From Software It's another Demon's Souls thread god damnit

[sullynathan]

It's 15h of non stop combat

The game is nowhere near this long, I beat Sigma 2 in less than 8 hours

 

[sullynathan]

 

[Socur Toxanarosa]

Not excited about the new Diablo 3 art style but looks good overall.

 

[Alkarl]

Bluepoint logo has me intrigued, but if Miyazaki isn't involved forget it. I've been fantasizing about a 3 way scraping spear gank since 2016. And if I can't rock up to Old Monk with more than 4 other motherfuckers, what's the point? Speaking of points, it isn't even a Souls game anymore unless it has a point down emote that allows you to spin rapidly in place. Ah, but I know Bluepoint. They wont do any of that. Best case scenario the move to 60fps breaks all of the A.I. and damage calcs, especially on fall damage.. somehow.. and those rolling skeletons, if they don't murder you in .04 seconds then they will probably have tossed themselves off cliffs before you even spawn in.

(jk, day one purchase for me)

 

[Wunderbar]

I'm actually a pathetic poser who never completed Demon's Souls, but posted about it here like i've completed it. Well, not anymore - i have finally finished this bad boy.

Started out as a Royalty, but instead of using magic I turned my character into a generic knight with a bastard sword. Overall the game was fairly easy, I defeated most of the well-known bosses such as Flamelurker or Old King Allant on my first try. The only boss that killed me more than once was Armored spider, the enemy that gave me the most trouble was a mindflayer black phantom on a spiral staircase before twin maneaters

DeS is just so creative and varied, each boss is different and memorable. Each archstone plays differently from others, like how Tower of Latria 3-1 is basically a Silent Hill location where you constantly finding keys and backtrack to open locked doors, or how Valley of Defilement 5-2 is a pitch black swamp and you have no idea where to go because there's barely any landmarks, or how in Shrine of Storms you're constantly under fire from those flying stingrays. The attribute system/weapons/abilities are badly balanced and allow you to become insanely OP, but I'll take this apporach over the sawyeristic direction that Dark Souls 3 has taken. At least in DeS different physical damage types actually matter, as opposed to Dark Souls where "blunt type" is just for show and you can easily kill skeletons with a fucking rapier.

This game kinda ruined Dark Souls for me, because it did many great things first and did them better.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

I'll never forget playing this beast for the first time back in '09. My mind was blown. It was like seeing boobs for the first time ever. I've been a Soulsborne fanboy ever since.

 

[Perkel]

This game kinda ruined Dark Souls for me, because it did many great things first and did them better.

It is kind of crazy that they already had complete formula back in Demon's Souls. Sure sequels added stuff like hexes and generally more content but all gameplay elements were first created and finalized in Demon's Souls. The combat system, magic, health/stamina, structure, enemy design, multiplayer which imho is still the best out of all Souls games as it properly function as addition to single player game not systemic feature that funnels people into playing multi.

It is like they had eureka moment and figured out everything at once leaving almost nothing for sequels.

 

[Karhu]

Spoiler

 

[Wunderbar]

This game kinda ruined Dark Souls for me, because it did many great things first and did them better.

It is kind of crazy that they already had complete formula back in Demon's Souls. Sure sequels added stuff like hexes and generally more content but all gameplay elements were first created and finalized in Demon's Souls. The combat system, magic, health/stamina, structure, enemy design, multiplayer which imho is still the best out of all Souls games as it properly function as addition to single player game not systemic feature that funnels people into playing multi.

It is like they had eureka moment and figured out everything at once leaving almost nothing for sequels.

Dark Souls introduced a seamless interconnected world without level select menu and almost without loading screens, but otherwise yes.

 

[Perkel]

Dark Souls introduced a seamless interconnected world without level select menu and almost without loading screens, but otherwise yes.

Not really.

All areas were interconnected they were just in different "worlds" you could walk from boletaria 1-1 to 1-4 if you wanted to do so.

