Demon's Souls Review

Demon’s Souls was released for the PS3 in 2009 and is an extremely influential game that led to the creation of an entire sub-genre now known as “Souls/Borne” in the video game market.  It and the games that followed in its footsteps are notorious for their difficulty and, unfortunately, have led to game journalists to start to compare any game with a moderate difficulty level to the original Souls/Borne games, mainly Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3, as well as Bloodborne.  I personally feel that this not only does a disservice to the Souls/Borne games but it also does a disservice to the games that are being compared to the Soul/Borne games.  (If any game journalists out there ever see this review, please, just stop.)

The story of Demon’s Souls is that you are an adventurer who has answered the call to investigate and save the kingdom of Boletaria, which has vanished behind a massive fog wall after it’s king, King Allant got extremely power hungry, and from the demons that inhabit the land.  As you just begin to adventure beyond the fog into the lost kingdom you are killed and your soul gets captured by the Nexus, a place designed to trap the souls of the fallen until the Old One is lulled back to sleep, at which point the trapped souls will be released.  The full story of the game is told in a minimalistic fashion; you have to piece it together through the minimal dialog with the NPCs you come across and the item descriptions of the things you find.  This leads to each player having their own interpretation of the history of the kingdom as well as to what exactly is going on.

Graphically, Demon’s Souls was not that impressive as all the visuals are a bit on the watered down side, even by the standards of the time it came out.  This actually isn’t as big of a negative as some might think because, as muddied down as the graphics are, the graphics actually set the atmosphere of despair and futility that the game relies on to draw the player into the world of Demon’s Souls.  The visual design of each area in the game is unique and gives the different areas a completely different flavor from one another other than the general atmosphere of despair.

Musically, the game is beautiful, that is, when you actually have music because a lot of the areas only use music for key encounters such as boss fights in order to maintain the proper atmosphere that the game is going for.  The only really compliant I have with the music is when the music is changes in the Nexus because the first piece of music in the Nexus is a much more fitting piece than the second one is.  As for the rest of the sound in the game, it is nothing extremely special but it does always fit for the interactions between the player, the environment, and the action that was taken.

The performance of the game is, for the most part top notch, but there are a few areas where the game clearly struggles to keep the framerates up, with the most notorious of these areas being the Shrine of Storms and the boss encounter at the very end of that area.

When it comes to the gameplay, Demon’s Souls shines in most places even though the controls can feel slightly clunky at first but you quickly learn to adjust this and you start to see that is all make sense in the context of the game.  Because of the slightly clunky feel to the controls, combat can feel a bit sluggish but that actually fits the slower paced and methodical combat the game employs.  Once you adjust to the controls, because the game just isn’t as fast paced as the other games of the time, everything begins to flow smoothly and it becomes easy to forget about the once challenging controls.

Demon’s Souls is the progenitor to a whole new sub-genre and, while slightly flawed, that makes it a masterpiece in my eyes.  The punishing difficulty, while not for everyone, leads those who push through and overcome the challenges that are presented to a wonderful sense of accomplishment.  In all honesty, while I think that it is extremely unlikely that we will ever see a remastered version of Demon’s Souls on the current generation of consoles, like we are with Dark Souls, I would happily purchase this game again if it was remastered in any fashion.  The Souls/Borne games as some of my favorites and I would happily buy any of them multiple times and I recommend that if you have never tried any of the games, that you don’t let the difficulty dissuade you from picking one up and giving it a shot, you might just be surprised at how much you like it.

Graphics – 9

Performance – 9

Sound – 10

Gameplay – 10

Story – 10

Replayability – 10

Total – 9.7 out of 10

- Arylin Michelle