After hearing about how good Demon's Souls is (from Matthewmatosis and many others) for years...

After hearing about how good Demon's Souls is (from Matthewmatosis and many others) for years, I decided to play it during its final month. I'm having conflicting feelings because of...well, lots of things:

>Item burden - despite armour sets being few, heavy besides AND dropped by one-time enemies and even a boss
>You have to actually go farm healing items until you can buy them at which point you have to go farm souls to buy healing items... before you can seriously try again with a boss
>Every single boss is terrible, incredibly poor quality and you can cheese them with magic or arrows sometimes from outside the fucking fog door - some final bosses are basically "free" - you activate a thing to deal 90% of their health or they outright kill themselves; the only time you'll ever lose to a boss is because of a weirdly animated move that deals an insane amount of damage at close range
>Extremely poor animations which don't properly convey what the enemy is doing, which often results in taking heavy damage - for example the roly-poly skeletons who for some reason mow you down - at least Bonewheel Skeletons have the trade-off of being strapped to actual fucking wheels
>World Tendency, a pivotal mechanic to unlocking optional areas in the already barebones world not only isn't even mentioned but actively shifts to a server average beyond your control unless you play offline
>Confusing terminology: Bladestone = Sharp upgrade path, Sharpstone = Regular upgrade path; LARGE SWORD of Searching in the Curved Sword category, etc.
>Max upgrade materials only drop from specific Crystal Lizard enemies which run away when you approach, are always guarded by enemies, only spawn a set amount of times AND the drop rate is poor.

[TBC]

Speaking of Matthewmatosis, in his "Lost Soul Arts" video he opens with a complaint about how "Demon's Souls has been forgotten by even the developers" despite Dark Souls III LITERALLY TURNING FIRELINK INTO A NEXUS HOMAGE AND LITERALLY PUTTING IN THE LITERAL STORM RULER. Among a MYRIAD of other things like certain upgrade types returning. Why is Demon's Souls forgiven for stuff Dark Souls gets shit for?

The Armor Spider is such a cop-out. A fire mine, okay. QUICK, put some cobwebs near the boss door to justify it! There's not even a single regular spider enemy. It's a poor man's Duke's Dear Freja.

Leechmonger is embarassing and inferior to The Rotten in every single way. Dirty Colossus looks like that thing from Toy Story 3.

The camera shits itself when in 2-2's tunnels, 5-1's shacks and certain bosses.
Forgive me for being so irritated, but I really don't see how anyone can argue this game is "better than Dark Souls/II/III" and expect to be taken seriously. It's not bad for its time but it's just so half-baked by comparison. I understand that a lot of people have strong feelings for the community at release, but the game itself really doesn't seem to hold up.

Fuck off faggot, nobody gives a shit about your e-celeb boyfriend

Demon's Souls is hardly enjoyable if you've played all the other Souls games before. That's why you play in release order.

Shitters who somehow think the whole game is Tower of Latria's first area and Boletaria. Anyone who played it first. That sort'a thing.

As far as I can tell Matthewmatosis got all butthurt because his sekrit treehouse game got a more popular, more serious sequel, so in a "the good old days" kind of way he has to constantly hark on about how "good" Demon's Souls shitty gimmick bosses were and how Dark Souls sucks for not having more things like Sif or the Old Monk (which they do have now - Looking Glass Knight and Halflight - like, they specifically made those in reference to the Old Monk). I find it slightly ironic that he's so hung up on these half-cutscene-half-bosses considering he likes to go on about how he "always plays a knight with no ranged attacks" because he's so skilled. FROM simply tuned the Souls series to give a little more of a duel-type challenge to its fans, who, as it turns out, are the ones who bought Dark Souls and Artorias of the Abyss en-masse. It's the same reason they put a single Ornstein in Dark Souls II - people wanted to fight him one-on-one. Isn't it ironic again, then, that his main critique of the latter game is that the mechanics favour "one-on-one duels"?

Why are you so upset that you disagree with a YouTuber
I agree with some of your points but you do seem to have a chip on your shoulder

I played it after Dark Souls and it's my second favorite.

Nice bait.

I'm not baiting, what do you disagree with me on?

