After having secured a PlayStation 5 for myself a few weeks ago, I was excited to make Demon Souls Remake my first ever PS5 game. Myself being a huge fan of Soulsborne games and having completed them all, I wanted to see how the original Souls game fared against its successors.
From a purely visual perspective, Demon Souls is a feast for the eyes. This is the best looking Souls game by far; the hardware of the Playstation 5 allows the game to render detailed environments that it couldn’t before. The built-in speaker of the Dualshock controller accentuated every weapon swing and environmental cue perfectly. The haptic feedback from the controller added a whole new level of immersion; being able to simulate numerous haptic outputs I’ve never felt before, from a subtle pulsing heartbeat to rumbling. The haptic feedback is direction-specific; in one level there’s a constant pulsing heartbeat. When the heartbeat came from my character’s left, the left side of the controller pulsed. When it came from the right, the right side of the controller pulsed. From a technological perspective, I was consistently impressed.
More importantly, Demon Souls runs at a solid 60 fps in Performance Mode. For an action game like Demon Souls, 60 FPS is crucial and I’m thrilled it was included here, especially after I replayed Bloodborne recently – which still languishes in 30 FPS hell.
However, the more I played Demon Souls, the more I realized that its not as refined as its successors. When Bluepoint Studios developed the remake, they apparently took the original Demon Souls source code and spruced it up with modern assets and visuals. The result is essentially a PS3 game with a PS5 coat of paint. This is especially noticeable in the overall game design.
The iconic level design that would define Dark Souls and future From Software games is absent. The game is split up into five distinct worlds. In each world, you complete a level and its boss fight to continue progressing towards a world boss – the archdemon. Rinse and repeat five times to beat the game. Unlike Dark Souls where levels were interconnected and gave you the feeling of navigating one gigantic world, levels in Demon Souls are only accessible via teleport. Levels are straightforward affairs, meant to funnel you towards the next boss fight. There are far fewer bonfires too, which makes death in Demon Souls all the more agonizing; not because the game is particularly difficult, but because you have to slog through mobs of enemies to retrieve your souls.
Other quality of life features are also absent. Item burden imposes a cap on the number of items you can carry with you, as opposed to the infinite item burden in every other Souls game. There’s no status ailment bar, so you can’t see how close you are to being poisoned or plagued. Even the plunging attack, a defining feature of Dark Souls combat is missing.
Healing items in Demon Souls are consumable, which means that you will have to farm healing items at some point, just so you can attempt a boss or get through a level. Compare this to Estus Flasks, where that wasn’t an issue. Even worse, because items heal only a specific amount of HP, some healing items become obsolete later on. Compare this to Bloodborne where blood vials were relatively easy to obtain and healed 40% of your max HP, making them useful at any point in the game.
Ultimately, Demon Souls suffers from a lack of balance. Early on, the game is challenging because farming healing items is difficult and you don’t get many souls. In the second half of the game, it becomes overly easy; since you’ll have far more healing items than you need and can purchase mass quantities of them with your leftover souls. As a result, you can simply outlast challenging boss fights with your 50 moon grass. I was also surprised that so many of the late game bosses are just gimmick bosses; easily beaten once you figure out their trick. In fact, pretty much all the bosses in Demon Souls are trivial affairs. I’m not sure if this was because I’m a Soulsborne veteran but almost every boss I encountered was defeated in one or two attempts.
Demon Souls is a great game, don’t get me wrong, and I enjoyed seeing the origins of the Souls-like genre I’ve come to love. But Demon Souls is also a testament to how far the genre has progressed. Demon Souls was the first ever Souls-like game, laying the groundwork for the genre we know today. From Software’s later games would refine the Souls-like formula; improving game balance, level design, quality-of-life features, and even the narrative. Unfortunately, I think that Demon Souls Remake will be overshadowed by its successors; Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and eventually Elden Ring.
Dar Al-Tadabur 