This review contains spoilers
Demon’s Souls is a “world mending” simulator/fantasy action RPG developed by FromSoftware as an exclusive for the Playstation 3 and published by Sony themselves. I’m personally unsure how the development went but from what I understand, it originally started as a title in their notorious “King’s Field” series before eventually falling into disarray due to a lack of vision. The development had been an underwhelming failure, and nothing had seemed to work as well as anyone wanted it to. However, one man was supposed to have saved it all: a man named Hidetaka Miyazaki. This man was kinda told to go HAM and do what he wanted, as with the game being deemed a failure but still needing to ship out a product, they didn’t really give a shit about what had happened. However, Miyazaki’s involvement led to it being transformed into the beast it was today, not only due to transformed mechanics but also due to the fact that the uppers at Sony didn’t really give a shit (though the difficulty of the gameplay was kept hidden to make sure it wasn’t asked to be removed). What ended up being released was a game of historical scale within the gaming industry, one of which I didn’t experience until much later.
My history with the Souls series has always been a bit of a strange one and truthfully goes way back to my love of H.P. Lovecraft. I had gotten a Playstation 3 a little bit earlier, but I had then decided at the drop of a hat in 2017 that I wanted to buy a Playstation 4. I needed games for this console and had decided on buying three games: Yakuza 0 (because I love Yakuza), Until Dawn and Bloodborne, all Playstation 4 exclusives at that time. I had also gotten into Bloodborne because my sister had shown interest in the game as well so it was something we could try together and with it being an exclusive I had picked it up. I sucked at Bloodborne when I first tried it and it scared me but after a while I had grown to love it to pieces. From there I had gone on a little bit of a Souls kick, and had decided at the time to purchase copies of Demon’s Souls as well as the rest of the Dark Souls series. When I first started playing Demon’s Souls, it had been a strange moment in my life to be honest.
If I remember correctly, I was in the middle of girl problems and my grandfather had just died, and I had started playing Demon’s Souls as soon as I had gotten home from the funeral. In that state, everything had just hit me: the soundtrack, the satisfying combat, the world, the sadness of it all. It felt like bliss, as something I wanted to give a full playthrough. Over the next while I sucked at it, killed bosses, learned the tricks (as well as a duplication glitch), and was on my way to beating the game. A while later while balancing different consoles I had platinumed Bloodborne as my first platinum trophy and had decided to go on a Souls game run, not thinking I would turn into a trophy hunter AGAIN after quitting achievement hunting on Xbox 360 and Xbox One. My personal journey towards the Demon’s Souls platinum would take around a year and five months, but I’ll go into that during the end. For now, I want to tell you why this game deserves the love even in spite of some outdated design compared to the newer titles.
The plot of Demon’s Souls is one that’s a very miniscule one, but one deep and rich in lore. There is no in depth plot synopsis, but one that starts with your player character being one of many who penetrate a giant wall of fog that surrounds the kingdom of Boletaria due to a threat from “The Old One”. You’ll go through a series of areas before eventually either dying to the first boss (most likely) or getting punched out by The Dragon God (which happens if you beat the first boss, and you get to pick up a bunch of loot before dying). Waking up in The Nexus, your soul is bound to it as The Maiden in Black sends you on a quest to free the five different regions of Boletaria from their souls in order to gain power to lay “The Old One” back to slumber. Along the way you’ll learn that the cause of this was due to the current king, King Allant, bringing back the Souls Arts, which stems from the Old One’s powers and therefore caused the apocalypse to begin with. However, along the way you’ll run into helpful wanderers (Sage Freke for example, whom can help you gain new powers in exchange for boss souls if you rescue him), real bastards (like Patches the Hyena, a tricky fucker who likes to lure you into traps only to kick you to your supposed doom before apologizing and declaring that he didn’t mean to. He’s a fun recurring character throughout most of the Souls games), and beings of pure evil (DO NOT recruit Yurt, your people will die).
Overall, there are times where I can be a little bit mixed on the lack of info in terms of story building. What I can say however is that I’ve always loved how the Souls games spread their lore apart. You don’t 100 percent know what’s true, or even if an interpretation of an interpretation IS the right one. You’ll learn bits and pieces to fit together a puzzle but never enough to get something totally comprehensive, which I think in itself is pretty cool and sparks the imagination. I don’t mind going into a story knowing a whole lot more, in fact I’m a bit of a weird spoiler freak so people could tell me the plot to say a new movie and I’d still enjoy it the same as I would’ve without it. HOWEVER, I appreciate how it doesn’t tell you much and in a way I still think that the Souls Franchise and Siren are still the top two titles for me in which you don’t have much in the way explained while still holding your interest. The exact polar opposite to this effect would be Outlast 2, which didn’t explain shit except giving you the twist in ONE document and the game was a lot worse off for it. The characters are all interesting and enigmatic, each giving a flavor to the atmosphere of Demon’s Souls which I LOVED to death when I first played it.
