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LTTP: DEMON'S SOULS

Bartski

Gold Member
About damn time. After over a 1000 hrs of other souls games combined. At the final boss now and slowly getting PTSD grinding for that 0.7% drop rate pure Bladestone for the plat, before going NG+!

Bought a second-hand PS3 real cheap just to play this game. The controller I got with it is broken AF, randomly producing D-Pad inputs switching spells and weapons while moving the left stick or pressing circle, pain in the ass and the main cause of me dying 3 out of 4 times.

Still loving it. A 10-year-old game and there was nothing I'd much rather be doing all this week. Sadly played it spoiled real hard, seen 75% of bosses and areas on youtube already.

Went for a Royalty class & felt quite OP real fast investing into magic and magic scaling weapons. Bosses felt easy, levels felt hard. The worst enemy is gravity, as usual.


loved:

- The origin story of so many things I know and love in later FROM games! So cool to see certain ideas introduced here for the first time knowing how they evolved and were iterated on in later games.
So many items and to see their "debut"... like a strange, reversed easter egg kind of experience!

- Very distinct areas with a really good layout and awesome vibes! As a seasoned Blight Town tour guide, I was really surprised to see how much of a downgrade is actually is as compared to Leachmonger village and the surrounding swamp. Disgusting!

- The Nexus.

- More intricate weapon upgrade system with multiple resource types like in Dark Souls 1. Sounds crazy but IMO it somehow makes upgrading feel much more meaningful.
Hope to see sth like this in Elden Ring, not necessarily having 10+ different resources but 3-5 would be nice. With top tier really making a difference and hard to get. Hard by challenge, not by RNG, more on that later.



hated:

- How easy you can cheese bosses and black phantom encounters with ranged attacks and magic. Swore I'm not gonna do it, ended up doing it anyway :(
I wish I started the game with a 100% melee class and stuck to that. More difficult and more fun.
How would certain fights work then I have no idea as they are clearly designed with ranged attacks in mind. The storm king boss fight was dope tho!

- Bullshit RNG grindfest trophies. Some give you a choice between save-scumming at cristal lizards or NG+.
Now that the servers are down and the game is 100% offline - some much less 'cause having the world tendency shift against your efforts must have sucked. I looked it all up reaching endgame and I am getting that plat!

- Not sure if clunky controls or just broken controller

- In some parts of Stonefang Tunnel, the game drops to like 10 FPS


Bonus mind-blower: the game is called Demon's Souls, not Demon Souls as I thought all this time.

Praise the sun!
 
Royal with the soul arrow is easy mode, basically. As you're a seasoned vet I would have definitely recommended a melee class.
 
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T_LVPL

Member
Still the only Souls game i’ve ever played/completed. Got the Dark Souls triology for cheap and is sat on my PS4 waiting to eventually play them all. Demon Souls great game which kept me busy all through summer 2010. Think the difficulty is definitely something that’s been overhyped by people who never even played the game or didn’t put the work in when playing it. It’s not easy but there’s many harder games than Demon’s Souls.
 

D.Final

Banned
About damn time. After over a 1000 hrs of other souls games combined. At the final boss now and slowly getting PTSD grinding for that 0.7% drop rate pure Bladestone for the plat, before going NG+!

Bought a second-hand PS3 real cheap just to play this game. The controller I got with it is broken AF, randomly producing D-Pad inputs switching spells and weapons while moving the left stick or pressing circle, pain in the ass and the main cause of me dying 3 out of 4 times.

Still loving it. A 10-year-old game and there was nothing I'd much rather be doing all this week. Sadly played it spoiled real hard, seen 75% of bosses and areas on youtube already.

Went for a Royalty class & felt quite OP real fast investing into magic and magic scaling weapons. Bosses felt easy, levels felt hard. The worst enemy is gravity, as usual.


loved:

- The origin story of so many things I know and love in later FROM games! So cool to see certain ideas introduced here for the first time knowing how they evolved and were iterated on in later games.
So many items and to see their "debut"... like a strange, reversed easter egg kind of experience!

- Very distinct areas with a really good layout and awesome vibes! As a seasoned Blight Town tour guide, I was really surprised to see how much of a downgrade is actually is as compared to Leachmonger village and the surrounding swamp. Disgusting!

- The Nexus.

- More intricate weapon upgrade system with multiple resource types like in Dark Souls 1. Sounds crazy but IMO it somehow makes upgrading feel much more meaningful.
Hope to see sth like this in Elden Ring, not necessarily having 10+ different resources but 3-5 would be nice. With top tier really making a difference and hard to get. Hard by challenge, not by RNG, more on that later.



hated:

- How easy you can cheese bosses and black phantom encounters with ranged attacks and magic. Swore I'm not gonna do it, ended up doing it anyway :(
I wish I started the game with a 100% melee class and stuck to that. More difficult and more fun.
How would certain fights work then I have no idea as they are clearly designed with ranged attacks in mind. The storm king boss fight was dope tho!