Well, that would seem to fit the pattern, wouldn't it? I'm definitely feeling that. Someone told me "DS3 feels like running through a Dark Souls-themed haunted house rather than an actual game" but I feel that way about Demon's, but I can back that up considering my camera clips through the cave wall revealing that the tunnel I'm in is actually floating in space. I'm starting to think that feeling happens when you've played too many Souls games.

Well I'm not hung up on Matt in particular, but he's the most prolific speaker on Demon's Souls that Sup Forums is familiar with, and it's generally accepted that he knows what he's talking about. I think he's heavily biased.

Well, I appreciate some of the twists of the gimmick bosses as well even if they are mechanically rough, but I think people would be pissed if, say, they bought Ringed City and all the bosses were Gravetender & Greatwolf type dealies.

Every x-3 feels like Lost Izalith, desu.

Sorry, I wasn't intending to start an e-celeb thread. I really do want to talk about Demon's Souls.

Demon's Souls is far more ambitious in my opinion than it's successors even after having played Dark Souls first. Not all it's ideas worked but it was never stale or uninteresting for me. It's bosses are pretty unique overall from the Gargoyles and Allant to Fool's Idol and Astraea even if not all of them are crazy difficult. As opposed to DS2 which is pretty much a shitton of enemies in various sized rooms.

You have a point about a lot of things but you are wrong about the bosses sucking. They are how the bosses in these games should have been. Cheesing them is a different subject though. Of course its not good that for some you can hit them without even entering the fog door. That does make the Maneaters fight go from one of the most difficult in the game to the easiest. The bosses were more gimmicky in this game rather than action focused. I think the gimmick nature of the bosses compliments the entire point of these games far more than straight up action bosses does. So I disagree here.

Now as for the rest of what you said here I'd probably agree with it. Crystal Lizards were supposed to be rare though and you can still buy upgrades from people without them. So this is the only other thing you are wrong about.

Demon's Souls was their first Souls type game and From isn't exactly a AAA developer. Their games from what I hear are known to be hard and even have fps issues. So this game being rough makes sense considering this.
>Why is Demon's Souls forgiven for stuff Dark Souls gets shit for?
Because Demon's Souls came first. A sequel comes after so devs should know better on what works and doesn't work.

>The Armor Spider is such a cop-out.
One of my favorite bosses in the game. It is perfectly in line with what I mentioned earlier about the bosses. And I also can't believe you seriously are defending that awful spider fight from the other game. I'm not even going to say anymore on this.

>Leechmonger is embarassing and inferior to The Rotten in every single way. Dirty Colossus looks like that thing from Toy Story 3.
Yeah these bosses did suck.

>It's not bad for its time but it's just so half-baked by comparison
Its only two years older than Dark Souls 1. And like 5 years than 2 right? As I said, its the first game. So it is understandable its a bit rough since that is how these games are anyways. With that said DES is still great.

>DS3 feels like running through a Dark Souls-themed haunted house rather than an actual game" but I feel that way about Demon's
This is what I've been saying for months. DeS totally ripped off DaS.

You're an idiot and completely missed his point.

>Dark Souls III LITERALLY TURNING FIRELINK INTO A NEXUS HOMAGE AND LITERALLY PUTTING IN THE LITERAL STORM RULER.

You're especially a brainlet for this because he hates that kind of senseless pandering.

I think that having the ability to cheese them is what make DeS an amazing experience. There weren't wiki back then and the whole you can shoot a boss from outside the room sounded like something THAT kid would say but it actually worked.
There's also poisoning bosses, broken scrapping spear for some extra fun, a boss committing suicide if you talk to it, etc...

>Every single boss is terrible,
Thank you for stating this near the top so I can stop reading

Majority of the things, really.
Item burden is a good thing and it forces you to actually manage your inventory. It's bullshit that you can carry everything, and it makes Bottomless box absolutely worthless until you get fed up with million broken swords in your inventory, unless you bother to feed them to Frampt one at a time. You don't even need to carry upgrade materials with you.
You don't have to farm healing items, unless you suck big time, since DeS is pretty easy game and the grass is plentiful as a drop anyway. I have never bought a grass item myself.
Every Souls game has cheesable bosses and gimmick bosses, not to mention the powerful builds. Granted, Royalty class is easymode.
I have no idea what's wrong with the animations. For one, they're the most natural ones of the whole series, since they were made with mocap.
WT is fine, but swifting towards average is bullshit, but it doesn't shift unless you quit the game.
Do you seriously think that every item should be obvious with it's name? There's a description in each item, which I'd rather have rather than a generic name. LSoS is a curved sword, is it not?
Crystal lizards spawn a million times. Once if I recall at first and then once for each boss you've killed. Most important upgrade materials you can find in environment though, only shitty one is pure bladestone and that can be farmed until you get it.