In fact, let's go into the atmosphere here: it’s fantastic. It’s this oppressive yet mystical place, colorful yet dark in nature. Each location is a unique place all on its own, with its own separate vibes. The first world of Boletaria (aka the Archstone of the Small King) is sunny yet suffers in the aftermath of what looks like a warzone, with pieces of wall destroyed and bodies all over the place. Dragons fly over and attempt to kill you at various points and you can run into characters like Biorr or Ostrava, a knight who only wants to search for his father. The second world is dry and hellish, literally because you start out on a desert mountain and your journey into the depths of the caves only gets more and more terrifying. With all of the worlds, I’ll be the first to say that the second world (aka the Archstone of the Burrow King) is the most…eclectic. It has some of the scariest and most bullshit boss fights (scary being Flamelurker, and bullshit being the Spider and the Dragon God). This is also where you’ll most likely encounter Patches the Hyena first, suspiciously next to a giant fire beetle. It’s a scary place and I don’t enjoy the premise of being burned alive, though if I were to recommend a place to start any platinum world tendency runs, this is where I would suggest it is first. It has the least amount of stuff needed (if I remember correctly) while also allowing you to get most of the stupid shit done and out of the way first.
The third world (aka the Archstone of the Tower Queen) is a dark, decrepit and confusing place. Starting out in a prison tower, this maze feels like something out of a medieval Hellraiser movie, with prison cells filled with corpse husks walking around and begging for death. Iron Maidens and chains riddle these decrepit and dirty cell blocks, akin to the U.S. Prison System is guarded by Lovecraft-esque monsters who will suck the life out of you in one shot if they ever grab onto you. With each layer you ascend it only gets more and more creepy, though it’s far from the worst or the most hopeless world that Demon’s Souls has to offer. You’ll hear ghostly wails surrounding this field of towers, surrounded by smog and filled with bridges you could get knocked off of if not careful by angry gargoyles. The last world is literally just an ascent up another giant tower in order to fight the Old Monk, a goofy bastard with a tornado for a headpiece but that’s usually another player that’s been summoned. However the throne room that surrounds this arena is filled with chairs that, while you can’t climb, seem to build all the way to the top of some glorified throne room in some sort of Papal church design.
The fourth world (aka the Archstone of the Shadowmen) is the world I like the best aesthetically other than the first one. It’s still riddled with corpses, craters and creepy caverns but it also has this peaceful aura, a blue sky surrounded by floating sting rays that shoot crystals at you. Granted the friendliness and peace of this world is kinda counteracted by the rolling skeletons who could eat a fat fucking dick or twelve but still the serenity that this world has to the others is unparalleled. It’s a place filled with nature, with water, with all of these sort of things that I can’t say enough positive things about. However, the fifth world (aka the Archstone of the Chieftain) is both aesthetically and atmospherically the worst. Yes, it’s a giant poison swamp world filled with black, charred corpses and looking like Detroit in the late 80s with it’s homes looking like a bad insurance fraud scheme. However, all of this black also just kind of feels lazy and I think for the most part that most people would agree: the poison swamp areas in all of the Souls series suck the most. I’m never going to pretend to like this area, and will probably be the last area that I go to on all of my playthroughs.
However, even with the swamps not being my favorite I can’t say that it doesn’t add onto the oppressiveness of the worlds that you’ll roam in the land of Boletaria. I can at least say for the most part, each world has its own unique style that you won’t really forget once you go through them. It’s a beautiful land, and finally I want to speak on the Nexus itself. The Nexus is home, a home that’s rather spacey and confusing to navigate sometimes but that’s just how it is. If you were to climb all of the staircases you will meet the Monumental One, who will give you stuff depending on your story place and your character tendency. However, the main areas you will go to is within the small circle on the first floor. It’s here where you will see all five archstones of which you’ll travel to the many lands, encounter many of the characters that you’ve seen before on the quests. And let me just say, this place is immaculately designed and feels warm, it feels like home. The Maiden in Black’s peaceful presence to all of your friends (and some of your enemies, fuck you Patches) welcoming you. The magical floors on the bottom which feels both solid and floaty at the same time, it’s just an amazing feeling. Before I move onto the sound design, I’d like to bring up the graphics for the original here: they’re fine. They look like 2009, with most of the human models looking for the most part okay. It’s not crisp HD, if you want that then play the PS5 remake but most of the models look fine human wise. Monster wise they look terrifying which does it’s job correctly. I don’t know, I don’t really have much to say about the graphics except sometimes it looks a bit smeary but that’s not something I was really bothered by.
I’ll start on the sound design with the soundtrack: the soundtrack is amazing! I picked this shit up on CD a long time ago, and was able to do so after buying a buddy of mine a “Game of the Year” bundle for his PS3 while keeping the CD for myself. Shunsuke Kida did a phenomenal job creating a soundtrack full of memorable bangers. The intro cutscene music for Demon’s Souls will be one you hear often, while other tracks I loved were Tower Knight with the badass chanting (which just sounds like the boss laughing at you), Old Hero sounds like a somber Zelda-styled track which shows the former shell of what the boss used to be, Leechmonger is imposing in its use of strings even if the boss itself isn’t that great, while the Character Creation Theme is something that I honestly sometimes use to go to sleep. It’s peaceful and brings a feeling of serenity that not a lot of shit can do aside from the Silent Hill soundtrack or “The Horse with No Name” by America. The rest of the soundtrack just flows into each other pretty well or fits the game perfectly even if I wouldn’t exactly listen to these often (though to be honest, I mostly listen to hip hop/R&B so what can you do) but everything just fits and it’s great.
