"This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game."

man. this was so bad that it made me start getting really annoying about gaming remakes on twitter which I'm continually embarrassed by, but it's hard for me to not be cynical about this thing on a level greater than 'i don't like what they did to a game that i think is good' bc to me it speaks to almost everything I find frustrating about the games industry at the moment

and like, I don't like to be miserable about media that isn't actively harmful! so what a shame that this remake feels actively miserable about the original game itself. it feels like the gaming zeitgeist at large sometimes have to be told when they're allowed to like old games instead of giving them the sweeping dismissal we generally give to anything older than a decade. if a game hasn't had a popular youtube essay about why it's good, actually, then it needs a remake to be playable in the modern age, right? jim ryan got absolutely demolished for asking why anyone would want to play a ps2 game nowadays, but we'll still eat this up because it has pretty lighting or w/e?

anyway to actually speak about the game itself, I think a lot of really questionable details in its presentation were largely overlooked when it came out. most people agreed that the new UI kinda sucks, but I've seen much less focus given to the janky facial animations (which will look worse in a few years than the original's lack of animation does now btw, there's a reason fromsoft straight up didn't bother) and questionable cutscene lighting and direction. a lot of scenes that from's team evidently gave a lot of care to in the original, like the dragon cutscene in 1-1 and king allant's entrance, look flat and lifeless in comparison - perhaps lit more realistically but cinematographically botched and much less effective. NPCs emote too much when they don't need to, and too little when they do, and every edge on most of the character designs has been sanded down to an unreasonable degree. the voice acting is a huge step down, the animation is all more weightless, etc, etc

fromsoftware are such an unlikely success story, and demon's souls has a weird place in their catalogue where it often gets dismissed as a kind of janky dark souls prototype instead of being taken on its own merits, so it kinda sucks to see it finally given mainstream attention only when its original paint job is stripped away in favour of something that exists primarily to show off the ps5's ability to push polygons. fromsoft's name isn't even attached to this in public, the vast majority of their original work taken out and replaced with presentation that's completely detached from the original's quiet, subversive style, despite bluepoint insisting that it's the same because they kept the gameplay intact or w/e

anyway this review is way too long and idk if i'm even allowed to post this here when it's so irrelevant to the game itself but I think this thing's mixed reception should prompt a lot of us to reconsider how we think about criticising games. is it an example of obnoxious purism when someone criticises the sweeping change in architectural style here, or the brighter colour palette? personally I think we should appreciate those details a lot more even before a new studio arrives to replace them wholesale, I have a lot more fun getting nerdy about the little things in games than I do trying to not be pretentious about them, and I think the push for better game preservation is allowed to point this stuff out without being shot down for nitpicking or w/e

(mask off, I think bluepoint are artistic terrorists and sotc ps4 was just as bad as this! give me my atmospheric haze or give me death, cowards)

fascinating as a character action game completely unbeholden to dmc3's overreaching influence and still wholly unique in its genre, I'll forever be mad that ngb doesn't get the intense analysis it deserves!!

it's not like, secretly perfect or anything but a lot of the 'flaws' I see people complain about with it can either be entirely played around or actually contribute to its flawless pacing and atmosphere

it doesn't have the boring "lock and key" design that a lot of worse action games do but it's still built less around personal expression and more about asking the player to figure out the best way to approach each challenge - and that includes making some parts of ryu's moveset unviable against certain enemies or bosses in a way that dante or bayonetta aren't quite as often

stop trying to spam flying swallow on alma and get used to ryu being vulnerable on landing and it'll hopefully click SO nicely afterwards, it's not overrated I promise!

it'd be way too harsh for me to complain that this still outdoes every other third person shooter bc it had such an insane unsustainable dev cycle but god I still want to! even disregarding the ridiculous amount of ideas that went into every level of this thing, it's still proof of how far a good combat loop will get you

in fact there's so much good game design wisdom here, the games it inspired almost universally took steps to make the core gameplay more frictionless and less restrictive and ended up way less engaging and satisfying for it, I wouldn't change these controls for the world and if the remake does I'll be thoroughly disappointed

final point - thanks to said controls this game is fucking SCARY with headphones on and the volume up and I will stand by that forever, the sound design is neither subtle nor complex but it works so well to instill panic in players like me who don't like having shit behind them