Demon’s Souls - PlayStation 5

What I loved: ========== 1) Great Graphics. 2) Good sound effects 3) Feels immersive with haptic feedback. 4) Excellent storyline. Complex for a newbie to get to grips with Character vs World Tendency. But you can find that info on Youtube/Fextralife if you've never played any of the predecessors in the series. 5) The 'quirky' reference was primarily in relation to the plague babies. That part reminds me of whack a mole! 6) The way the game becomes an entirely different animal depending on the rings you wear, and the World Tendency, Black being harder, White being easier. 7) The variety of gameplay tactics on offer.. Ranged as an archer, Mid range with Magic, In your face with swords, axes etc, and Faith builds that provide healing characteristics. What I didn't like: ============== 1) Lack of manual (there are options built in and message markers in places like the tutorial/Nexus, but that barely scratches the surface. Something like Master of Orion's manuals from back in the 90's. Really detailed breakdown on maths involved (thinking levelling, weapons, what foes are susceptible to what damage type etc). But you pick that up with trial and error eventually. 2) Inventory a) You sort things, put something in, then have to resort, rather than it retain sort order on insertion. b) You should be able to say don't send to either Stockpile Thomas/carry yourself. c) Materials - you should be able to classify by type -default seems most logical. But it breaks down when you run out completely of an item and restock - it then often ends up at the start of the list. I want to see size within Type order. d) Weapons. Would like to see one icon per type (with a number, rather than it listed 99 times!). Ideally you would be able to see all the upgraded versions by clicking into the icon - so Short Sword -> Blessed Short Sword etc. e) Should be able to select what is in an item slot and move all of it to inventory without the rigmarole of of removing it from items slots. f) Should be able to say discard straight from storage box. 3) Some of the characters like Stockpile Thomas needs a more varied dialog. Gets boring after a while hearing same thing. 4) Amour reword for the 26 ceramic coins. Underwhelmed. Aesthetically pleasing. But a couple of other armour sets are better. Can't believe the grind I went thru to get that only for it to come up so short of the mark. 5) In the Nexus, Maiden in Black keeps standing by Stockpile Thomas, making it awkward to interact with him. 6) Suddenly after 666+hrs of game play I thought the save game file got corrupted, because I could no longer send inventory to Stockpile Thomas. I always synched my save games to cloud too. So I thought I was hosed. After a few of days of not hearing back from anyone at Bluepoint, it dawned on me, maybe there is an item cap limit I hit and that was why I could not send items to inventory. Decided to retrieve then discard a pickaxe, then send a Clearstone Chunk to inventory. Voila - sending items to inventory worked again. I really didn't like the fact the game gave no feedback saying you've hit the max inventory limit, you need to discard some items. 7) Following on from last point.. No ability to sort weapons in inventory by quantity. It would also be good if you could set a limit on the number of weapons you can send to inventory before auto-discarding. 7 seems reasonable as a default, so you can have enough to do the weapon upgrades to max per weapon. Some that need Clear Demon Soul upgrade only need one - but having 7 so you have spares is still ok. I had loads of Hands of God, Pickaxes, War Scythes, Uchigatanas, Winged Spears... 8) You can't delete individual characters. It's all or nothing. So, if you had a few attempts at killing the training boss you were left with characters you never use too. What I an hesitant about: ==================== Doing online gaming (PVP vs PVE) - the amount of time it takes to level up (over level 300 currently), only to have someone Soulsucker you makes me wary! Even so, i have been playing for months and can't leave it alone. I highly recommend. On my 9th play-through. I have other games to try out like Ghost of Tsushima to try out, but I can't seem to put this one down.

