 Hey everyone this video is up late, but not because of work or family or any of my usual excuses I really only have one reason. I've been playing in the Demon's Souls remake for like two weeks straight I mean even though I've been playing some other stuff off and on I end up coming back to Demon's Souls over and over When I'm not playing Demon's Souls I've been finishing up hitman 3 and I've been playing destiny 2 a little bit and I've been playing robo quest a new Indie rogue light shooter with my son, but mostly I've just been playing Demon's Souls I'm finishing up my fourth time through the game And I feel like I finally know it enough to talk about both the remake as a product and the game itself So today let's take a look at the game that launched the souls like genre and as always if you like what I have to say Or at least how I sound saying it subscribe and all that stuff Demon's Souls after the logo Part remake part remaster No, I came close many times I can never bring myself to buy a ps3 for just Demon's Souls And I was never able to actually find a working iso to run the game in an emulator on PC So when I finally saw the trailer for the blue point remake I was pretty excited and then of course it became impossible to find a ps5 I refused to spend a thousand dollars or more for a console, but two weeks ago I found one on eBay for 640 It still pisses me off, but an extra hundred and forty dollars was low enough that I couldn't resist Hate me if you want One of the very early videos I made when I started this channel was the blue point remake of Shadow of the Colossus And one of my only complaints was that while the game was a gorgeous visual upgrade Many small issues in the actual mechanics were left unchanged I still feel that the Colossus remake was a chance to improve the original game mechanically But it's obvious that blue point's view is that the fundamental gameplay systems need to be completely true to the original That left me a little nervous about the remake because I'd heard Demon's Souls had some jank in it But I had to balance that against the other thing that made me kind of nervous about the remake The Souls games all have a very distinctive feel to them A lot of that comes down to tons of little things that mark a from soft Souls game The way the engine handles movement and physics the sound design Animations how the lock-on functions how the camera moves and a million other tiny little details Dark Souls 2 is a great example of a Dark Souls game that just doesn't feel like a Dark Souls game Even though I've played it for like 300 hours and have come to actually really like it despite all of its terrible flaws It still feels like playing a game from a different developer to me Well blue point did something really impressive with this remake it feels precisely like playing a from soft Souls game but prettier in Fact this game from a totally different developer feels more like Dark Souls than Dark Souls 2 does while the textures and Designs and particle effects and all that are clearly blue points original work the animations Sounds and game feel is basically a perfect representation of from software If someone had given me this game without me having heard of it I would have assumed it was a from software game made with a new and prettier engine for what I've seen of the original Demon's Souls It seems like many of the animations are basically exactly the same and as far as the stuff that's new The Demon's Souls remake is a remarkably gorgeous game and the ps5 is a pretty impressive freakin console I can't say enough about how impressive the haptic feedback and the controllers is and Blue point makes really good use of that here in the remake in the Tower of Latria You can feel a heartbeat throbbing in the controller Elevators have clacking chains that vibrate in your hands. It's pretty awesome, man And of course the game runs at 60 frames a second without ever slowing down Load times are fast and the visuals are just amazing All of the Souls games other than Dark Souls 2 are beautiful games But none of them are as technically solid as this remake is Lighting is great and there's none of the weird dithering or bad reflections like you get in from softwares engine It's basically the quality of from softwares unmatched art design done in a super polished engine It's the best a Souls game has ever looked. In fact, it's the very best-looking souls like game in the entire genre I don't think it's possible for this to have come out any better Just as a pure remake and playing this really drives home just how disappointing the Dark Souls 1 remaster actually is Blue point is obviously a world-class developer and I'm interested to play the original game. They're apparently now working on proto souls Okay, with that out of the way, let's talk about demon souls as a game The really interesting thing about demon souls is how incredibly similar it is to Dark Souls While still being such an odd ball of a game Playing this game last rather than first really shines a light on how from soft has gone about iterating on the design of these titles I can't find the quote but years ago I read an interview with William Faulkner where he said that most writers spend their entire careers trying to tell the same story Every poem short story or novel they write is an effort to get that one story that they're interested in Perfect and eventually when they finally work hard enough and get it right. They're basically done Demon souls Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 are all pretty much the same game Not just the combat system and leveling mechanics, but right down to levels enemies and bosses in many ways Dark Souls 3 is like a super polished simplified version of demon souls Each of the games has its own unique flavor But they're far more similar than they are different and it's interesting to think about what changed and what stayed the same across all Three titles I'm one of the rare people who thought that Dark Souls 3 even though I played it last is in fact One of the best of the games because in most places it feels like the final version The demon souls remake feels so interesting