- Bullshit RNG grindfest trophies. Some give you a choice between save-scumming at cristal lizards or NG+.
Now that the servers are down and the game is 100% offline - some much less 'cause having the world tendency shift against your efforts must have sucked. I looked it all up reaching endgame and I am getting that plat!

- Not sure if clunky controls or just broken controller

- In some parts of Stonefang Tunnel, the game drops to like 10 FPS


Bonus mind-blower: the game is called Demon's Souls, not Demon Souls as I thought all this time.

Praise the sun!

Maybe a Remake from Bluepoint?
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
A truly amazing game

I didn’t experience it until after the 3 Dark Souls games. it was amazing how much of Souls was there right from the start

also it made me realize Dark Souls III is as much a tribute to Demons than any other game in the series
 
S

Steve.1981

Unconfirmed Member
Bartski Bartski how did it take you this long to get around to the game that started it all?! Brilliant though, isn't it.

I agree that Valley of Defilement beats Blighttown. But that's probably unfair because every area in the game is brilliant. Every archstone is an absolute masterpiece of world design in it's own way. Stonefang Tunnel beats any of the 'underground maze' areas from the later games. Tower of Latria (especially Prison of Hope) beats any creepy dungeon area from the later games. & the swamp... Oh man, that swamp. Making it all the way around & finding that one bridge for a shortcut was, no joke, maybe the best feeling of relief I can remember from any Souls. It's all just so damn good.

It's cool to look back & see characters that would often return in later games as well. Again, Yurt is the best version of his type of character. Fucking hated that dude the first time I saved him lol.

Excellent game. Just thinking about it again has me coming around to the idea of some kind of remaster from Bluepoint. Played it twice, but I never did have the courage to try for a completely dark world tendency...
 
S

Steve.1981

Unconfirmed Member
Never played a Souls game. Demon's good place to start?

It's the best place to start. Then I would recommend skipping the entire Dark trilogy (they can wait) & jumping straight to Bloodborne. The 2 masterpieces of the franchise. Each genius level in terms of overall aesthetics.
 

Bartski

Gold Member
Bartski Bartski how did it take you this long to get around to the game that started it all?! Brilliant though, isn't it.
This is the first time I own a PS3, great post btw I totally agree about the rest of what you said, the level design is so much better than some later titles

Why are you not playing on PC for those glorious 60fps?
I tried. For some reason on RPCS3 the graphics is all messed up... like it shows up only some of the textures, in 5 FPS. I tried following tutorials online, copied settings, tried different settings, no luck. I'm on 8 gigs Radeon 580
 

Bartski

Gold Member
You got any pure bladestone man?

I DID!

Then I defeated FK Allant and... the end game sequence did not begin.

So I went to check fextralife:

"The Atlus wiki reports that a couple of players who died at the same time as the Dragon God dies, have not been able to proceed to the game's end event. The players were able to collect the dragon god soul, but were still not invited by the Maiden in Black to finish the game. Make sure you do not risk dying when taking your last hit at the Dragon God."

Which is exactly what happened to me. The game didn't register the trophy but I didn't make too much of is as I thought I can always catch up on NG+. Now I have to play the game all over again with a new character...

Normally I'd be really pissed, but here somehow here I dig the idea, looking forward to it and actually I'm already quarter way in with a totally different strength build.
 
S

Steve.1981

Unconfirmed Member
Oh man I forgot about Fextralife. That place was great for digging into all things Souls. They fucking loved everything about the games.
 
Fantastic title, pretty much on par with the others. The mood is a bit less oppressive than Dark Souls, it feels more like a regular fantasy game than future fever nightmares From produced. Maiden Astraea is my favorite boss because of the hard hitting music and for being the first one to explore that ambivalent nihilistic feeling future titles would lean heavily on. Final boss is also majestic with the symbolism.

DeS feels like peeking behind the curtain and catching some glimpses of the abyss, but it's still sane enough. It's definitely understandable why it's so beloved.
 
Not really. It's better to start by something like Bloodborne in order to get used to the formula. Then Demon's souls will be much more friendly.
Demon's Souls STARTED the formula. Suggesting someone start with a game that basically disregards shields in preparation for this one is just bizarre.
 
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T_LVPL

Member
I absolutely hated The Valley of Defilement. Hearing there was another very similar level on Dark Souls is the thing which’s always put me off starting my PS3 copy of Dark Souls and subsequently now my download of DS remastered. I just find the entire level disgusting to look at. That’s why i didn’t like Bloodbourne much just the aesthetic was disgusting. Obviously the games are all brilliant.