The last piece of the sound design is the literal sound design: how does everything fit/feel? Does it work well in context with the environment? Yes I’d say it does. Thrusting with the sword feels powerful and has this sharp sound which sounds like blood could be dripping out, while magic feels ethereal yet powerful (or not so much, depending on the spell). Footsteps sound pretty damn good, and enemies sound intimidating with their roars, their clunks and all of that shit. The voice acting is something that’s pretty good too! You know the feeling when you can’t recognize anyone in a movie or a play but you can tell they did a terrific job portraying the world that they live in? Yeah that’s what it feels like, filled with old english sounding dialogue and soft spoken yet sad sounding words. The only name I can sort of recognize from the IMDB is Christopher Fairbank though I genuinely don’t remember if I’ve seen or heard him in anything. Either way, all the sound design shit is fucking good and fits cohesively with the world so no complaints.
The gameplay is why Demon’s Souls (along with its successors) is truly known amongst gamers around the world however. Miyazaki had a goal set in mind for this: difficult but with the trade that it led to more satisfaction when conquering a goal. I have no real feeling about this as I’m the kind of dude who would use cheat codes in a single player game and still get good vibes but what I’ll say is that the game isn’t difficult just for being difficult. Sure, are there bullshit enemies and bosses? Yes, but I’d dare say that it’s in how the mechanics feel and work that really excel the title to the top of the list. It’ll never not feel satisfying rolling through an enemy’s attack at the exact precise moment (with something called an eye frame) and getting no damage before going in for a backstab from behind. But truthfully I’m getting ahead of myself, what is this game all about?
You start by creating your own character and choosing your own class (of which Royalty is considered the best one due to the fact that magic is overpowered as hell). You go through a couple different locations, killing enemies while dodging their attacks and picking up pieces of armor, health items (called Moon Grass here), weapons, projectiles and the like. Eventually you make your way to the first boss: the Vanguard Demon. This is where the game will break you for the first time as you will get skull stomped into the ground almost immediately unless you are on top of your shit. You may pass this boss but either way you will die and be sent to the Nexus. The game’s concept is about dying and surviving, learning from your mistakes and moving forward with a better understanding of what you need to do and how to do it. That’s not to say that you will get it the second time, the third time or even ten more times after that. But somehow, somehow, something will stick.
From the Nexus you will be introduced to three concepts: one is the Maiden in Black. When you kill enemies and gather souls (or beat boss battles), you can come back to the Nexus and present your souls to the Maiden in Black to level up. Here is where you kind of have to come up with a class, and learn a bit about what you need. You can’t equal everything out as you’ll still be a bit on the weak side so you need to be a master of some and put souls into some skills as much as you can. If, say you’re a magic user and you decide to put in souls for Intelligence and Magic use then it’ll power you in certain areas (with certain weapons and clothes also helping certain classes) but at the same time you’ll neglect others. One thing I do want to bring up here as a legit problem is probably the Item Encumberment, which was later dropped from Dark Souls onwards thankfully. However, in Demon’s Souls OG it can be a legitimate problem and you kind of have to keep an eye on it as unlike the Remake, I don’t remember you being able to send anything into the stockpile.
The next concept is NPCs and their quests, which you will encounter throughout the game as you explore the world's you roam. Each of these quests can end well or terribly depending on your decisions (or lack thereof). There are some NPCs you might not even run into unless you looked it up beforehand or did certain quests and events. Some you might just run into randomly if you’re not paying attention, but a lot of these quests gain certain rewards. Some of these NPCs could also be enemies later on that you’ll need to fight down the line. These could be as simple as upgrading materials, souls or as good as weapons and such. What I’ll say is for the upgrade materials are great, but within Demon’s Souls there are a lot of ranks. The higher it is, the more rare it is and these can only be found within certain parameters or by grinding what I call “loot lizards” (shiny fuckers which only spawn once or twice within every boss death if you kill them) and if you don’t get certain stones then you could be screwed out of a trophy for a run and there are A LOT of fully upgraded weapon trophies which you’ll need rare stones for. Luckily, by joining a Discord server and configuring your PS3 online, you’ll be able to join up and make trades with players if all goes well as I did.