because it's now simultaneously the most technically and graphically mature game in this series While also being the most mechanically weird each of the souls games has moved faster than the last To the point that using a shield in Dark Souls 3 is almost pointless by the time Sekiro arrived The games were almost entirely based on twitch skill and fast reaction times And I like that but demon souls is the slowest of these games It's the most overtly unfair at times But it's also the one that most relies on knowledge of the game and least relies on twitch skills and reaction times This can be frustrating at first because it's not a game. You can quickly roll through relying on your built-in souls memory Probably the best way to say this is that Dark Souls 3 is an action RPG while demon souls is an RPG action game I'm going to point out most of what I think are the rough edges in demon souls in a minute here because I think it's a cool way to look at the more recent games Almost everything that pisses me off in demon souls is something that was changed in the later games But I have to say like all the souls games even dark souls 2 Demon souls is a great game The fact that I kept playing through the mountains of bullshit that this game likes to throw at you shows just how amazingly good it is It's fun to realize just how much of the formula was already fully formed right here I am so happy this got remade because with a fresh coat of paint There's nothing to distract from just how interesting the design is And how many insane chances from software and Miyazaki took making this game We've come to expect the games to be hard But demon souls is opaque in ways that none of the other games ended up being and it seems to revel in pissing the player off in spots I am going to criticize this game some coming up, but let me say up front. I am totally in love with this game Okay, let's talk about the things that makes demon souls different from the later games Not user-friendly Are you the kind of player who likes to see everything a game like this has to offer? Well, then you're going to have to play at least three times if you go in blind And unlike the other games you can fuck up so badly. You kind of need to start over That's how unforgiving demon souls is Not just because the game can be very difficult if you don't understand what's going on But also because the game is almost absurdly obtuse in some of its systems But demon souls balances some of that difficulty with items and spells that can trivialize parts of the game Let's talk about the world tendency system in demon souls For those of you who haven't played the game yet Demon souls was the first iteration of a system that all of these games have fiddled with and handled in different ways How dying affects the player And demon souls dying in human form Immediately lowers your max health by half and prevents you from summoning other players or being invaded The health penalty in demon souls is the most severe of any of the other games Dying means playing the game with half health until you beat another boss or use a resource That's very rare early in the game Now there's a ring in the first level that cuts the health penalty to 25 But then you're given up a valuable ring slot and in demon souls the rings are really quite powerful Indeed probably the most powerful in the series if the system stops right there It would already be the most punishing in the series, but the system does not stop there You see every time you die in human form the game gets more difficult Dying shifts the world tendency system on a scale from pure white to pure black And remember this system is so totally unique Unintuitive and opaque that you really need to have read about it to have any idea what's going on My first time through the game. I had no idea how this system worked and it caused me much irritation After dying to a boss I just put down my summon sign and a boss door to become human and try again Because I was doing this in a boss fight. I didn't quite recognize that the boss was getting harder and harder After my first run I started new game plus and when I got to the second level the world was shifted to pure black This is what that means for the player watch first pure white world tendency Now pure black world tendency It was the one hit kills and getting killed literally from chip damage to this level's boss That finally drove me to the internet to read about the system And it turns out that this system controls quite a lot Certain npcs and items only appear in pure white or pure black In pure black valuable resources drop more commonly But you also get blown up by enemies and more difficult phantom enemies spawn It's the kind of thing. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a player to ever figure out in their own Or at least not before like five playthroughs, man It is a crazy system and the only way to adjust this system is to die in human form Or to defeat bosses or npc phantoms Killing players who invade you also works But you would be crazy to try that because remember you can only be invaded while human and dying while human Shifts the world black So losing a pvp match means setting your world tendency back This is a really shitty penalty when you're trying to manipulate the system to get to pure white in each world So what ends up happening is players kill themselves in the hub area to prevent it Which means that you end up having to jump to your death every time you defeat a boss To make sure you don't get killed by an invader and mess up the world tendency If you're trying to get all of the pure white world events to happen This is one of the most unique and crazy systems I've ever seen in any game and while it's very interesting. I also think it's too punishing I'm pretty okay at these games I've got well over a thousand hours in the series But for new players they're naturally going to want to co-op bosses Or use the item to become human before fighting a new boss solo because they'll probably need that extra health But every time they die doing that they're making the game harder and harder without realizing it This seems kind of pointlessly