>They are how the bosses in these games should have been.
I can appreciate that.
>The bosses were more gimmicky in this game rather than action focused. I think the gimmick nature of the bosses compliments the entire point of these games far more than straight up action bosses does.
Again I can appreciate that but what is an "action" boss? You still ultimately have to fight in every Demon's Souls boss. They're not THAT different. You can't use Charisma or something to talk them down.

>Crystal Lizards were supposed to be rare though
But they're not though due to their shitty spawn mechanics and the fact that they always appear in the same spawn locations. I can give them some leeway since the technology was limited, but it's still shitty and no you cannot buy certain Pure materials from anybody.

>Because Demon's Souls came first. A sequel comes after so devs should know better on what works and doesn't work.
Well, fair enough, but whenever FROM change something people generally assume they "changed it for the hell of it" instead of having applied feedback.

>One of my favorite bosses in the game. It is perfectly in line with what I mentioned earlier about the bosses. And I also can't believe you seriously are defending that awful spider fight from the other game. I'm not even going to say anymore on this.
Oh, man. We are going to have to agree to disagree, then. I can appreciate you having your own view, so I'm not trying to convince you or anything, but I just can't comprehend how it'd even be a good Mega Man X boss, let alone a Souls boss. It doesn't even fucking move. At least DDF can step on you.

>Its only two years older than Dark Souls 1. So it is understandable its a bit rough since that is how these games are anyways. With that said DES is still great.
Yeah, well. The roughest thing from Dark Souls is the GUI. Everything else is leaps and bounds above DeS from my perspective. Thanks for the legit response.

>There weren't wiki back then and the whole you can shoot a boss from outside the room sounded like something THAT kid would say but it actually worked.

I get what you mean but since this game is built on the levels and bosses it gets ruined way too much if you can cheese them without even going through the door to start the official fight. That is too much right there. One cheese method I approve of a lot more is wearing the thief ring and poisoning the flamelurker to death since at last you have to go through the door. I still would rather the boss fights actually function as they are intended to be fought though. Flamelurker is my favorite of the fights if you fight it with melee.

> but I just can't comprehend how it'd even be a good Mega Man X boss, let alone a Souls boss.
Are you mentally retarded? Who would type a sentence like this?

Defending your e-celeb faggot? Man you're such a cumdumpster.

>Someone told me "DS3 feels like running through a Dark Souls-themed haunted house rather than an actual game" but I feel that way about Demon's

You shouldn’t because Demon’s was the first of these games to be released. DaS1 is a great game, in a lot of ways a far better game than DeS, but it still recycles a fair bit, something that gets more grating and frustrating with each release. I think your points on healing items, weight limits, world tendency, and gimmick bosses (some work, some don’t) are fair, but other criticisms can be interchanged with any DaS game I.E. cheesing bosses with magic or arrows, and others like the levels and bosses being bad are vague as every one of these games has disappointing bits. You really shouldn’t judge Demon’s Souls too harshly on how it’s sequals improve on the formula, though. That’s the entire point.

>what is an "action" boss?

Basically bosses like Artorias count as action bosses. They have no real gimmick other than you knowing when to dodge and attack. Want a good example other than the spider of what I mean by bosses with good gimmicks? So the point in general of what I mean is don't let the bosses just be these huge arena fights against a large enemy where you are only expected to dodge and attack and block. Give some good mix ups. Even when it comes to the areas you fight them in like the spider being down a long hallway. To me that was great stuff and it was a shame they almost completely abandoned the concept for later games. These gimmicks can be awful if done bad though like BOC from DAS1. So its about getting the right balancing and idea to flow well for a boss fight.

I'll reply to the other things in another post.

Well, you're twisting my words, there, aren't you? They have the same atmosphere. Latria is by far my favourite area but when I panned my camera up the first thing I saw when I saw those awfully-drawn sky-chains was "This looks like a fan-game".

