs is some rebalancing to stop the enemies from being insanely damage spongy. I don't care how gud i need to git as much as I care about wasting my time doing 50 damage per hit on an regular mob enemy that has 10,00000,0000000 hp & will give a pittance of souls on defeat.

Big 'your mileage may vary' thing here but it's free and has a great installer so it's an easy recc. If this project sees fruition I can imagine it'd be special to the point of legal action being considered or something. Saria is a my queen etc.

For a free fan project, there is much to praise: the new enemies and bosses feel fresh, (some of) the voice acting is good enough to put in an actual release, and the whole thing is visually phenomenal. The use of the perfect guard mechanic and parrying also make it distinct from the rest of the series. However, only more than half of it feels original, with two of its five available worlds being directly lifted from DS3.

Additionally, for a project attempting to emulate the design philosophy of Demon's Souls, it fails as there is an obvious disparity between the challenge of the areas. They really can't be tackled in any order as enemies will just have too much health and damage, unlike in DeS where even the daunting Shrine of Storms could have been tackled from the start if you had the appropriate equipment.

This is a tangible issue with the entire package - it feels like a DLC to be played after DS3 but you're starting with a low level character. Though it may be too late to go back and change things now, I think it would have done a lot of good to start players with higher level characters (Maybe 20-25) and scale up the easier areas to bring everything to a more solid baseline while also permitting the greater build variety players would expect from such a challenging entry to the series.

(This is a followup to my previous review of the Artcthrones demo, as there has been a major balance patch since I wrote that review.)

I started a fresh playthrough today to see if the new balance patch would solve my issues with enemy scaling. In short, it absolutely has.

I hadn't actually gotten very far through the mod on my original playthrough, only beating the Angelic Siege Golem boss and running around the beginning of each Archthrone, so I was able to catch up very quickly. The decreased enemy scaling is very noticable and feels far more appropriate for starting characters even outside of the first Archthrone.

A lot of my complaints in the previous review centered on the overturned bosses, and I'm happy to report that they now feel much closer to vanilla DS3 bosses in damage and health. Their movesets are still a bit more complex than I would prefer this early in the game, but at least the punishment for getting hit isn't instant death. I was able to beat the Angelic Siege Golem on my first try at level 15 with a +1 Claymore, and the Pus-ridden Beast on my first try a couple levels higher with a +2 Claymore and some fire consumables. I do not believe they have overcorrected; the bosses were still challenging and if I hadn't had practice with their much harder previous forms, I would not have beaten them in a single try.

Given how much better this mod feels to play after the balance patch I do intend to finish the demo this time around. Previously I had said I didn't recommend the mod, but this patch has changed my mind. Definitely give it a shot if you're a fan of Dark Souls III, Elden Ring, or Bloodborne. I think there's a good chance you'll enjoy it.

Update: I've been playing all day and found a few more bosses, one of which I really liked (unfortunately my obs hotkey failed me so I need to do the fight on another character), and a few others that were decent. Overall really enjoying this demo.

Update 2: The further in I get, the more over-designed the bosses are. Does a mid-game boss really need to have moves from Soul of Cinder, Champion Gundyr, Great Shinobi Owl, Maliketh, Margit, and fucking ISSHIN?!?! There's also a janky version of Great Shinobi Owl as a separate boss in the same mod (the parry timings on that boss are completely fucked, you need to parry WAY earlier than normal for DS3). There's also a Sekiro-ass ninja boss who I really hope is just unfinished because the jank was unbearable but the presentation was really good. These bosses look really cool but borrowing moves from such a wide variety of other bosses (from different games, even) means they have no cohesive feel or flow.

Update 3: I found the secret boss in Phoenix Tower today and laughed out loud at how absurdly janky it is. The lock on couldn't stay on the boss for more than 15 seconds and every move felt completely off-tempo. I'm not even going to say I hope this one is unfinished because if it made it into the full release like this it would be fucking hysterical (this thing makes Maneaters look extremely polished).

There's a lot of promise here, but in its current state the enemy scaling absolutely ruins the entire experience. No area is scaled for starting level characters, and even the earliest bosses have complex and difficult movesets.

The Angelic Siege Golem (pictured on the cover here on Backloggd) is a great example, and the first boss I found in the game. The basic moveset of the boss is that of the Iron Golem boss from Dark Souls, but with the knockdown gimmick of the Tower Knight from Demon's Souls. That sounds fine for a first boss, right? Well, once you've worked your way about 30% into its gargantuan health bar, he gains magic spam that follows some of his basic attacks, and around 50% health, he starts teleporting across the arena and doing the Valiant Gargoyle's vacuum slice attack from Elden Ring, which oneshot me the only time I got hit by it. The bosses are maddeningly overtuned. I was level 15 and had a +3 fire longsword when I managed to beat the Golem, and it was gruelingly hard.

The second boss is far worse. An obvious reskin of the Cleric Beast from Bloodborne, but it's styled as a Pus of Man type monster now. This boss is in the same area as the Golem, but has even more health and does even more damage. I was still using the +3 fire longsword, which I expected to be a very strong choice against this boss; both Bloodborne beast bosses and Pus of Man monsters in Dark Souls III are extremely weak to fire. My sword did 102 damage on an r1 attack, barely scratching the massive healthbar of this extremely aggressive, very lethal, difficult to dodge boss. Oh, and I had gone out of my way to acquire the Soul Fog spell, which seems to poison the target and does good damage, but this boss seemed nearly immune to it (took 12 damage over the course of about 2 seconds, then nothing). I gave up on this boss after a couple attempts and haven't touched the mod since.

I ran around the starting areas of every Archthrone, but all of them were scaled so aggressively that I couldn't hope to fight through them. I barely found any new weapons or spells, and upgrade materials were incredibly sparse.

If the developers scale the enemies down to a reasonable level or let the player gain levels much quicker in the early game, this mod definitely has the potential to be something special. As is, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a challenge runner of some kind. It just isn't fun.

I will update this review or make a follow-up if I end up playing more of the demo.

Edit: apparently there was a balance patch, so I will be revisiting the demo.