Let's get the obvious out of the way: Yes, this game looks fantastic. I won't be someone who tries to deny very obvious quality simply because I don't like the game itself, the graphical fidelity is stunningly pretty. The magic effects look really bright and colorful, the detailed armor makes for great photos, and some bosses benefit greatly from the upgrade, especially Leechmonger. Aside from graphics, there are some good QoL features this remake provides, too. Your World Tendency being shown at every teleport is useful, the increased ladder speed is heavily appreciated, and being able to rest at Archstones a la Bonfires makes farming a bit less tedious. Oh, and the way the controller's speaker and vibration are used is pretty excellent too, really wish more games would use DualSense's vibration to this extent.
Now, typing that entire paragraph made me feel a bit strange, and that strangeness is reflected in my low rating. This remake is not meant to be a thoughtful recreation of the original game, it is meant to show off the capabilities of the PlayStation 5. I take no real issue in games being made to be essentially tech demos (Mario 64 and Halo: CE for example), but I do take issue in a company pulling out an old IP that was locked to a far outdated console and tossing it to a team who do solely remakes with no input from the original developers. I want to make that very clear: I don't think the remake's issues are solely a fault of Bluepoint's, but rather Sony for letting this entire thing happen without enough care given to make it a true re-imagining of the original artistic vision. However, I will still take issue with the way Bluepoint handled a lot of the game, and I'll list them out just so I don't have to string them together cohesively.
=== SOUND DESIGN ===
The worst offender, which is why I'm putting it here first. I find that all the Souls games, especially Demon's Souls, have a very deliberate stillness to their sound, with great attention taken to when noise is being made. You have your obvious times like killing an enemy or getting hit, but there's a lot of subtle ambience that often goes unnoticed (e.g. the nature sounds in 3-1) but provides a lot of atmosphere, giving so much with so little. The remake decides to ignore that design philosophy entirely and have everything make as much noise as possible, the biggest offender being your character grunting and hollering with nearly every move you make. Certain cutscenes that had a very delicate low volume are now flooded with dramatic breaths, coughs, and grunts to really sell you on just how epic this current moment is. Aside from that, there's a particularly big offense in Tower of Latria, a previously dark and skin-crawlingly eerie level turned into just a generic fantasy prison due to both overbrightening and a constant distant female vocalization. Sure, it's subjective, but I find that all of the scary atmosphere is broken by changes like that. The bosses themselves feel like they just make more noise, too? I can't really place it, but everything just feels very very loud at all times, and it feels like a complete opposite of the faint, quiet nature of the original.
=== GRAPHICS ===
The thing everyone focuses on, and one that I don't have as many personal complaints with outside of general things. Yes, it's incredibly bright. The original game had a very deliberate visual style (hey this sounds familiar) and used stark contrasts between darks and lights to create a striking image despite the lower texture and model quality; a good example of this is with the boss Maneater. In the original, it's a harshly-silhouetted flying monster against the dark Latria sky, the main thing visible being its blank green eyes, and in the remake, it just looks like a generic Warcraft monster. That's really the whole game; there's no contrast between lighting anymore, everything looks bright and comfortably lit even in times where it was a very specific and obvious choice to not have things lit, the best example of this being the Valley of Defilement. Yes, I know the original's dark swamp was hard to navigate, but that was part of the challenge, learning to navigate it. By raising the brightness to, again, a comfortable level, there's no challenge anymore, it just becomes like every other FromSoft poison swamp. Why keep things unique when you can make them like later games?