The last concept here is exploring the worlds, of which there are five (with a six archstone broken and cut during in-game development). Each world has three to five sections in which you’ll explore, with each section ending with a boss to defeat. Some of these bosses have gimmicks (like the Fool’s Idol, which requires you to kill an NPC with exploration) or the Dragon God (which is a pain in the fucking ass and has gameplay akin to Metal Gear then an RPG) while some just require straight up combat. Either way, most of these bosses are unique and add personality to them and the world surrounding them. However, this is where I’ll introduce another concept: World Tendency. If you are revived from your Soul form (of which you’ll have 50-75% left health) and die in Human form in one of these worlds, then your world tendency goes down. Either way if you die, your souls are dropped and you have to run back to where you were and grab them: if by any means you can’t grab them and you die again then they’re lost forever. Unrelated you can also read (and rate) notes of various quality that could help you or get you killed that you or other players can put down as well as see the red shadows of other players who’ve died, warning you of potential traps. Now world tendency as a concept is neat: if you’re in Black World Tendency it gets more difficult but has exclusive events (needed for trophies) and more loot drops. However, getting back up to World Tendency is a real bitch if you don’t have any boss battles left and requires an online connection (either through the Discord Servers having special events) or through grinding out special demons/invaders. If I were to recommend something, I’d say each time you get your human form back, go to the Nexus and jump off a cliff. Then go back to the world and fight the next boss, rinse and repeat. By the time you’re done, you should have white world tendency and can unlock exclusive events to those tendencies. Afterwards if you have enough ephemeral eyes (or coop play with enough people), you can die and do that all over again until Black Tendency. Here’s the problem though: as cool as this concept is, it’s a pain in the ass and if you’re a completionist like me, that means you have to handicap yourself (or be REALLY good) for the entire game at 50% (or 75% if you have a special ring that’ll boost your health up).
The last concept I’ll bring up before I leave the rest to the player is cooperative play: it doesn’t play like Call of Duty with lobby searches. What it involves is this: if you’re summoning then you need to be in human form in order to recruit someone. You could do a random (either by random password or by better chance, no passwords) or a friend (through specific passwords); they pop in your game and can help you make progress through a certain world section. If you beat the boss they disappear, rinse and repeat to the next one. To become summonable on the other hand is a whole ‘nother ball game other than using passwords. To become a summonable helper, you need the Blue Eyed Stone: you need to be a phantom and set down the stone and you can be brought into the next world. There’s also the Black and Red Stones, in which you can invade another player's world as an enemy. According to the wiki, the Red Stones are summoned only and involve a battle for souls while the Black Stones are forcefully put into another player’s world. The Blue Stone comes from the Maiden in Black after defeating the Phalanx Boss, the Black Eyed Stone comes from killing a Black Phantom and the Red Eyed Stone involves killing the Maiden of Black and getting the bad ending at the end of the game. There are only two endings and it either involves killing her or not killing her so thankfully it doesn’t require crazy requirements.
A long while after having beaten the game and deciding to temporarily give up on grinding for the upgrade trophies, it was announced that a special group on Discord was reviving the servers for the original Playstation 3 game. I was ecstatic and jumped in as soon as I could, both reliving the classic again but also engaging with the community and making trades with others in order to get the trophies. The online wasn’t around (or at least it was abandoned) when I first started so getting to play with others and even invade them was a bit of a trip the next time around. I still to this day remember the last trophy I had gotten which I believe was the “Soldier’s Trophy”, for obtaining all of the weapons. I had obtained the platinum through the trade, and while for a moment I had decided that I would perhaps duplicate the weapons and give them back, I had just decided at that moment to just go butt ass naked and give everything back to the one (or maybe two? I don’t remember) people that had joined me to help them get their trophies and such as well. I had logged off of my profile and most likely my character forever, a journey completed in the original game with a sense of accomplishment. Demon’s Souls was a difficult platinum to get and not a lot of people got it, ESPECIALLY as their fifth game. I always held a place for the original Demon’s Souls in my heart and I always will; evidently so did the rest of the community surrounding the Souls game as the future of FromSoftware would show.
This future would propel the studio into a new direction entirely with the critical acclaim of Demons Souls. The financial success wouldn’t really land, only selling around 20,000 copies until demand in the west led to Atlus publishing it overseas. They would go on to release a couple of new titles here and there, but their main focus of financial success would reside in their mech games (like Armored Core) and future Souls games. Whilst Demon’s Souls was popular (especially in Japan), it was the success of the spiritual successor Dark Souls that would hit worldwide in 2011 with critical acclaim and a successful series of titles after that, including future Playstation exclusive Bloodborne (which would at first have narrative links to Demon’s Souls before being purged altogether, and would retain Miyazaki as director), the rest of the Dark Souls series, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (originally a Tenchu reboot) while creating the magnum opus of the series: Elden Ring. There was so much success in this formula that it would spin off into it’s own genre, labeled the “Souls-like” which would be used by games like Nioh, Lords of the Fallen, Lies of P, and The Surge amongst many others. HOWEVER, the history of Demon’s Souls wouldn’t end there as during the Playstation 5 reveal event in June of 2020, with a release date later arriving in November of 2020. I hadn’t played it yet until Fall of 2021 during a depression slump before temporarily shelving it and moving my playthrough to the end of 2023/beginning of 2024. However, before I go I’m just going to say one thing: the fact that there’s absolutely no port of the original or remake of this game on PC (as well as Bloodborne!) fucking blows and I’m disappointed in Sony for not putting these games as I genuinely feel this shit would sell like hotcakes. Only place you can play this game now on PC is probably the PS3 emulator (RPCS3), of which I’ll put down the files I uploaded to Internet Archive below in the links list.
