Demon’s Souls (2020) – In Review

On February 9th, 2009, From Software’s Playstation 3 game Demon’s Souls was released into the world. Since then Demon’s Souls, and the various franchises that From Software has developed, have found themselves in a genre of their own. While Demon’s Souls was itself an iterative work, expanding on From Software’s own King’s Field series, it is still looked on as the first of the Souls genre. That said, it has grown old. When it was new it was an unproven difficult game that didn’t have the same kind of budget as its contemporaries. The 2020 remake from Bluepoint Games gives it a fresh coat of paint that preserves the original material while greatly improving the presentation. It runs better, it loads faster, it looks fantastic, and under the hood it’s mechanically the same experience that it was over a decade ago.

The visuals don’t just look fantastic, they run smooth. That was a problem with the original game, and even some of its sequels, is that the framerate was never that smooth, the loading time was always too long. The remake makes the game a better experience than it was when it was new, not only running at 60 frames per second but also making loading time almost negligible.

The game itself is still strong after all these years, and feels much more streamlined after playing its more open world follow ups. It’s generally also more straightforward with its mechanics and level design. There is no situation in which you need to be cursed in order to fight a specific set of bad guys, or need a specific ring to fight a boss. Levels are obstacles to overcome with whatever weapon you choose and bosses have only one phase of attacks to fight through; they don’t change their styles halfway to become tougher and faster versions of themselves.

There are still obscure elements to the game that have been simplified over the years. World tendency is a feature that only really works if you’re trying to affect it, otherwise it is easily unnoticed. Upgrading weapons and armor requires way too many different kinds of upgrade materials, making it difficult to experiment with different pieces of equipment. Progression can also be tricky, in that it’s not entirely clear what order you’re expected to actually play the game in, which can easily lead you to areas that are probably more difficult for your level.

It also feels slow after having played so many faster iterations of the genre. Not sluggish, though, just slow. There are boss battles which I remember being fast, with bosses zipping around the arena at speeds that I could barely keep up with. After playing Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, and Bloodborne, enemies like the Flamelurker didn’t seem like they moved particularly fast at all. Bosses felt more manageable then ever, despite the fact that it has been over a decade since I’ve seen most of them. The difficulty that remains in the game is mostly contained in the levels themselves. They are sometimes linear, sometimes mazes that sometimes have shortcuts to help you reconnect with later progress and sometimes do not.  

Demon’s Souls is still a difficult game after all of these years, but it doesn’t feel quite as difficult as it used to be, not just because Souls games have become harder and faster, but because games inspired by the Souls formula have also been, at the very least, getting faster as well. This remake doesn’t seek to revitalize the experience for an existing audience, but to give a chance for oldcomers and newcomers alike to go back to what made the original great, in a package that glistens and shines.

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