=== GAMEPLAY ===
This is simultaneously the least touched part and also the one that's maybe the most upsetting. Demon's Souls, for both its flaws and its strengths, is a unique and daring game, still fresh as a new player 14 years later. The lack of elements from future installments helped add to the uniquity of the game as well, still providing new things you had to get used to, but very appropriately fit the game due to it being designed around these "outdated" elements. Bluepoint, for whatever reason, thinks that they understand the design of this game better than the creators, and choose to add in the ability to warp to any Archstone from any Archstone, thus kneecapping the importance of the Nexus and making it feel like the "pitstop" hub world of Dark Souls 3 (and 2, to a lesser extent). In Demon's Souls, the Nexus is a safe haven, a break from all the combat to level up, upgrade your weapons and, unique to this game, attune spells and manage your inventory. Later games may have those former aspects, yes, but they lack the atmosphere that the Nexus (and similarly, Bloodborne's hub world) has that make it feel less of a hindrance, and more of a decrescendo before embarking on another adventure; a specific way that The Nexus handled this was by having each world be separated, thus making the jumps between worlds feel a little more weighty and purposeful. By being able to warp to and fro however you like, sure, it makes the game more streamlined and simple, but it takes away from that unique player choice and strips the Nexus of some of its importance. Similarly, both the inventory system and Stockpile Thomas have been butchered by a "Send to Storage" option being added in the menus and even when you pick up a potentially-overburdening item, thus removing any real importance to managing your weight at the Nexus and directly halving your amount of time spent with Thomas. In the original, he became a fan favorite character due to how reliable and compassionate he was, and that was because you saw him and used his services so much; by removing the need to see him to move items out of your inventory, you're doing that character a disservice by making him feel like a checkpoint to get your items back. Also, it bothers me to no end that they changed a couple balance things for whatever reason. By adding in a ring that allows for normal movement in swamps hidden behind Pure Black World Tendency, not only do you make the swamp seem like less of a challenge to overcome by giving the players an out, but it also makes that out incredibly tedious rather than challenging. It's not hard to use a bunch of valuable items to return to human form and dive off a cliff in 3-2, it's just time-consuming and annoying, all for a "get out of jail free" card that didn't need to be there. But I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised, considering the team wanted to add an Easy Mode before realizing that would be taking a step too far.
I know a lot of my complaints seem like nitpicking, and to be fair, they are, but they're representative of a team that didn't care about truthfully recreating the original game and just cared about drawing new players in while still keeping just enough the same to not completely invoke the rage of veterans. So, despite all my complaints, why the relatively high score? Well, because, at the end of the day, it's still Demon's Souls. It's still a good game, not so much because of Bluepoint, but rather in spite of them, and it's probably the version I'll return to the most out of sheer convenience (and a more lively online server), but I would recommend any beginner to play the original first, and then play this as a subpar substitute for getting janky emulators to work or setting up an entire older console for one game. I'm upset that I have to dislike this game, but oh well.
Now, typing that entire paragraph made me feel a bit strange, and that strangeness is reflected in my low rating. This remake is not meant to be a thoughtful recreation of the original game, it is meant to show off the capabilities of the PlayStation 5. I take no real issue in games being made to be essentially tech demos (Mario 64 and Halo: CE for example), but I do take issue in a company pulling out an old IP that was locked to a far outdated console and tossing it to a team who do solely remakes with no input from the original developers. I want to make that very clear: I don't think the remake's issues are solely a fault of Bluepoint's, but rather Sony for letting this entire thing happen without enough care given to make it a true re-imagining of the original artistic vision. However, I will still take issue with the way Bluepoint handled a lot of the game, and I'll list them out just so I don't have to string them together cohesively.
=== SOUND DESIGN ===
The worst offender, which is why I'm putting it here first. I find that all the Souls games, especially Demon's Souls, have a very deliberate stillness to their sound, with great attention taken to when noise is being made. You have your obvious times like killing an enemy or getting hit, but there's a lot of subtle ambience that often goes unnoticed (e.g. the nature sounds in 3-1) but provides a lot of atmosphere, giving so much with so little. The remake decides to ignore that design philosophy entirely and have everything make as much noise as possible, the biggest offender being your character grunting and hollering with nearly every move you make. Certain cutscenes that had a very delicate low volume are now flooded with dramatic breaths, coughs, and grunts to really sell you on just how epic this current moment is. Aside from that, there's a particularly big offense in Tower of Latria, a previously dark and skin-crawlingly eerie level turned into just a generic fantasy prison due to both overbrightening and a constant distant female vocalization. Sure, it's subjective, but I find that all of the scary atmosphere is broken by changes like that. The bosses themselves feel like they just make more noise, too? I can't really place it, but everything just feels very very loud at all times, and it feels like a complete opposite of the faint, quiet nature of the original.
