I have a hard time rating demon's souls, a flawed but beautiful game that deserves more love. (This review is ramble btw). One if its most impressive aspects (or saddest revelations) to me is how even 14 years later it still manages to be fresh. The world in Demon's souls while lacking the graphics of Elden Ring or Dark Souls 3 is more alive, thoughtful, memorable and real than it ever where. Each level is a master in mood and tone creating a genuinely bleak, depressing and disgusting atmosphere. Even with this horrid atmosphere the level are still incredibly fun and engaging, having a perfect pace of new items, locations, enemies, or characters anytime the player starts getting tired of the status quo. The world feeling so real is also multiplied by the consequence of the gameplay. Demon Souls of any souls game makes an effort to make death feel impactful. Killing Characters or diying while human will decrease 'soul tendancy'. This will lock you off from getting cool weapons and make enemies harder. A very interesting mechanic when combined with the fact NPCs can often drop fantastic loot and being human doubles the health bar. And while execution of this not the best its certain a shame i think that this dropped instead of developed in the spiritual sequels.

So why is Demon Souls not seen with classic status and more as a 'stepping stone'. Well, it comes down to three flaws. (Oddly these flaws are not addressed in the remake apparently)
1. The bosses. While each one is very unique I do wish alot of them weren't so easy to cheese. Most bosses are more puzzles than tests of power. and while i dont really like the flailing arms fest we have now at least those ones have more going on once you find out their moves. In demon souls once the weakness is found its practically over. It makes alot these fights feel rather anti-climatic even with unique feel each one has.
2. is healing. Its broken. Not really much to say rather than while glad i never had to farm, always being able to heal whenever does rather cheapen each hit.
3. It big brother overshadows it. Almost everyone played Dark Souls first and while Demons is certainly more consistent in quality, Dark souls just has alot alot alot more going on in every way. So not as easy to be impressed by the game just by the fact they are about 4ish sequels that either do everything better or bigger.

Overall an 8/9 out of ten for me. If you hava half-decent modern PC install rpcs3 and boot it up. Great for beginners of the genre and for long-time veterans.

Coming back to this game and getting it feel so rewarding. I tried a few months ago and put it down around 4-1 due to it feeling too unforgiving and frustrating, with not enough moments of satisfaction afterwards, but even then I knew there was something special about this game. Now, I'll admit that it is a near impossibility to not relate this game to the members of the lineage that it spawned, especially with this being the last one I played in said series, but it really is mind-blowing just how much right they got from the start.

I've made it no secret that Dark Souls 1 is by far my favorite entry in the Soulsborne collective, and I made the foolish-in-hindsight error of praising it for concepts like bloodstains, messages, summoning, etc. while never acknowledging that this game did it first. I knew it did, but I wanted to believe that "oh, this is some archaic version of the TRUE VISION that is DS1"; I could not be more incorrect. While it is true that the later games in the series did polish up a lot of various aspects, the core gameplay and soul (no pun intended) of the series was exquisitely laid out here. Infinite retries, big boss battles, XP currency, the multiplayer aspects, all of that started from this. I know I'm repeating myself a lot, but it is genuinely unbelievable that so many unique and now iconic mechanics in video games were done perfect in the first attempt. But enough waxing poetic about its history, how does it hold up on its own?

Demon's Souls takes an incredibly interesting and subversive look at the concepts of "levels", with everything feeling simultaneously extremely segmented yet also open and fluid. The five worlds you're given are all wildly different from each other, some experimenting in verticality, some experimenting with status effects and different elemental damage, each one having not a gimmick but rather a theme that makes them all super memorable and unique. As an aside, it's also really cool to see the flickering wisps of level design ideas that would go on to be recreated in later games. The individual segments within the worlds also switch things up between each one, with the layout of said levels being absolutely superb. The leanest cut of meat possible; every walkway, every set of stairs, every top and bottom of every single room is crafted with the express intent of "the player will go here for a reason", there is positively zero wasted space. The use of shortcuts, while regrettably a little sparse, also makes thorough searching and emptying of every level that much more rewarding, for you may be able to save yourself some extreme repetition should you fail at the boss. Speaking of bosses...

It seems as though the biggest turn-off for this game for a great many amount of people, specifically Souls fans, are the bosses being "underwhelming". Well, yes, but it feels a bit unfair to say that considering this was the first attempt at doing boss fights in this style, especially before the shift away from having the runback to the boss be part of the challenge. Now, I'll admit that I do prefer the quality bosses we got later on after the reduction of said runbacks, but that doesn't mean these are "bad", they just strike a different tone. It's a comparison many people have made, but they feel more like the puzzle bosses of Zelda games, except here they serve a slightly different purpose. Here, they're checkpoints, the things preventing you from seeing the rest of the world you're in, and that factor alone gives you the motivation to beat them. I wanted to see the rest of the Tower of Latria, which made me all the more determined to beat Fool's Idol, despite the demoralizing taste of failure and remembering the required runback. But, seeing what awaited me made it totally worth it, which retroactively adds to the challenge and satisfaction of beating these bosses.

I've held off on talking about this, since it's so subjective, but good lord is this game beautiful. Sure, maybe not in the "traditional" sense (ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵉᵐᵃᵏᵉ ˢᵗᵘᶜᵏ ᵗᵒᵒ ᶜˡᵒˢᵉ ᵗᵒ), but it has a wistful, half-forgotten feeling to the art style, like a canvas that's been hung up in a gallery for a long, long time. It's faded and worn, but in a way, that adds to its melancholy. The architecture feels like a perfect blend of the familiar medieval and the dream-like uncanny, often stepping between the two at a moment's notice, which adds so much to the thick, foggy atmosphere that completely blankets this game. That atmosphere alone is what really sets this game apart from the rest, not just the (rather overstated) Soul Tendency system or the Archstones; I've made the "playing a painting" comparison to Dark Souls 1 many times, but I feel like this game might encapsulate that feeling better. Seeing 3-2 made me feel like I was seeing something that's never been done before or since in video games.