Speaking of which archstones is something DS2 would benefit from. Because in that game a lot of locations didn't make sense how they were connected.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Dark Souls introduced a seamless interconnected world without level select menu and almost without loading screens, but otherwise yes.

Not really.

All areas were interconnected they were just in different "worlds" you could walk from boletaria 1-1 to 1-4 if you wanted to do so.

Speaking of which archstones is something DS2 would benefit from. Because in that game a lot of locations didn't make sense how they were connected.

I always figure that DS2's oddball linking is simply the weirdness going on with the space-time continuum due to the crisis that's bringing all lands into convergence as everything goes to shit. This culminates in DS3's Ringed City where at the beginning you look down into everything basically being flushed down the toilet as reality mashes together and crumbles.

 

[NJClaw]

Dark Souls introduced a seamless interconnected world without level select menu and almost without loading screens, but otherwise yes.

Not really.

All areas were interconnected they were just in different "worlds" you could walk from boletaria 1-1 to 1-4 if you wanted to do so.

And to travel between those worlds you have to go through a level selection menu.

Moreover, the level of interconnectedness of DeS isn't really comparable to that of DS1, they're in two different categories. In DeS you go from 1-1 to 1-2, from 1-2 to 1-3, and from 1-3 to 1-4. In Dark Souls you go from the Firelink Shrine to the Undead Burg, then you reach the Undead Parish and loop back to Firelink Shrine. You return to the Undead Parish and reach the Darkroot Garden, from which you can loop back to the Undead Burg. From there you go to the Lower Undead Burg and then find yourself in Firelink Shrine once more. Then from the Lower Undead Burg you traverse the Depths, go through Blighttown, and loop back once again to Firelink Shrine. From there you can explore the New Londo Ruins, reach the Valley of Drakes, and find yourself again in the Darkroot Garden. It's a web of areas that you can traverse in different ways, exploring and getting lost at your own leisure, and this decisively strengthens the sense of adventure.

Also I guess the sequels added more naked feet?

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

I started playing it on my ps3 yesterday when i found out there was a private server to play online after Sony decided to shut it down for the inferior remake, good stuff.

 

[Matador]

Next month when I get a new PC I will be playing this in RPCS3 with proper performance. Not gonna touch the sodomite's remake.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

It's funny how Sony is always talking about "videogames are art" and they are the first ones to fucking trash the artistic integrity of one of the most beloved games of the 7th gen.

 

[N0rn]

After finishing Elden Ring, I was in the mood for some more From, so I went back to the series beginnings, since I have never played Demon's Souls before. Of course I choose the original version and not the shit Bluepoint put out.
I really had to get used to the slower, more deliberate movement of earlier From titles again, but that also makes you realise how many of ER's encounters you can squeeze through without really thinking about it. I feel like you had to get some kind of plan for most parts of DeS, for example how you deal with enemy groups in world 4, while it's way easier to bruteforce things in ER. While it is often annoying to have to run back to a boss after fucking up, most levels are either short enough to not make it too much of a hastle or offer some shortcuts, that also reward those who inspect the environment carefully. For example, I noticed the raised plank at the start of 5-2 right away, so when I reached the other site of the swamp, I knew right away that I could circle back to open a shortcut. Design like this may be simple, but I think it makes it way more rewarding to be rewarded with a shortcut like that instead of just having another bonfire/grace placed before you.
Atmospherically, DeS was absolutely great, easily on par with DS1. "Gimmick-bosses" seem to be kinda frowned upon nowadays in the Souls-fanclub, but I gotta say I didn't mind them at all in DeS. Most of the games challenge comes from the levels themselves, so I wasn't too concerned how the bosses were generally easier than modern From bosses. I also read somewhere that Miyazaki aimed to give a unique twist to every boss to keep the players interest constantly and I guess that kinda worked for me. Of course there are shitty, forgettable bosses like Leechmonger, but I'd rather have a fight like Maiden Astrea that really sticks in your memory than another hyper-aggressive swordsman fight.
There were negatives too, of course. Weight management sucks absolute ass. Loading times really are a drag when you want to warp between different locations in quick sucession (Back to Nexus, to 2-1 to upgrade stuff, back to Nexus, now to the level you actually want to go to etc.) and the hunt for upgrade materials can be painful as well. The upgrade system in general was pretty hard to grasp without any external resources, and the scarcity of good upgrade materials doesn't really encourage experimentation with upgrades.
All in all, I had a great time and wish that Fromsoft recaptures some of the stuff that lead to DeS for new titles. Theres just some hard to describe charm in the more unpolished, but also more experimental titles in my opinion.

