On a more serious note, does anyone actually think Demons does anything better than Dark Souls and onward? When playing the newer games and going back to it, I didn't get this feeling of dread that
Ivan mentioned. To an extent I sort of see why people think Dark Souls 3 is formulaic, once you've played these games a lot and seen the level design, enemy patterns and more somewhat repeated for 5 games it does become predictable.
Demons Souls ends up having the worst bosses and combat in the series just due to the fact that the later games improved heavily on bosses and combat. Just thinking about how every boss in the game has a very basic and limited moveset highlights the games weakness.
The game doesn't have an outright bad level, I'd even say that perhaps Valley of Defilement would have been better than Blighttown if it didn't have the shitty plague/poison floors with no way to move quickly through it like Blighttown. It hurts the 2nd area and the shitty ending boss fight.
The Shrine of storms ends up being the worst world in this game. Stupid skeletons and their stun locking reminds me of Dark Souls 3 but more sloppy. The shit mages that track you, the constant flying things that shoot you with their bad hit detection and the all round awful bosses in the world.
- Stonefang Tunnel
- Tower of Latria
- Boletarian Palace
Would have ranked Valley there too but too much BS later on and lazy bosses.
In the bosses, I have
- Penetrator
- Maneater
- Old King Allant
- Flamelurker
The flamelurker will be readjusted in my NG+ playthrough. I killed him far too quickly so I didn't fully get his movesets or a challenge from him.
The Old King ends up being the most challenging boss because of his strong attacks and large moveset. I beat him first try but he was really fun to fight, he doesn't have delayed attacks like bosses in the later series but all his attacks follow with a gust of magic which does damage. I actually think this boss would have been better if the player didn't have so much healing too, it makes it somewhat trivial when you can just eat a piece of grass after every attack because you have so much.
Maneaters have a simple melee attack pattern but have a cool design, the claustrophobic fight location adds a bit of challenge to the fight since you can be knocked off.
In my playthrough, the penetrator was the first good boss.
On Balance, farming, armor and weapons, Demons Souls also handles this a bit different from the rest of the series. No armor upgrading is actually something I end up liking, no need to farm for that. At times the limited weaponry is likable because I don't have to spend time upgrading a large amount of weapons but at the same time unlike the later games there are weapons that are flatout just better than the rest. You Demonbrandt, Soulbrandt and your Blueblood sword are the best weapons I found and I've also learned that its possible to fuse Demonbrandt and Soulbrandt together.
Now, farming is a bigger pain in this game than Souls 1 - 3. About as annoying as bloodborne. Having to go back to the nexus over and over with long loading times is annoying and boring, and also most enemies give really low amount of souls in this game which is really weird. Since the game has a perishable healing system, I ended up having to farm which is shit. I will admit that it got better once I got gud.
I beat the game at less than lvl 70 which was far lower than any other souls game (DS1 - lvl 110+, DS2 - lvl 200+, BB lvl 100+, DS3 120+). Maybe its just me complaining but it was rather odd.