Links:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1537739/ (IMDB)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls
https://demonssouls.fandom.com/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls_Wiki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezcNxSfa3Tg&ab_channel=Jepedillo (Youtube OST)
https://downloads.khinsider.com/search?search=Demon%27s+Souls
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/DemonsSouls
https://archive.org/details/demons_souls_rpcs3_iso
https://gamerant.com/demons-souls-crazy-development-stories/#western-audiences-weren-t-supposed-to-play-it
https://dondonrv.com/c/115/the-making-of-demon-s-souls
https://www.eurogamer.net/demons-souls-was-a-failure-before-miyazaki-stepped-up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjkdKKgmofA&ab_channel=LanceMcDonald
My history with the Souls series has always been a bit of a strange one and truthfully goes way back to my love of H.P. Lovecraft. I had gotten a Playstation 3 a little bit earlier, but I had then decided at the drop of a hat in 2017 that I wanted to buy a Playstation 4. I needed games for this console and had decided on buying three games: Yakuza 0 (because I love Yakuza), Until Dawn and Bloodborne, all Playstation 4 exclusives at that time. I had also gotten into Bloodborne because my sister had shown interest in the game as well so it was something we could try together and with it being an exclusive I had picked it up. I sucked at Bloodborne when I first tried it and it scared me but after a while I had grown to love it to pieces. From there I had gone on a little bit of a Souls kick, and had decided at the time to purchase copies of Demon’s Souls as well as the rest of the Dark Souls series. When I first started playing Demon’s Souls, it had been a strange moment in my life to be honest.
If I remember correctly, I was in the middle of girl problems and my grandfather had just died, and I had started playing Demon’s Souls as soon as I had gotten home from the funeral. In that state, everything had just hit me: the soundtrack, the satisfying combat, the world, the sadness of it all. It felt like bliss, as something I wanted to give a full playthrough. Over the next while I sucked at it, killed bosses, learned the tricks (as well as a duplication glitch), and was on my way to beating the game. A while later while balancing different consoles I had platinumed Bloodborne as my first platinum trophy and had decided to go on a Souls game run, not thinking I would turn into a trophy hunter AGAIN after quitting achievement hunting on Xbox 360 and Xbox One. My personal journey towards the Demon’s Souls platinum would take around a year and five months, but I’ll go into that during the end. For now, I want to tell you why this game deserves the love even in spite of some outdated design compared to the newer titles.
The plot of Demon’s Souls is one that’s a very miniscule one, but one deep and rich in lore. There is no in depth plot synopsis, but one that starts with your player character being one of many who penetrate a giant wall of fog that surrounds the kingdom of Boletaria due to a threat from “The Old One”. You’ll go through a series of areas before eventually either dying to the first boss (most likely) or getting punched out by The Dragon God (which happens if you beat the first boss, and you get to pick up a bunch of loot before dying). Waking up in The Nexus, your soul is bound to it as The Maiden in Black sends you on a quest to free the five different regions of Boletaria from their souls in order to gain power to lay “The Old One” back to slumber. Along the way you’ll learn that the cause of this was due to the current king, King Allant, bringing back the Souls Arts, which stems from the Old One’s powers and therefore caused the apocalypse to begin with. However, along the way you’ll run into helpful wanderers (Sage Freke for example, whom can help you gain new powers in exchange for boss souls if you rescue him), real bastards (like Patches the Hyena, a tricky fucker who likes to lure you into traps only to kick you to your supposed doom before apologizing and declaring that he didn’t mean to. He’s a fun recurring character throughout most of the Souls games), and beings of pure evil (DO NOT recruit Yurt, your people will die).
Overall, there are times where I can be a little bit mixed on the lack of info in terms of story building. What I can say however is that I’ve always loved how the Souls games spread their lore apart. You don’t 100 percent know what’s true, or even if an interpretation of an interpretation IS the right one. You’ll learn bits and pieces to fit together a puzzle but never enough to get something totally comprehensive, which I think in itself is pretty cool and sparks the imagination. I don’t mind going into a story knowing a whole lot more, in fact I’m a bit of a weird spoiler freak so people could tell me the plot to say a new movie and I’d still enjoy it the same as I would’ve without it. HOWEVER, I appreciate how it doesn’t tell you much and in a way I still think that the Souls Franchise and Siren are still the top two titles for me in which you don’t have much in the way explained while still holding your interest. The exact polar opposite to this effect would be Outlast 2, which didn’t explain shit except giving you the twist in ONE document and the game was a lot worse off for it. The characters are all interesting and enigmatic, each giving a flavor to the atmosphere of Demon’s Souls which I LOVED to death when I first played it.
In fact, let's go into the atmosphere here: it’s fantastic. It’s this oppressive yet mystical place, colorful yet dark in nature. Each location is a unique place all on its own, with its own separate vibes. The first world of Boletaria (aka the Archstone of the Small King) is sunny yet suffers in the aftermath of what looks like a warzone, with pieces of wall destroyed and bodies all over the place. Dragons fly over and attempt to kill you at various points and you can run into characters like Biorr or Ostrava, a knight who only wants to search for his father. The second world is dry and hellish, literally because you start out on a desert mountain and your journey into the depths of the caves only gets more and more terrifying. With all of the worlds, I’ll be the first to say that the second world (aka the Archstone of the Burrow King) is the most…eclectic. It has some of the scariest and most bullshit boss fights (scary being Flamelurker, and bullshit being the Spider and the Dragon God). This is also where you’ll most likely encounter Patches the Hyena first, suspiciously next to a giant fire beetle. It’s a scary place and I don’t enjoy the premise of being burned alive, though if I were to recommend a place to start any platinum world tendency runs, this is where I would suggest it is first. It has the least amount of stuff needed (if I remember correctly) while also allowing you to get most of the stupid shit done and out of the way first.