This game, the game that's only on PS5, is amazing. The visuals are amazing, the graphics are amazing, the character designs are amazing, everything is amazing. When I first started this game, I was blown straight away. Everytime I open this game, I would just wonder around the area, killing enemies for souls non stop just to get the best out of it. This game took me really long as I kept getting shot, stabbed, burned, and others. Enough talk, time to talk about the game itself. The game is a remake to the original PS3 Demon Souls from From Software with upgraded realistic graphics and stuff. Now while From Software is doing Elden Ring with Game Of Thrones writer, Bluepoint Games, the guys who made the epic remake of Shadow of the Colossus, handles the development of the game and tbh, they did it right. They respected everything that made the game a masterpiece in the first piece. Character customisation is back and it's better than ever. Usually in a Souls game when it comes to customisation, I would just pick a character, a character who would prove useful in battle but this one, I couldn't stop looking at it. I would just look at the different characters and even give that character a face. I once even thought of making a hulk. Combat is similar to the original but it's slower and more tense than ever. Nevertheless it's still fun. I played the game as a knight which was an ok choice but he kept dying and losing souls. So I chose a wizard who is much fun and is the default 'easy difficulty.' When I said the default 'easy difficulty' it's not. The game is still challenging as I kept dying and I sometimes became arrogant after defeating a boss. And the more times I died, I would use everything I learned from my death and come up with a plan and thus I succeeded. The challenge is what makes the game fun and for people who have never played a Souls game before, then good luck with that cause the first time I played a Souls game which is Dark Souls, I kept dying and gave up until I learned how to really play it. This game is a complete masterpiece from Sony and Bluepoint Games (makes me wonder why Xbox didn't make a game like this when their new console launched). The price is a bit unfair but I understand since the game is beautiful and huge to play with. Most importantly, this game is worth it and people who have a PS5 and is a hardcore player must play this.

Good game just overally difficult in places. Lots of grinding needed and more of a committment than i have free time for. Still managed 30+ hours

The Good: • Stunning remake brings the fantastic gameplay of the PS3 game, while updating the visuals and performance with the PS5 - Both old and new players can enjoy the experience as a fresh and new journey • Native 4K/2160p at 30 fps 'Cinematic mode' looks stunning • Reconstructed 4K at ~60 fps 'Performance mode' looks great, while offering a significant performance increase (my recommended mode) • Haptics and adaptive triggers let you FEEL every swing, fall, hit and incoming boulder.. • 3D audio (headset only as of writing) brings Boletaria to life, as you hear every creak, groan and incoming arrow with full directionality • Entirely renewed score, which is utterly epic and fantastic, adding much 'drama' to the game (although, I adore the simplicity of the eerie and unsettling PS3 OST) • Tons of new, unique animations, such as individual weapon animations, parries and backstabs (not present in original) The Bad: • The price. An increase in price is understandable, however, $70/£70 is not remotely equal or fair on UK players. Doesn't look like Sony will budge on this though. (US$70 ~= £53) • No ray-tracing (this only impacts people who were hoping for some RT support) • Unless you're a fan of the From Software's (original developer) games, you might struggle to get into it (slow paced, vague narrative, no hand-holding - but all this also makes for excellent tension and escapism) (• 'Mind flayers'.. Good luck to new players ;) )

To clarify on the title, this is the first Soulsbourne game I have completed all the way from start to finish. I have played previous games a little including Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 but I've only scratched the surface of those games.. So.. Anyway.. Demon's Souls is the first From Software game I have completed all the way through and then instantly gone back for a second play-through. I got a Ps5 on launch day in the UK and didn't pre-order Demon's Souls, instead I decided to get it a few weeks after launch, it was a bit of a shot in the dark considering I haven't played many of the past Souls games. As a first complete experience I loved this game. There is clearly a lot of passion in this remake, the sound and visuals are absolutely top notch and the music (despite what some die hard fans may tell you) is brilliant and beautiful. The Duelsense controller is incorporated really well with the rumble, haptic triggers and controller speaker all being put to use here. In total this lasted me a good 28-30 hours on my first play-through, all hours I would happy do again. Whatever I say about this game will not be the same as playing it, it needs to be experienced. In summary this game has prompted me to buy the Dark Souls trilogy on Ps4 and Sekiro, here's hoping the rest of them are this brilliant!

Amazing graphics, but the game is fairly basic with little replay value. It suffers from the fact that it is a pure remake of a low budget 2009 game as the mechanics and gameplay are preserved from the original. Don’t pay full price.

Demon's Souls was an incredible game when it launched so many years ago, and the core gameplay is still as testing and intensive on a new generation of hardware. The graphics are where all of the work has been done in this revision, to ensure that Boletaria and its denisens look better than ever. A lot of the marketing and talk about the game focuses too much about how hard it is, and while it is a brutal game, more fanfare should be made of how involved and interesting the place is. A great example of telling a story through showing, rather than saying.

Really wanted to like this game. Graphics are very good and no doubt there is a deep & impressive world to explore. The game lets its self down in my opinion with the controls and gameplay. Everything feels slow and unresponsive & you cannot edit the controller buttons ( I admit i'm playing this game directly after finishing Returnal, so my review might not be entirely fair with regard to the game being unresponsive, but thats the impression it gives me) Maybe I should have played this game first. Anyway, not for me. update decided to give it another go and I'm glad I did. still slightly frustrated with controlling the character but can't stop playing it now. 4 1/2 stars.