Not much else I can say. The main thing holding this back for me is just the clunk being a bit too much for me to want to come back to as often as I do the other games, and builds being much more strict, but I think that aspect adds to the weight of your adventure and purpose in the game's world. Though, I can not stress enough, even if I think other games provide this gameplay style in a more refined and replayable way, this game has a feeling to it that none of the others come close to; a feeling strong enough that it outweighs nearly all the negative feelings I have towards certain parts. A very special game made by a team of very special people.

Less consistently scary, but more fun, both in its stealth and shooting.

Yet I found myself missing the highs of fear from the first one or the constant dread I felt walking down the unpredictable villages, city streets, and hospitals of the first game.

The story manages to somehow be even hammier than the first one, but I can’t deny that as a parent the start of the game really worked for me - running into a burning building, knowing I’d die trying to save her, I thought, if it was my kid yelling for her daddy to help, I would to it instantly, fuck all my chances of survival. And while the finale of the game felt mechanically lackluster (especially the shooting gallery parts), as a parent and married, I found it touching and my love for Sebastian, the protagonist, was higher than ever before seeing the way he carried his daughter. And to think I actually missed the moody serious Sebastian from the previous game at first.

Some of the story stuff about overcoming grief and understanding that you are not at fault for things that you didn’t have any power over is also pretty good. And this time it also didn't take 6 hours for the game to finally start explaining something or giving you a proper goal.

Everything with the administrator is whacked though (and what is it with his animations? What is he doing with his hands all the time? Why? Nobody gesticulates like that). And I kinda low-key hated where the story went with most of the side-characters, thinking “fucking bullshit” more than once.

But I did like Union the city, even though I think it doesn’t do enough to stand out as a memorable video game place. There were some moments though where I had the same kind of nostalgic-for-stereotypical-life-from-the-movies feeling that so heavily pervaded my experience of Control (even though covid isolation has long since ended in my country), but the downside of the stealth and open maps is that the rules governing the enemy AI become more clear and the game itself through that feels safer. A horror game is less effective with its horror when it’s approached as just a set of mechanics and rules meant to create an experience. You’re supposed to fear the monsters, not think how juking them in unrealistic ways can allow you to backstab the whole gang without wasting any ammo.

Ultimately it’s this gaminess that proved to undermine the game for me. As the end was approaching, I was ready to be done with it, so facing another small area with a new enemy filled me with dread not for the monsters, but the boredom. There’s not enough ammunition to really enjoy it as an action game (at least not on Nightmare) so you’re forced to mess around with the AI in silly ways to succeed.

Crafting is another part of the game where I appreciate them trying something new, but with it is also gone the precise balance of ammunition from the first game where you always had too little to feel good but enough to survive that made it feel so great and added to the constant dread. Here there are times when I had to scavenge around before I could do sidequests because I just didn’t have enough ammunition to survive them; and bosses take so long that they have to magically keep refilling ammo drops for you to be able to survive.

I still enjoyed the game and coupled with the first Evil Within (which is in many ways a very different game, in some ways worse and in others better) I quite like this series. I’m both sad that there’s no third Evil Within, but also glad that poor Sebastian didn’t have to return to this hell again.

Damn. Truly one of the best pieces of media ever. Horror as a genre is punk as hell and this game just elevates that on so many levels. It's not a joke when people say this game is a masterpiece. Like yeah, it may not hold up great gameplay-wise today (I love tank controls, fight me) and while REmake 2002's gameplay is definitely the pinnacle of tank control survival-horror, Silent Hill 2 excels in every other way.

When I was younger I would just watch let's plays of this game because I was too scared to actually play it. I played it all the way through for the first time these past few days and let me say that it was one of the best experience I've ever had with any art form. The game is gut-wrenching, horrifying, beautiful, and depressing.

I'll admit, I haven't been feeling myself for a long time now. Not many other games have really touched me aside from Disco Elysium, TLOU2, and the Mass Effect Trilogy. This game really spoke to me and that could be due to the ending I got for this playthrough (which trust me, I'll continue playing until I get all the endings) but I was entranced by the whole experience.

Yeah, there were moments where I needed a walkthrough but for the most part I managed to get through by myself despite how fucking scared I was the entire time lol. The game is also extremely charming with it's awkward acting (which some would say adds to the uncanny valley, making it even more unsettling), the outdated graphics, and again the archaic tank controls. Some may not be able to look past these things which is fine, I'm sure the remake will be sufficient enough in those departments. However, I highly doubt the remake will capture the magic in this game (if you see the trailer, James' car door is closed. The implications of that alone goes to show that they don't have a clue as to what that means). The story, the atmosphere, the sound effects, the music, oh god the music is so damn good. I'm just utterly in love with Akira Yamaoka's soundtrack.

I could go on and on about how greatly this game affected me but I'll save that for another time. It's no joke when people say this is one of the best games ever made. I think it's possibly the greatest horror game ever made, I don't know, I got to play SH3 which I know is a favorite for many as well. Amazing game, an amazing experience, absolutely stunning, I recommend. I personally played the Enhanced Edition on PC but I'm definitely gonna find a copy to play on my PS2 and buy a CRT tv because this game is worth it. On to get the rest of the endings!