The third world (aka the Archstone of the Tower Queen) is a dark, decrepit and confusing place. Starting out in a prison tower, this maze feels like something out of a medieval Hellraiser movie, with prison cells filled with corpse husks walking around and begging for death. Iron Maidens and chains riddle these decrepit and dirty cell blocks, akin to the U.S. Prison System is guarded by Lovecraft-esque monsters who will suck the life out of you in one shot if they ever grab onto you. With each layer you ascend it only gets more and more creepy, though it’s far from the worst or the most hopeless world that Demon’s Souls has to offer. You’ll hear ghostly wails surrounding this field of towers, surrounded by smog and filled with bridges you could get knocked off of if not careful by angry gargoyles. The last world is literally just an ascent up another giant tower in order to fight the Old Monk, a goofy bastard with a tornado for a headpiece but that’s usually another player that’s been summoned. However the throne room that surrounds this arena is filled with chairs that, while you can’t climb, seem to build all the way to the top of some glorified throne room in some sort of Papal church design.
The fourth world (aka the Archstone of the Shadowmen) is the world I like the best aesthetically other than the first one. It’s still riddled with corpses, craters and creepy caverns but it also has this peaceful aura, a blue sky surrounded by floating sting rays that shoot crystals at you. Granted the friendliness and peace of this world is kinda counteracted by the rolling skeletons who could eat a fat fucking dick or twelve but still the serenity that this world has to the others is unparalleled. It’s a place filled with nature, with water, with all of these sort of things that I can’t say enough positive things about. However, the fifth world (aka the Archstone of the Chieftain) is both aesthetically and atmospherically the worst. Yes, it’s a giant poison swamp world filled with black, charred corpses and looking like Detroit in the late 80s with it’s homes looking like a bad insurance fraud scheme. However, all of this black also just kind of feels lazy and I think for the most part that most people would agree: the poison swamp areas in all of the Souls series suck the most. I’m never going to pretend to like this area, and will probably be the last area that I go to on all of my playthroughs.
However, even with the swamps not being my favorite I can’t say that it doesn’t add onto the oppressiveness of the worlds that you’ll roam in the land of Boletaria. I can at least say for the most part, each world has its own unique style that you won’t really forget once you go through them. It’s a beautiful land, and finally I want to speak on the Nexus itself. The Nexus is home, a home that’s rather spacey and confusing to navigate sometimes but that’s just how it is. If you were to climb all of the staircases you will meet the Monumental One, who will give you stuff depending on your story place and your character tendency. However, the main areas you will go to is within the small circle on the first floor. It’s here where you will see all five archstones of which you’ll travel to the many lands, encounter many of the characters that you’ve seen before on the quests. And let me just say, this place is immaculately designed and feels warm, it feels like home. The Maiden in Black’s peaceful presence to all of your friends (and some of your enemies, fuck you Patches) welcoming you. The magical floors on the bottom which feels both solid and floaty at the same time, it’s just an amazing feeling. Before I move onto the sound design, I’d like to bring up the graphics for the original here: they’re fine. They look like 2009, with most of the human models looking for the most part okay. It’s not crisp HD, if you want that then play the PS5 remake but most of the models look fine human wise. Monster wise they look terrifying which does it’s job correctly. I don’t know, I don’t really have much to say about the graphics except sometimes it looks a bit smeary but that’s not something I was really bothered by.
I’ll start on the sound design with the soundtrack: the soundtrack is amazing! I picked this shit up on CD a long time ago, and was able to do so after buying a buddy of mine a “Game of the Year” bundle for his PS3 while keeping the CD for myself. Shunsuke Kida did a phenomenal job creating a soundtrack full of memorable bangers. The intro cutscene music for Demon’s Souls will be one you hear often, while other tracks I loved were Tower Knight with the badass chanting (which just sounds like the boss laughing at you), Old Hero sounds like a somber Zelda-styled track which shows the former shell of what the boss used to be, Leechmonger is imposing in its use of strings even if the boss itself isn’t that great, while the Character Creation Theme is something that I honestly sometimes use to go to sleep. It’s peaceful and brings a feeling of serenity that not a lot of shit can do aside from the Silent Hill soundtrack or “The Horse with No Name” by America. The rest of the soundtrack just flows into each other pretty well or fits the game perfectly even if I wouldn’t exactly listen to these often (though to be honest, I mostly listen to hip hop/R&B so what can you do) but everything just fits and it’s great.