A tad overly aggressive, aren't we? Look, I get that, but what exactly does he want then? So they changed the setting because of the licensing issues and then put in some more serious, story-relevant bosses and added quality of life improvements. What else could they have done without literally TAKING OUT things from Dark Souls? Bonfires, poise, different magic types, different summon mechanics, different weapon classes; what else is there that they could put in to please Demon's Souls fans? They have tongue-in-cheek jokes like the Xanthous shit, the Storm Ruler, Gundyr's armour, spells lifted straight from DeS; are those "not right" for some reason? Frankly I think there's too many references to Demon's Souls and the DS series would be better off without ANY. Yhorm sucks shit all because they had to do a meme fight like those shitty flying manta rays.

You haven't played Mega Man X, I take it?
I'll spell it out for you. There's a boss which is a big spider and it takes up the back wall and does janky attacks. There's also a boss which is literally the room you're in, in the same game. Armor Spider is like those bosses in that it doesn't even fucking move. Why does it even need to be a spider? There's no lore about it or anything. Who made its armour? Why can it shoot fire? How did it even get there? It's fucking awful. You need to actually read and think about the sentences you read, not just the nouns.

Its pretty silly since DeS has plenty of great action bosses. All of Boletarian Palace, Flamelurker, Maneaters, Old Hero - all fantastic fights. I don't know why so many people act like DeS only has like 2-3 good bosses anyways, it reeks of people just going into the game looking to hate it.

I played Mega Man X, it was just such a stupid and pointless thing to say that I don't know why you bothered.

I don't know why you're so obsessed with Armor Spider not moving. And reading your posts I am honestly wondering if you are over 18.

DeS invented the wheel
DaS polished it
DaS2 mass produced it
DaS3 took DaS's wheel and called it vintage

Also Bospider moves so you're doubly retarded with your comparison, and Ranga Banga is a great boss who doesn't need to move, showing that such a thing isn't necessary for quality boss design. So you're triply retarded.

>This looks like a fan-game
Okay you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
DeS pulled a miracle with its budget.

>But they're not though due to their shitty spawn mechanics and the fact that they always appear in the same spawn locations. I can give them some leeway since the technology was limited, but it's still shitty and no you cannot buy certain Pure materials from anybody.
I get what you mean here. They should have given them a few more spawn locations to mix things up. This would also let some of them be much easier to kill since some of them are in really difficult spots to kill them.

>but whenever FROM change something people generally assume they "changed it for the hell of it" instead of having applied feedback.
But they do change things for the hell of it. I mean shit I remember the menu being messed up in DAS2. I think it had something to do with the health not displaying right but I can't remember. That is inexcusable right there when they got it right two other times. I don't mind some changes for the sake of change either like DAS 1 and 2 using limited casts in place of mp. I thought that complimented bonfires well by balancing what would otherwise be overpowered magic again. Which it still is mostly but I guess mp can have its benefits as well.

>It doesn't even fucking move.
Which is why it tries slowing you down and throwing fireballs at you. The idea behind the fight is avoiding this and getting in on it at the right moment before it spits fire forcing you back down the tunnel again. That fight was so well done it is one of the most memorable bosses for me in all of gaming.

>Yeah, well. The roughest thing from Dark Souls is the GUI. Everything else is leaps and bounds above DeS from my perspective. Thanks for the legit response.
I did eventually come to like Dark Souls 1 better than DES myself after playing both for awhile back then. I probably had more fun with DES invasions than any other game desu.

Also you're welcome.

One detail that I never see anyone mention when talking about DeS that really disappointed me coming from the other Souls games was the lack of lore text in descriptions, they're really dry and tell you barely anything about the world, pretty much just a blurb of what a given thing does and some of them aren't even written well.

Personally I felt like the lore in the archstone warps made up for that. I was sad DaS1 didn't have that for the bonfires you could warp to.

Maybe that's because the world isn't filled with vague shit. DeS is a pretty straightforward game.

That's a fair perspective; I really didn't WANT to be harsh to Demon's Souls or I wouldn't have completed it. I'm just really disappointed by how opposite my experience has been to the opinions of those who recommended it to me. People talk about how "atmospheric" the grey boxes are because there's a bell sound or something, then scream "IMMERSION BREAKING" when Dark Souls II has a trap room you're meant to get the fuck out of ASAP and never go in again in the richly spider-themed desolated town. You also can't cheese such a huge percentage of any other Souls game bosses, although on the flip side I really liked the Thief Ring/sight mechanic because it slowed down the pace of your combat and made you think about placement.