 

[Great Deceiver]

DeS is from a time before From started catering to sperglords who think every game should be infinite. So, every boss has a gimmick that kind of trivializes it, but that's ok, because there was no expectation of grinding through them 250 times.

Area design was consistently great and even the very first swamp level is still the most memorable From soft swamp - it felt hostile and difficult, with limited visibility. I still think individual thematic "worlds" with a central hub work best for this sort of game, although the first half of Dark Souls was obviously very well designed as well, as was Bloodborne.

DeS will always be my favourite Souls game, because it was so fresh at the time and the feeling that the devs were just trying to put out a great game shows at every turn, instead of them trying to cater to a sperg "fanbase" with degenerate gameplay/copypasta bloat, which is what we have now.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

The true boss of the Tower of Latria is that fucking squid on the stairs (as well as the gravity)

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

So as a process of setting up some RTV and home shit (having a 17" laptop for every single thing including watching movies with other people started to get grating) I got a cheapo 32" 4k monitor and a PS5 as a "tv". It is still being heavily scalped here, but I picked one up in retail when it appeared like after a month of no stock. With that I will pick up some used copy od DeS Remake in the following days, to judge it by myself. If nothing else, I expect a pretty spectacle, as it clearly hypnotized so many people.

You know that Bluepoint UI etc. looks and sounds like? Elder Scrolls: Blades.

However first I had to play the original. I set it up on RPCS3 and with some custom settings & tweaking worked flawlessly. Apparently there's even 60fps patch but meh, after Bloodborne if the framerate is stable for 100 coma 00% of the time, I don't mind 30fps that much. More importantly, it recognizes the SSD, so the loading times were llike 3 seconds each.

For me PS3 is that weird era where many titles look uncanny; they look kinda modern, but at the same time more dated than many PS2 titles. Also that they look like they can be remastered, but not really, as they often had to cut corners on details, meshes and geometry etc. at least here. Something to keep in mind when I'll be looking into the remake.

I'll start with the negatives, because I'm an edgy contrarian, and as this game is not without its flaws of course. There's a lot of jank here. It took me a couple tries to beat Flamelurker and every time he got stuck running into some bones in a corner for ~5 seconds. Some hitboxes are wonky, with that squid being the first thing that comes to mind. Apparently on PS3 you can roll only in 4 directions? For me it was normal. The bloom effects make the game look downright Oblivious at times, in a "have you come seeking the light?" fashion, once again in this distinct PS3 fashion. In general Dark Souls 1, even that Prepare to Die edition in which I had to move the mouse cursor away and play on KB with 3 hands, set the bar on how smooth the gameplay is, with that formula being practically unchanged even with Elden Ring. Here it feels like the poor man's version of that, as the movement and moveset feels a bit stiffer and more unrefined, there's no jump attacks or other minor but obvious things (but you can climb ledges, which literally shocked me away from the screen). It's a minor gripe but something very apparent to me.

So this petty list is all I have.

A lot of people say it's their favorite one, and I see where they're coming from. The general tone of the game is top notch: when I finished Latria and entered the Storm King's arena, that bleak, oppressive and pitiful atmosphere stroke me so much I'll remember it for a very long time. The setting, storytelling, lore etc. are not so esoteric and obscure which made it more relatable for me in that regard, with Allant's final monologue being the perfect one. In many aspects the apparent smaller budget clearly works in the game's favor, as is often the case. For example the music had to get creative, and fits the lowkey mood perfectly, whereas now even From would obviously use some grander orchestral pieces.