Anyone remember that horrible bastard in Demon’s Souls, a big fat bloke holding a meat cleaver? That’s one of my main memories of the game. And those two gargoyles up the tower. Everyone hated Flamelurker but i thought that was a great battle easily the best boss in the game.
 

HarryKS

Member
I think the Pure Bladestone thing is pure bullshit and the only true failure of the game.

It goes against every core principle they established. Don't know how they got to that point.

Someone thought that the game was too well balanced in almost every way imaginable and decided to throw the pure Bladestone farming in there to make it worse.
 

WindomURL

Member
Recently fired it up again as well. It's definitely far jankier than I remembered.

Still a treat though-- a real one of a kind experience. Going through the Tower of Latria after so long had me spooked all over again.
Miyazaki got that creep game
miyazaki-e1525087024697.jpg

ps Pure Bladestone is pure bullshit. Never got it, and will never bother.
 

Fawst

Banned
I still remember the first time I ever heard of this game. It was a trailer they had on Comcast On Demand, of all things (they used to have some awesome stuff on there, like Something Weird). It was an amazingly well done trailer. Showed the character slowly walking through areas and getting absolutely ruined by out-of-nowhere attacks.

Other than MGS4, it was the reason I bought a PS3. Still has some of my favorite loading screens of all time. Those sepia character sheets, and their poses, are excellent.

The Tower of Latria gave us Mind Flayers, Gargoyles, Giant Man Centipedes, AND Yurt. That place is fuckin evil.
 

fvng

Member
If you were to detail what the key differences between dark souls and demon's souls that gives them their own identity despite all the similarities, what would you say they are? What makes them unique from each other in other words besides lore obviously.
 
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The only platinum trophy I have is for Dark Souls 2. Farming some drops for that was nightmarish enough, and I don't think they had anything on the pure bladestone level.
 

Keihart

Member
When you are experienced i would expect you to go for the barbarian and naked run.
 
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f3dyJC3.jpg

My first and proudest platinum, I never cared to platinum anything until Demon's Souls. Now I've platinumed all souls except DS2 which isn't soulsworthy in my humble opinion.

As for pure bladestone, just put on a podcast you like while you farm it so you won't be bored. In my case I listened to The Flophouse.

...so the world may be mended.

Umbasa.

Welcome to the 3%! We are the few ... the proud ... the ones with way too much fucking time on our hands.

Umbasa.
 
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#Phonepunk#

Banned
I agree that Valley of Defilement beats Blighttown.
the atmosphere in that place is so thick. just the opening area with that waterfall of sludge and you are kind of on some rickety wooden platform suspended in space. it's not easy to immediately see where you are supposed to go. the first time i played the level i just walked off and fell instantly to my death. lol that was kind of perfect. the whole level is a real journey downwards into the mucky muck.

it is interesting to see how they took concepts from Demon's and re-used them and re-tooled them. so, so many concepts. the Phalanx is one of your first bosses, it appears again in Dark's secret level The Painted World. the famed rolling skeletons, legendary pains in the ass, appear again in the bottom of the Catacombs, where they are in the room right before the boss, and there are just a ton of them all revving up to kill you (as well as the basement of the Painted World where they are the biggest pains in the ass the entire game). they show up in 3 again, in some different catacombs, and are nerfed pretty hard. however, having dealt with them in the first game, i kind of count that as a blessing!

i really loved the Demon's nods in DS3, Lothric Castle having a very strong Boletaria feeling to it, the Irithyll Dungeon -> Profane Capitol being a kind of inverted version of the green jail from Demon's, which spirals upwards and also features a number of Cthulu style wizards and coffins scattered everywhere, just like Bloodborne. the new Firelink Shrine feels very similar to the Nexus and the Evangelist enemies are pulled right from it as well. i'm leaving out probably half the stuff that is in Demon's but was iterated upon in later games. you can really see the roots in so much of what From went on to accomplish right here in this first Souls game. very astonishing they were so creative right out the gate.
 

Bartski

Gold Member
The only platinum trophy I have is for Dark Souls 2. Farming some drops for that was nightmarish enough, and I don't think they had anything on the pure bladestone level.
Dark Souls 2 at least gives you the option to buy covenant rank 3 spells in Drangleic on NG++...
Playing through the campaign 2.5 times is still so much faster than getting them online, where you'd need to win a total of 1000 PvP fights to get there (500 Blue Sentinels, 500 Brotherhood of Blood) which today would be rather impossible

Pure bladestone here took me 2.5 hours. Pure bullsit crazy bad idea. Same goes for Moon and Crescent
 
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