I see what you mean but I don't think they abandoned that kind of thing; Crystal Sage is like Fool's Idol on steroids; Fume Knight plays with regenerating stage hazards; Moonlight Butterfly, whilst not a good boss, has a similar concept of placement and strategy. I simply think they've had to adapt it to bosses that fit the theme and narrative of the Dark Souls/Bloodborne world.

I don't really see it, I'm sorry. Penetrator is hilariously easy juxtaposed against his intro video; Boletarian Palace itself is barebones and boring and has, what, two shortcuts? Three? Do I have to bring up those dragons? Maneaters were fine but I didn't like their janky teleport; Old Hero was fine but had a tiny moveset except for the thing where if you hit him three times in a row he automatically does an attack on your location despite being "blind" as a bit of a cheat; Flamelurker is alright but janky like Maneaters. They weren't bad, but DS has headliners like Artorias, Fume and Gael.

Nice ad hominem. Call me quadruply retarded if you want, you haven't said anything of note.
>Also Bospider moves
That's my point. Even a fucking 2D spider boss managed to get its ass up over to hit you.

>That's my point.
Then why did you write this?
>Armor Spider is like those bosses in that it doesn't even fucking move.
Do you know how English works? Fucking moron.

There wasn't much need for lore blurb in Demon's Souls. The entire game takes places in various parts of Boletaria and it's all overrun by demons. There's no need for 'this belonged to some NPC you'll never see and it served this purpse' because everything you need to know is explained by observing the levels and talking to the characters.

Bospider isn't just the spider. It's the entire room. The weak point is the spider, and in-world it's the spider, but the boss fight consists of the spider and the rails it runs on, much like how Armor Spider is a corridor with a spider-shaped flamethrower at the end of it.

Are you alright user?

DeS is a pile of shit that people excuse only because it birthed DaS.

>Call me quadruply retarded if you want
That wouldn't even begin to describe you.
But don't worry, I'll memearrow it for you:
>game with low budget looks worse than its multiplatform sequel
Shocking, I know.

Okay so now you're back to acting like the spider doesn't move, even though you just stated here that it does:
You couldn't articulate your way out of a wet paper bag.

>Bospider isn't just the spider. It's the entire room.
No, its the fucking spider you retard. The rails are a visual, they don't damage you. And the spider moves along the rails.

I'm wondering if you played MMX or just watched a lets play of it.

This is the last time I'm going to respond to you because you're clearly being silly.

Let me rephrase: the developer of Mega Man X bothered to animate the spider moving along the rails to attack your character.

By contrast, the developers of Demon's Souls didn't bother to animate the Armor Spider moving even an inch out of its position. It just flails its limbs.

The walls don't damage you in the Armor Spider fight, either. Like, what are you not getting? How would you feel if I told you there aren't any spiders at all, just some hitboxes with spider graphics placed over them?

Hipster Dark Souls deserves a lot of credit for getting so much right in the first attempt, but there's also a huge number of things that have been since changed for a reason. I recently replayed and it definitely shows it's age.

> the developer of Mega Man X bothered to animate the spider moving along the rails to attack your character.

And From gave Armor Spider animations too. It just doesn't run around the tunnel. Also the webs in Armor Spider's fight do get you webbed up so you're wrong on yet another thing.

You're a joke of a retard.

Now you know why 2 was great in my opinione. Because is started with demons and dark souls just felt like a casualization of the series.
>wow these checkpoints are so close to each other
>there’s no fucking hub world
>man, your healing items just refill everytime you die, and they never run out
>these bosses are lame, and they don’t even fit the themes
>no item weight? Now you can just carry all your gear and switch them on the fly depending on the situation, there’s no need to prethink your play style at all
>a ring to roll faster in swamps, the fuck is this easy shit
>oh look, it’s a man eater clone
>fucking patches again
>I bet that dude with the cool looking armor is going to betray you
>man this entire game is like an easier demons Souls, it fucking sucks
So by the time 2 got around, I had adjusted to the changes. 2 felt like a good marriage of demons souls and dark souls, but if you’d never played demons souls, you might not like it as much.