Latria is a standout. Shrine of Storms is a standout. Boletaria is a standout (though like I said, some corners had to be cut so it doesn't exactly look like it was such a prosperous kingdom to begin with, as the game tells you). Not a big fan of Stonefang aesthetic and I could take it or leave it, and Valley of Defilement would make a bigger impact if it wasn't repeated ad nauseam from there (at least there are not many fucking candles here), and is kinda let down by bleh first 2 bosses. But Maiden Astraea herself (well, judging by her name etc. Garl is friendzoned) would be something in From's top 10.

For now that's it - I'll most likely rant some more about how great this game is generally, and many things specifically, when it will come to inevitable comparison with the remake.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The true boss of the Tower of Latria is that fucking squid on the stairs (as well as the gravity)

Across three playthroughs of Demon's Souls, a majority of my deaths in the Tower of Latria levels have been due to gravity.

Tower of Latria is still the best set of levels in any of the Souls games.

 

[Ravielsk]

"Gimmick-bosses" seem to be kinda frowned upon nowadays in the Souls-fanclub, but I gotta say I didn't mind them at all in DeS.

"Gimmick-bosses" are really only a problem for PvP tryhards and speed-runners because once you know the "gimmick" there is nothing new in the fight for you to discover but at the same time there is no way to shorten or extend it. So the PvP guys are upset because they cannot get their preffered PvP weapon right away and speed-runners are upset because suddenly there is a "5 minute wall" in front of them and outside of glitches there is no way around it. For a normal player who plays the game once to completion "gimmick bosses" are and never were a problem.

But normal people do not spam twitter and reddit with their satisfaction so again its a loud minority is setting the tone for a conversation they have no intention being a part of.

 

[Lutte]

A higher variety of encounters also make the more twitchy encounters more memorable by being uncommon and slapping you on the face the first time you experience them. There is a reason why Flamelurker and Artorias are so talked about in their respective games. The more From repeated the same encounter type, the more the encounters blurred together.

 

[Perkel]

The reason why they are more talked about is because Dark Souls was the first Souls games most of Souls fans had played.

Sony funded Demon's production but fat fuck from sony thought it was bad game and aside from publishing it in japan as they already sunk money they gave it 0 money for PR as they already considered it failure before selling even one copy. They left it to die and there wasn't planned western release.

Turns out word of mouth started to spread and over months game started to sell, then Atus i think picked it up since Sony didn't want to publish it in west and they published it after nearly 1,5 years after its release. And since we are talking Atlus here they gave it almost no PR money too. Game was basically only spread around as word of mouth until official release in west where some but not all game mags picked it up and gave it high notes. Then again word of mouth and it started to spread around. At that point it already became legend but mostly in hardcore circles rather than in mainstream.

Bamco smelled money and secured funding for From Soft to make another game like that and this is how Dark Souls was made. Dark Souls rode on Demon's fame and Bamco spent actual money to promote it and thus why mainstream picked it up.

This is how reskin of Demon's became Dark Souls.

Ultimately far fuck from Sony had huge remorse over his lost annual CEO bonus due to fuck up with From Software and started to suck From Soft cock so much that they finally got together for romp and end product of that was Bloodborne.

 

[The Decline]

Turns out word of mouth started to spread and over months game started to sell, then Atus i think picked it up since Sony didn't want to publish it in west and they published it after nearly 1,5 years after its release.

The NA release came out in Oct 2009, 8 months after the Feb 2009 Japanese release.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Hello,
What are the minimum pc specs for running it on RPCS3? Approximately what order of processing power (cpu/gpu) do I need to play it comfortably at 1080p@60 fps? Is it playable at resolutions/framerates above native without disrupting game's functioning (physics, sound, timers etc)? If I already own a ps3 with DeS for it, is it still preferable to play on emulator?

(I've never played a Souls game before.)