frustrating to me. This is probably the only time I will ever say this about a souls game But I highly recommend you read about this system beforehand because it's actually hugely important And is completely unexplained in the game But the trolling of the game goes way beyond that This is without doubt the most frustrating of all the souls games because it really depends so much on enemy and game Knowledge nearly every enemy after the first level is some flavor of frustrating the first time you encounter them This game is just loaded with one hit kills just chock full of them Man, I never level health in these games like in dark souls 3. I don't even bother putting points into health But in demon souls regular mobs will start one hit killing you fairly soon into the game Health kind of matters in a way. It really doesn't in the other titles These assholes here are just a nightmare until you figure them out and until you figure them out You'll find that two of their three attacks one hit kill you when you're not in human form These guys here are just the worst And the game puts them on tiny fucking ledges and there are flying manta rays shooting you while you fight them Red phantoms have grotesque levels of health and one hit kill attacks Meaning it's literally a matter of poking them once and turtling behind a shield because one missed dodge means instant death The game is obsessed with putting you in the most ridiculous places for fighting You are constantly fighting in tiny little halls or small little rooms or spiral staircases or narrow ledges Shit the mandatory swamp level makes it so you literally cannot roll And then it throws out enemies who you can't block with a shield Oh, and also they can sprint through the swamp, but you cannot But wait you can find a ring that lets you move normally in the swamp Oh, but that ring only appears in an out of the way place when you have pure black world tendency It's insane man insane Now i'm a masochist with these games So sure enough i did enjoy eventually figuring out how to handle all of these issues in fact surprisingly I think this might be my favorite game in the series But you have to know going in that get good isn't actually the answer in demon souls Instead almost all of these miserable encounters require very specific strategies You have to switch weapons use different damage types try to use spells use different rings Remember those annoying as hell manta rays if you wear a certain ring They just stop shooting at you which takes the level from blinding rage to simply difficult I have always strictly avoided any kind of teasing in these games I don't use a bow except in the rare instances where it's the only option Like the dragon in dark souls 3 in the second level or the zombie dragon in the valley of the drakes I don't really use magic except after a few playthroughs just to mess around with a different style I don't use shields and souls games except for the parrying buckler or the grass crest shield to get extra stamina But demon souls beat that shit right out of me Demon souls the game is consistently cheesing you so by my third playthrough I felt no compunction about cheesing it right the fuck back There's a boss that is a great example of this the man-eaters boss fight is sort of similar to the gargoyles fights in dark one and two Except they move faster and you fight them on a five foot wide bridge Oh, and they have several attacks that knock you off of the bridge In my first playthrough I fought these guys seriously like 15 times and like 13 of my deaths were to gravity My second time through I beat them on the fourth try But it was still really frustrating getting knocked off the bridge because one of the bosses flew behind me Or he dashed straight through the geometry Going into ng plus with black world tendency I finally googled them and discovered that you can use the firestorm spell on them I would normally Never do this in a souls game, but I gave it a shot and sure enough I blew them up in the first try. Don't feel bad at all about it. Fuck these guys, man I fought flame looker like 20 times a pure black tendency in my second playthrough Before discovering accidentally the dodging straight into him is actually how you deal with his attacks And that he's weak to magic This is what I meant when I said demon souls is far more of an rpg than the other titles And in a way, I found that really refreshing though admittedly pretty damn frustrating too Rough around the edges Bluepoints remake is insanely polished. This game is again Simply beautiful But they kept all of the original design decisions And while sometimes these are crazy, but interesting like world and character tendency Sometimes they're just clearly shittier than the later games Dark souls one has a notoriously ludicrous weapon upgrade system There are four blacksmiths spread all over the map And each of those blacksmiths can make different weapon types And there's a bunch of different materials required. I sincerely doubt there are very many people on earth Who prefer dark souls ones upgrade system to the streamlined dark souls three system But demon souls makes dark souls one seems simple and straightforward Now remember, I don't look things up in my first playthrough and sometimes not even my second It was only nearing the end of the game that I started thinking Hmm. I never found the person who makes boss weapons I found two blacksmiths, but I never got the option to make boss weapons or anything other than normal upgrades Going to the second time through I googled it Turns out you need to give the soul from the third boss of the second level to the second blacksmith Oh, but you can't just have that soul on you and expect him to ask for it Actually, he doesn't really even mention it You find this out if you choose the talk option five or six times on a couple of different visits to him cool I ended up just consuming that soul eventually because none of the magic vendors sold anything for it Then there's the sheer insanity of upgrade materials There's just a ridiculous number of different upgrade materials And unlike dark souls these stones are only dropped by very very specific