Bluepoint's Demon's Souls remake is somehow the most beautiful coupling of both the best and worst elements of the Soulsbournesoft franchise.
Before discussing the "game" portion, I'd like to discuss the excellent job the team did in recreating one of the most influential titles of the new milennium. Much like their Shadow of the Colossus redux, Bluepoint was working with... not a whole lot in the realm of good looking or inspiriational visuals in the source material. The ability to re-imagine the original environments, enemies, and music with modern technology and visuals as to look and feel amazing in the current gen is nothing short of amazing. Locations I visited felt like those in Elden Ring with the amount of detail poured into them, and the more Victorian settings wished for a modern touchup of Bloodborne. Everything looked and felt so visceral, when NPC's talked their faces lit up and it felt like an actual speech instead of mingling with low poly 3D models. Each individual realm/world had a distinct grime and feel to it as a result of the hardcore asset upgrading, making a crusty 3D action-adventure become an enthralling experience that drags the player in. The themes, which as I understood were also remade for this game, were a great touch to bossfights to make them feel grandiose and challenging, despite them being a breeze. Everytime I walked into a boss arena and the chorus or instrumentation hit, I was reminded of the daunting nature of Fromsoft's scope in games.
Now the less than stellar part of the Demon's Souls remake is the... Demon's Souls part of it. There's only so many things you can do to touchup a game like this while staying faithful to the source material, and that is much to the detriment of the game. Thankfully Fromsoft has clearly demonstrated some serious lesson learning in the time between the first game and Elden Ring, I mean even from Demon's Souls to Dark Souls. There were many issues with combat, the first being that it was honestly laughably easy. Enemy variety was low, once you learn the patterns just about once it becomes extremely simple to avoid death in fighting. Boss difficulty was almost comical, most bosses against my magic build took one try, only one of the sixteen that I fought took more than two (took three) because I could sit in a corner or in the boss' face and cast the same spell throughout the game's entierty. The issue with Demon's Souls, and again this is almost excusable because of its age, is that the bosses are entierly gimmicks, and once you discover how to get passed that, its free real estate. Contrast that to another game I found to be easier, Bloodborne, and that actually required learning the boss song and dance and reacting accordingly in a marathon of dodging and attacking.
The second major red flag for Demon's Soul's was the mapping, oh man it was awful. Each archstone serves as a world, and each world has 3-5 levels within it. Each level has one "bonfire" equivalent, which often leads to some bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuutal paths to the boss. On your first clear of an area you'll go through the gamut of enemies hiding around walls, holes in the ground, awkward camera angels, etc... which can kill you pretty easily. Now, death in Fromsoft games is no stranger, as you'll likely be doing a whooooole lot of it, but with Demon's Souls hp halving mechanic for the first time you die on every level, it gets real annoying. There were a few levels in which I'd die to falling off a cliff just before the boss arena, and spend an unfathomabley annoying amount of time trying to trace back and memorize enemy patterns just to get my souls, but not my HP which I could only recover by killing this boss. Most levels have this random environment RNG which made it even more aggrivating, why include the HP half mechanic? What does it add to the game other than just making it "harder" for more annoying's sake? It just feels like awful gameplay design, worse than Sekiro's dragonrot sickness by a mile because its legitimately uncurable until you kill a boss. The level-long corpse runs couple with the game's penalty for dying led for some genuinely miserable treks. Even with all this, the game took me less than fourteen hours.
All in all, Demon's Souls is a pretty decent use of time as it includes the best of Fromsoft's last fifteen or so years, but also a plethora of head scratching mechanics. I would recommend this game to fans of the Soulsbourne genre, but not at the complete pricepoint of $70, probably only half of that.
Before discussing the "game" portion, I'd like to discuss the excellent job the team did in recreating one of the most influential titles of the new milennium. Much like their Shadow of the Colossus redux, Bluepoint was working with... not a whole lot in the realm of good looking or inspiriational visuals in the source material. The ability to re-imagine the original environments, enemies, and music with modern technology and visuals as to look and feel amazing in the current gen is nothing short of amazing. Locations I visited felt like those in Elden Ring with the amount of detail poured into them, and the more Victorian settings wished for a modern touchup of Bloodborne. Everything looked and felt so visceral, when NPC's talked their faces lit up and it felt like an actual speech instead of mingling with low poly 3D models. Each individual realm/world had a distinct grime and feel to it as a result of the hardcore asset upgrading, making a crusty 3D action-adventure become an enthralling experience that drags the player in. The themes, which as I understood were also remade for this game, were a great touch to bossfights to make them feel grandiose and challenging, despite them being a breeze. Everytime I walked into a boss arena and the chorus or instrumentation hit, I was reminded of the daunting nature of Fromsoft's scope in games.
Now the less than stellar part of the Demon's Souls remake is the... Demon's Souls part of it. There's only so many things you can do to touchup a game like this while staying faithful to the source material, and that is much to the detriment of the game. Thankfully Fromsoft has clearly demonstrated some serious lesson learning in the time between the first game and Elden Ring, I mean even from Demon's Souls to Dark Souls. There were many issues with combat, the first being that it was honestly laughably easy. Enemy variety was low, once you learn the patterns just about once it becomes extremely simple to avoid death in fighting. Boss difficulty was almost comical, most bosses against my magic build took one try, only one of the sixteen that I fought took more than two (took three) because I could sit in a corner or in the boss' face and cast the same spell throughout the game's entierty. The issue with Demon's Souls, and again this is almost excusable because of its age, is that the bosses are entierly gimmicks, and once you discover how to get passed that, its free real estate. Contrast that to another game I found to be easier, Bloodborne, and that actually required learning the boss song and dance and reacting accordingly in a marathon of dodging and attacking.
The second major red flag for Demon's Soul's was the mapping, oh man it was awful. Each archstone serves as a world, and each world has 3-5 levels within it. Each level has one "bonfire" equivalent, which often leads to some bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuutal paths to the boss. On your first clear of an area you'll go through the gamut of enemies hiding around walls, holes in the ground, awkward camera angels, etc... which can kill you pretty easily. Now, death in Fromsoft games is no stranger, as you'll likely be doing a whooooole lot of it, but with Demon's Souls hp halving mechanic for the first time you die on every level, it gets real annoying. There were a few levels in which I'd die to falling off a cliff just before the boss arena, and spend an unfathomabley annoying amount of time trying to trace back and memorize enemy patterns just to get my souls, but not my HP which I could only recover by killing this boss. Most levels have this random environment RNG which made it even more aggrivating, why include the HP half mechanic? What does it add to the game other than just making it "harder" for more annoying's sake? It just feels like awful gameplay design, worse than Sekiro's dragonrot sickness by a mile because its legitimately uncurable until you kill a boss. The level-long corpse runs couple with the game's penalty for dying led for some genuinely miserable treks. Even with all this, the game took me less than fourteen hours.
All in all, Demon's Souls is a pretty decent use of time as it includes the best of Fromsoft's last fifteen or so years, but also a plethora of head scratching mechanics. I would recommend this game to fans of the Soulsbourne genre, but not at the complete pricepoint of $70, probably only half of that.
Reviewed on Aug 12, 2022