The last piece of the sound design is the literal sound design: how does everything fit/feel? Does it work well in context with the environment? Yes I’d say it does. Thrusting with the sword feels powerful and has this sharp sound which sounds like blood could be dripping out, while magic feels ethereal yet powerful (or not so much, depending on the spell). Footsteps sound pretty damn good, and enemies sound intimidating with their roars, their clunks and all of that shit. The voice acting is something that’s pretty good too! You know the feeling when you can’t recognize anyone in a movie or a play but you can tell they did a terrific job portraying the world that they live in? Yeah that’s what it feels like, filled with old english sounding dialogue and soft spoken yet sad sounding words. The only name I can sort of recognize from the IMDB is Christopher Fairbank though I genuinely don’t remember if I’ve seen or heard him in anything. Either way, all the sound design shit is fucking good and fits cohesively with the world so no complaints.
The gameplay is why Demon’s Souls (along with its successors) is truly known amongst gamers around the world however. Miyazaki had a goal set in mind for this: difficult but with the trade that it led to more satisfaction when conquering a goal. I have no real feeling about this as I’m the kind of dude who would use cheat codes in a single player game and still get good vibes but what I’ll say is that the game isn’t difficult just for being difficult. Sure, are there bullshit enemies and bosses? Yes, but I’d dare say that it’s in how the mechanics feel and work that really excel the title to the top of the list. It’ll never not feel satisfying rolling through an enemy’s attack at the exact precise moment (with something called an eye frame) and getting no damage before going in for a backstab from behind. But truthfully I’m getting ahead of myself, what is this game all about?
You start by creating your own character and choosing your own class (of which Royalty is considered the best one due to the fact that magic is overpowered as hell). You go through a couple different locations, killing enemies while dodging their attacks and picking up pieces of armor, health items (called Moon Grass here), weapons, projectiles and the like. Eventually you make your way to the first boss: the Vanguard Demon. This is where the game will break you for the first time as you will get skull stomped into the ground almost immediately unless you are on top of your shit. You may pass this boss but either way you will die and be sent to the Nexus. The game’s concept is about dying and surviving, learning from your mistakes and moving forward with a better understanding of what you need to do and how to do it. That’s not to say that you will get it the second time, the third time or even ten more times after that. But somehow, somehow, something will stick.
From the Nexus you will be introduced to three concepts: one is the Maiden in Black. When you kill enemies and gather souls (or beat boss battles), you can come back to the Nexus and present your souls to the Maiden in Black to level up. Here is where you kind of have to come up with a class, and learn a bit about what you need. You can’t equal everything out as you’ll still be a bit on the weak side so you need to be a master of some and put souls into some skills as much as you can. If, say you’re a magic user and you decide to put in souls for Intelligence and Magic use then it’ll power you in certain areas (with certain weapons and clothes also helping certain classes) but at the same time you’ll neglect others. One thing I do want to bring up here as a legit problem is probably the Item Encumberment, which was later dropped from Dark Souls onwards thankfully. However, in Demon’s Souls OG it can be a legitimate problem and you kind of have to keep an eye on it as unlike the Remake, I don’t remember you being able to send anything into the stockpile.
The next concept is NPCs and their quests, which you will encounter throughout the game as you explore the world's you roam. Each of these quests can end well or terribly depending on your decisions (or lack thereof). There are some NPCs you might not even run into unless you looked it up beforehand or did certain quests and events. Some you might just run into randomly if you’re not paying attention, but a lot of these quests gain certain rewards. Some of these NPCs could also be enemies later on that you’ll need to fight down the line. These could be as simple as upgrading materials, souls or as good as weapons and such. What I’ll say is for the upgrade materials are great, but within Demon’s Souls there are a lot of ranks. The higher it is, the more rare it is and these can only be found within certain parameters or by grinding what I call “loot lizards” (shiny fuckers which only spawn once or twice within every boss death if you kill them) and if you don’t get certain stones then you could be screwed out of a trophy for a run and there are A LOT of fully upgraded weapon trophies which you’ll need rare stones for. Luckily, by joining a Discord server and configuring your PS3 online, you’ll be able to join up and make trades with players if all goes well as I did.
The last concept here is exploring the worlds, of which there are five (with a six archstone broken and cut during in-game development). Each world has three to five sections in which you’ll explore, with each section ending with a boss to defeat. Some of these bosses have gimmicks (like the Fool’s Idol, which requires you to kill an NPC with exploration) or the Dragon God (which is a pain in the fucking ass and has gameplay akin to Metal Gear then an RPG) while some just require straight up combat. Either way, most of these bosses are unique and add personality to them and the world surrounding them. However, this is where I’ll introduce another concept: World Tendency. If you are revived from your Soul form (of which you’ll have 50-75% left health) and die in Human form in one of these worlds, then your world tendency goes down. Either way if you die, your souls are dropped and you have to run back to where you were and grab them: if by any means you can’t grab them and you die again then they’re lost forever. Unrelated you can also read (and rate) notes of various quality that could help you or get you killed that you or other players can put down as well as see the red shadows of other players who’ve died, warning you of potential traps. Now world tendency as a concept is neat: if you’re in Black World Tendency it gets more difficult but has exclusive events (needed for trophies) and more loot drops. However, getting back up to World Tendency is a real bitch if you don’t have any boss battles left and requires an online connection (either through the Discord Servers having special events) or through grinding out special demons/invaders. If I were to recommend something, I’d say each time you get your human form back, go to the Nexus and jump off a cliff. Then go back to the world and fight the next boss, rinse and repeat. By the time you’re done, you should have white world tendency and can unlock exclusive events to those tendencies. Afterwards if you have enough ephemeral eyes (or coop play with enough people), you can die and do that all over again until Black Tendency. Here’s the problem though: as cool as this concept is, it’s a pain in the ass and if you’re a completionist like me, that means you have to handicap yourself (or be REALLY good) for the entire game at 50% (or 75% if you have a special ring that’ll boost your health up).