>my favorite e-celeb said dis game wuz bad!!!
>senseless shitty complaints
Christ almighty stop playing an actual good game and slit your fucking jugular, disgusting nigger

Tfw I bought a ps3 just to play Demon Souls for the first time after playing Dark Souls 1/2/3 and Bloodborne.
It sucks even more that I found out about RPCS3 half a year later at most.

underrated post

Demon's is the most atmospheric, least polished, and least replayable Souls game.

I'd say 3 is the least replayable.

I can understand why, they're pretty close.

>least replayable Souls game
speak for yourself

DeS gives you way more options after 1-1, essentially letting you structure you build right at the start of the game. DaS3 is a linear slog unless you want to do the DLC areas after Crystal Sage.

I hate how orange DaS3 is.

I don't know exactly why Dark Souls 3 is so lacking replayability. I didn't think the level design in DaS2 was particularly better, but maybe it was. I know most areas in Dark Souls 3 aren't fun to plow through, but I'm not sure why I didn't mind as much in earlier games. 3 also had this awful feeling of series fatigue, like every weapon you picked up was something you had gotten tired of three years ago.

Don't the servers shut down this month though? Doesn't feel like much point in returning when you can't fuck people over with busted weapons.

...

I know why. Because you have zero options for sorcery, faith, and pyromancy (And most intersting stuff in general) until after Catacombs. The game only has two real portions of choice where you can pick where you want to go, every time you play it you'll be doing the same stuff in about the same order.

Yeah, they shut down at the end of this month. I've been playing but it feels pretty empty and desolate, I thought it would bring people back for one last romp through the game but no-one really seems to care. The game is still great even without online (offline is also the only way to influence world tendencies because when you join the server tendency resets), although if you're a PvP inclined player it's going to lose the feature you cared about.

What did Bloodborne do?

>The Armor Spider is such a cop-out. A fire mine, okay. QUICK, put some cobwebs near the boss door to justify it! There's not even a single regular spider enemy. It's a poor man's Duke's Dear Freja.

Glad somebody else got triggered by this shit. Its just the generic giant spider rpg boss fight except he has an AOE.

Well except for that part where DeS is better than DS in every way.

Demon's Souls explained itself in other ways, so the item blurbs didn't have to fill that role. Also, Demon's Souls was a very "in the present" game with the distant history getting its solid references in too, whereas Dark Souls is far more of a puzzle across history.

I did miss the more detailed descriptions for boss souls though. It would have been nice to know more about the Adjudicator, the Maneaters, the Armor Spider, and the False King. Maybe the Flamelurker too.

I heard that From already switched the servers to worse ones, so people who are on might be struggling to connect.

The Armor Spider itself was cool and fit the idea of "creepy shit in the underground world", but I do think the game would have been better with some other spider enemy or text mentioning some kind of folklore about a metal spider that preyed upon the miners.

The boss fight was great, but it did raise one question for me: If the spider can leave the tunnel (hence the webbed-up corpses on the way to it), why did it fix itself in one location for the boss fight? I can see the logic of the spider bunkering down in its burrow, and it did make the flame-based attacks more dangerous, but we do know that the boss can walk. I wonder if that's what's nagging at the OP?

I'll miss having my glass cannon build to wreck people in Latria
>Maxed DBS
>cracked talisman
>second chance
>cursed weapon
>adju. Shield on back + regen ring to outpace plague
>still minmaxed to one shot most people but can be killed just as easily

You can mash things with it.

I went in the order of DaS3 > SotFS > DeS > DaS

Demon's Souls ended up as my second favorite, with Dark Souls 1 and 2 far behind it.

You convince Demon Souls fags that it sucks, just like you can't convince Morrorwind fags that their game is garbo.

Agreed, I played DeS in December and while it was neat seeing Souls in its infancy, there is just too much unrefined garbage.

Edgier wheel

>not mentioning that retarded fucking audio glitch that makes you have to restart the game i mean come on how the fuck does this still exist and was not patched or something jesus fucking christ i couldn't enjoy the game at all i was always wondering when the fucking audio would begin to stutter and glitch out

t. played demon's first
I played Demon's last. It's tied for first/second/third with DaS and BB, and dead last for gameplay.

meant to say it's tied for first/second/third for plot/atmosphere