=== GRAPHICS ===
The thing everyone focuses on, and one that I don't have as many personal complaints with outside of general things. Yes, it's incredibly bright. The original game had a very deliberate visual style (hey this sounds familiar) and used stark contrasts between darks and lights to create a striking image despite the lower texture and model quality; a good example of this is with the boss Maneater. In the original, it's a harshly-silhouetted flying monster against the dark Latria sky, the main thing visible being its blank green eyes, and in the remake, it just looks like a generic Warcraft monster. That's really the whole game; there's no contrast between lighting anymore, everything looks bright and comfortably lit even in times where it was a very specific and obvious choice to not have things lit, the best example of this being the Valley of Defilement. Yes, I know the original's dark swamp was hard to navigate, but that was part of the challenge, learning to navigate it. By raising the brightness to, again, a comfortable level, there's no challenge anymore, it just becomes like every other FromSoft poison swamp. Why keep things unique when you can make them like later games?
=== GAMEPLAY ===
This is simultaneously the least touched part and also the one that's maybe the most upsetting. Demon's Souls, for both its flaws and its strengths, is a unique and daring game, still fresh as a new player 14 years later. The lack of elements from future installments helped add to the uniquity of the game as well, still providing new things you had to get used to, but very appropriately fit the game due to it being designed around these "outdated" elements. Bluepoint, for whatever reason, thinks that they understand the design of this game better than the creators, and choose to add in the ability to warp to any Archstone from any Archstone, thus kneecapping the importance of the Nexus and making it feel like the "pitstop" hub world of Dark Souls 3 (and 2, to a lesser extent). In Demon's Souls, the Nexus is a safe haven, a break from all the combat to level up, upgrade your weapons and, unique to this game, attune spells and manage your inventory. Later games may have those former aspects, yes, but they lack the atmosphere that the Nexus (and similarly, Bloodborne's hub world) has that make it feel less of a hindrance, and more of a decrescendo before embarking on another adventure; a specific way that The Nexus handled this was by having each world be separated, thus making the jumps between worlds feel a little more weighty and purposeful. By being able to warp to and fro however you like, sure, it makes the game more streamlined and simple, but it takes away from that unique player choice and strips the Nexus of some of its importance. Similarly, both the inventory system and Stockpile Thomas have been butchered by a "Send to Storage" option being added in the menus and even when you pick up a potentially-overburdening item, thus removing any real importance to managing your weight at the Nexus and directly halving your amount of time spent with Thomas. In the original, he became a fan favorite character due to how reliable and compassionate he was, and that was because you saw him and used his services so much; by removing the need to see him to move items out of your inventory, you're doing that character a disservice by making him feel like a checkpoint to get your items back. Also, it bothers me to no end that they changed a couple balance things for whatever reason. By adding in a ring that allows for normal movement in swamps hidden behind Pure Black World Tendency, not only do you make the swamp seem like less of a challenge to overcome by giving the players an out, but it also makes that out incredibly tedious rather than challenging. It's not hard to use a bunch of valuable items to return to human form and dive off a cliff in 3-2, it's just time-consuming and annoying, all for a "get out of jail free" card that didn't need to be there. But I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised, considering the team wanted to add an Easy Mode before realizing that would be taking a step too far.
I know a lot of my complaints seem like nitpicking, and to be fair, they are, but they're representative of a team that didn't care about truthfully recreating the original game and just cared about drawing new players in while still keeping just enough the same to not completely invoke the rage of veterans. So, despite all my complaints, why the relatively high score? Well, because, at the end of the day, it's still Demon's Souls. It's still a good game, not so much because of Bluepoint, but rather in spite of them, and it's probably the version I'll return to the most out of sheer convenience (and a more lively online server), but I would recommend any beginner to play the original first, and then play this as a subpar substitute for getting janky emulators to work or setting up an entire older console for one game. I'm upset that I have to dislike this game, but oh well.