The last concept I’ll bring up before I leave the rest to the player is cooperative play: it doesn’t play like Call of Duty with lobby searches. What it involves is this: if you’re summoning then you need to be in human form in order to recruit someone. You could do a random (either by random password or by better chance, no passwords) or a friend (through specific passwords); they pop in your game and can help you make progress through a certain world section. If you beat the boss they disappear, rinse and repeat to the next one. To become summonable on the other hand is a whole ‘nother ball game other than using passwords. To become a summonable helper, you need the Blue Eyed Stone: you need to be a phantom and set down the stone and you can be brought into the next world. There’s also the Black and Red Stones, in which you can invade another player's world as an enemy. According to the wiki, the Red Stones are summoned only and involve a battle for souls while the Black Stones are forcefully put into another player’s world. The Blue Stone comes from the Maiden in Black after defeating the Phalanx Boss, the Black Eyed Stone comes from killing a Black Phantom and the Red Eyed Stone involves killing the Maiden of Black and getting the bad ending at the end of the game. There are only two endings and it either involves killing her or not killing her so thankfully it doesn’t require crazy requirements.
A long while after having beaten the game and deciding to temporarily give up on grinding for the upgrade trophies, it was announced that a special group on Discord was reviving the servers for the original Playstation 3 game. I was ecstatic and jumped in as soon as I could, both reliving the classic again but also engaging with the community and making trades with others in order to get the trophies. The online wasn’t around (or at least it was abandoned) when I first started so getting to play with others and even invade them was a bit of a trip the next time around. I still to this day remember the last trophy I had gotten which I believe was the “Soldier’s Trophy”, for obtaining all of the weapons. I had obtained the platinum through the trade, and while for a moment I had decided that I would perhaps duplicate the weapons and give them back, I had just decided at that moment to just go butt ass naked and give everything back to the one (or maybe two? I don’t remember) people that had joined me to help them get their trophies and such as well. I had logged off of my profile and most likely my character forever, a journey completed in the original game with a sense of accomplishment. Demon’s Souls was a difficult platinum to get and not a lot of people got it, ESPECIALLY as their fifth game. I always held a place for the original Demon’s Souls in my heart and I always will; evidently so did the rest of the community surrounding the Souls game as the future of FromSoftware would show.
This future would propel the studio into a new direction entirely with the critical acclaim of Demons Souls. The financial success wouldn’t really land, only selling around 20,000 copies until demand in the west led to Atlus publishing it overseas. They would go on to release a couple of new titles here and there, but their main focus of financial success would reside in their mech games (like Armored Core) and future Souls games. Whilst Demon’s Souls was popular (especially in Japan), it was the success of the spiritual successor Dark Souls that would hit worldwide in 2011 with critical acclaim and a successful series of titles after that, including future Playstation exclusive Bloodborne (which would at first have narrative links to Demon’s Souls before being purged altogether, and would retain Miyazaki as director), the rest of the Dark Souls series, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (originally a Tenchu reboot) while creating the magnum opus of the series: Elden Ring. There was so much success in this formula that it would spin off into it’s own genre, labeled the “Souls-like” which would be used by games like Nioh, Lords of the Fallen, Lies of P, and The Surge amongst many others. HOWEVER, the history of Demon’s Souls wouldn’t end there as during the Playstation 5 reveal event in June of 2020, with a release date later arriving in November of 2020. I hadn’t played it yet until Fall of 2021 during a depression slump before temporarily shelving it and moving my playthrough to the end of 2023/beginning of 2024. However, before I go I’m just going to say one thing: the fact that there’s absolutely no port of the original or remake of this game on PC (as well as Bloodborne!) fucking blows and I’m disappointed in Sony for not putting these games as I genuinely feel this shit would sell like hotcakes. Only place you can play this game now on PC is probably the PS3 emulator (RPCS3), of which I’ll put down the files I uploaded to Internet Archive below in the links list.
Links:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1537739/ (IMDB)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls
https://demonssouls.fandom.com/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls_Wiki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezcNxSfa3Tg&ab_channel=Jepedillo (Youtube OST)
https://downloads.khinsider.com/search?search=Demon%27s+Souls
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/DemonsSouls
https://archive.org/details/demons_souls_rpcs3_iso
https://gamerant.com/demons-souls-crazy-development-stories/#western-audiences-weren-t-supposed-to-play-it
https://dondonrv.com/c/115/the-making-of-demon-s-souls
https://www.eurogamer.net/demons-souls-was-a-failure-before-miyazaki-stepped-up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjkdKKgmofA&ab_channel=LanceMcDonald