enemies Oh, and the world tendency massively affects drop rate If you want to do the crushing upgrades to make your weapons scale with strength Well, you need to kill these six assholes over and over and over and over until they drop enough chunks Want to upgrade crescent weapons this guy right here In pure black tendency with the item discovery ring It took me like 40 minutes killing these freaking worms to finally get the four chunks of gray stone I needed want to final upgrade material for crescent upgrades Well, you need to show a very specific NPC who only spawns in pure white tendency a specific sword The game is full of this stuff, man I've said in all my videos about souls like games that I hate farming I don't farm for souls. I don't farm for armor. I don't farm for anything. It's boring Well demon souls has farming as a heavy component of the gameplay and the upgrade system And that upgrade system is so insanely opaque and obtuse that it just straight up demands that you google that shit How would any player realize that these stupid worms are the only way to ever get gray stone chunks? By the time you're looking for more of them Good luck even remembering that this is where you got one in the first place And you need a shitload of these chunks to upgrade even one weapon to max Speaking of farming demon souls requires you to farm for healing This is a double-edged sword on the one hand once you've gotten good you end up carrying so damn much grass You need to put it in the bank because the game has a fallout style carry weight limit Which is annoying on the other hand though when you're just starting out and you haven't yet fully appreciated that this game Is actively trolling you you'll end up needing to farm for grass That means going here and killing these two guys like 35 times Like I said just understand you will be farming in demon souls Wrapping up All right, so the ps5 is a pretty damn impressive console people 60 fps on a console is a game changer For years now the only games I've actually played on console have been ps exclusives But with fast load times 60 frames a second. I might actually end up playing quite a lot of games away from my pc I bought hitman 3 on the ps5 for instance And as far as the first game to play in the ps5 demon souls is a gem I am so glad I never broke down and bought a ps3 for this If they ever dropped below 200 bucks, I probably would have but getting to play the game as the most technically proficient Best-looking best performing of all the souls games is a tremendous treat I have to say I'm kind of shocked at how much I ended up loving this game It's so janky and raw and unintuitive and downright bullshit half the time and it's just full of farming And ridiculous upgrade requirements and enemies seemingly designed to make you rage quit But it's also so unique And its levels range from straight up brilliant at their best to at least above average at their worst And there's something just really charming about a game that forces you to approach it as much as a puzzle as an action game You can do what I did on my first playthrough and brute force your way through it And in fact now on my fourth time I have enough of a handle that I can kind of play it like dark souls 3 And just dodge roll my way through But more than any of the other games demon souls really makes you go slow and pay attention When you die, it's almost never just a matter of getting better at dodge timing There's something kind of liberating and needing to actually think through these encounters and find solutions I figured out the thief ring thing with the manta rays on my own and that felt amazing It was like lancing a boil Of course that section is then followed by an even more bullshit section But even that just required reevaluating the way I was approaching the game whenever someone talks about dark souls They almost always Describe the game as hard but fair and that's absolutely true for most parts of most of the games But it is not true for demon souls. The game is straight up unapologetically unfair But that's what makes it such a wonderful blend of action and puzzle This game doesn't test your skill It tests your willingness to adapt to improvise To break the game in your favor because the enemies are constantly breaking the game in their favor Because it's less of an action game. It's kind of less replayable than bloodborne But it's so obtuse that it takes like four playthroughs to finally master what it has to offer It is both ridiculously unfair and totally brilliant I actually wouldn't change any of the frustrating unfair bullshit in this game I think that stuff is core to what makes it different unique and quite possibly the best of all of them And again, this comes from someone who thinks dark souls 3 was the best all-around game in the series But I do wish blue point had taken the initiative to change those few things that aren't core to the gameplay But are rather just annoying wastes of time I think an npc should have been added who at least fucking hints at world tendency I mean seriously just some dude who's like, oh don't die in human form too many times friend Something I don't know something like that man I ended up not playing new game plus on my first character Because I gave up thinking that new game plus in demon souls meant that every single enemy could one hit kill you It was only going online that I discovered actually it's just that I was in pure black in two worlds And I don't think anything at all would have been made worse By making it totally and easily clear How to unlock boss weapons at the blacksmith ed without having to go to texture life and find out I needed to talk to him five times And I think you could have easily streamlined the upgrade materials and the game would have been better for it But overall I cannot recommend this enough I don't even slightly regret buying a ps5 for just this game Even though I'll have to wait a long time before there's another decent ps5 exclusive All right, I probably will do another destiny 2 video next and then hitman 3 And I need to talk to you all about gtfo. All right. Thanks for coming. I'll see you next time. Bye