Soul of the mind, key to life’s ether.
Soul of the lost, withdrawn from its vessel.
Let strength be granted, so the world might be mended.
So the world might be mended.
Demon’s Souls is hard. That might sound like an obvious statement, chances are if you’re reading this you’ve played it, or at the very least played one of theDark Soulsgames orBloodborne. But it’s an observation that’s worth making, the game is really quite difficult. It’s also incredible, brilliant and still to this day, can be surprising.
I decided recently to go back to Demon’s Souls, partly for a series on my YouTube channel, but partly because it hit me one day that it had been over 2 years since I had last played the game. In that two years I’d managed four separate runs ofDark Souls, two runs ofDark Souls 2and at least five runs of Bloodborne, yet for some reason, the progenitor of the SoulsBorne series has laid dormant on my shelf, collecting dust and being quietly forgotten about.
Demon’s Souls is one of those games I always look back at with rose tinted glasses, much like Final Fantasy VII; I talk about the game ad infinitum and in glowing terms, forgetting the limitations, quirks and stuff that simply doesn’t work because the experience was overwhelmingly positive.
So, I slide the disc into my PS3, open up the game on the X bar and feel the warmth of nostalgia wash over me with that opening “DUN DUN” of the timpani in the introduction cutscene. The cutscene has very little to do with the actual game, though it does show off some of the enemies you’ll be dying to plenty of times throughout the game. It’s a wonderful introduction, if a little irrelevant.
When you start the game through the tutorial, you’re dropped on the edge of Boletaria. You’re alive and you’ve got a mess of dreglings and undead soldiers to work through as you get used to the controls. This is where the wobbles start. The controls on Demon’s Souls are surprisingly sloppy and laggy, especially when you’ve come straight from playing Bloodborne. Bloodborne has a sense of impact and precision. Every attack has a sense of heft and the movement is so fast yet never out of control, you really do feel in charge of your character. Demon’s Souls, however, is softer, less precise, your attacks have no response or impact and movement can be slow or sluggish. I almost died in the tutorial section to the two dreglings due to massively underestimating the speed of the enemies and quite spectacularly mis-timing the parry windows on the shield I had with me.
Slowly, I got back to grips with the game’s controls, I was taking less damage and moving more comfortably and it came the time to meet up with The Vanguard, DeS' first “boss”. I quote that, because he’s not really a boss but he’s given a boss health bar and some boss music. The whole point of The Vanguard is that you need to die and almost every time I’ve taken him on, that’s what has happened. This time, however, with my experience of the SoulsBorne series… I still died. BUT! I died from a poorly timed roll when the boss was at1HP! In this, DeS' legendary indifference towards player’s feelings come straight out.
It didn’t matter that I was so close to killing him. It didn’t matter that up until that last second I’d had nearly a perfect fight against him.Idied becauseIscrewed up the timing on a roll and the hit was enough to kill me.YOU DIED. The first of many times I would see that screen on this play through.
Now, let’s get some context here. I’m by no means a pro-player, but I’m not bad either. I’ve played the Souls games long enough that I managed to get toShadow Of Yharnamin Bloodborne without dying or leveling up. I can get to Ornstein & Smough in Dark Souls with less than 5 deaths. I play these games a lot and I like to think I’m reasonably skilled at them. To die in the tutorial of DeS is a stark reminder that hubris is my undoing, overconfidence WILL get you killed and it will always beYOURfault.
This is reflected in Boletaria 1-1, the only place you can go in The Nexus until you’ve beaten Phalanx. There were 4 deaths in this level, all in places where most Souls players would balk at a player’s inability:
I struggled through Boletaria 1-1 and I was ready to give up in frustration but I figured I would take on Phalanx. If you haven’t fought Phalanx, he’s a deceptively difficult boss to fight. Essentially the boss is an entirely non-threatening mass of flesh who actively avoids you, the danger comes from about 50 smaller lumps with shields on their front and spears they can throw or stab you with. It is very easy to be ganked by several of these creatures and stun-locked to death. I resorted to my classic tactic, add Turpentine to my sword, run in laps around the boss room picking off the lumps until it was safe to attack Phalanx himself.
This is where Demon’s Souls is made for me. The music for Phalanx is superb, the fight is surprisingly dangerous and requires real concentration to get through unscathed. Even for a relatively simple fight, the adrenaline was still going and by the end of the fight I was pumped up. I think I actually punched the air when I downed him.
Demon’s Souls is a vicious, imperfect, savage beast of a game. It’s ready to chew you up and spit you out at any available opportunity. It has fights that make the worst of Dark Souls seem tame by comparison. Ornstein & Smough? Please, try taking on the Maneaters. Struggling with Quelaag? She’s a pussycat compared to Flamelurker. Think Blighttown is tricky to navigate? Well, my friend, let me show you The Valley Of Defilement…
Taking off the rose tinted glasses, it’s easy to dismiss Demon’s Souls as the imperfect older brother of Dark Souls, but you’d be wrong with that contention. Demon’s Souls is the purest form of Hidetaki Miyazaki’s hardcore vision. Dark Souls and Bloodborne both feature compromises for the players to make life a touch simpler whereas Demon’s Souls is single minded in its difficulty. To succeed you need to embrace the limitations of the hardware and software, you have to learn the quirks, compensate for the occasional input lag. To beat False King Allant, to lull The Old One back to its slumber, you need become one with the game, accept the flaws and work through them. Then, and only then, the world might be mended…
