Demon's Souls Remake Review

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, its time for another review and this time its a hybrid of sorts as it is based on a previous one I did last year for a game. However, the game itself has since been remade and was an exclusive release for the next gen console that is the PS5 and the game is Demon's Souls. 

Now its been no secret that the PS5 has been extremely hard to purchase due to high demand and short supply mainly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the supply of component parts needed to create the consoles as well as other tech gear e.g. graphics cards or mobile phones. However, I was able to finally buy a PS5 last week and since then I purchased the remake to check it out at last.  As for the review I will still largely use my original review content and expand on it in to cover the aspects of the updated remake version, which was developed by Bluepoint studios.

So, with that said, let's take a look and see how the remake fairs in comparison to the original...

And as I will mention a bit about the story of the game, the usual is coming...

PLOT SPOILERS ARE AHEAD!!!

STORY

So to save time on me typing the story synopsis, here's a decent size snippet of it from Wikipedia

"In ancient times, Boletaria was attacked by a being called the Old One due to the abuse of forbidden Soul Art magic, with the world being almost lost in a magical "Deep Fog" filled with soul-eating demons. The Old One was eventually lulled into slumber, saving Boletaria and populating the damaged world with special humans called Monumentals. In the game's present, Boletaria's ruler King Allant has restored Soul Arts and consequently awoken the Old One and its demon army within the fog. Boletaria is now being consumed by demons, with those humans without souls turning into insane monsters. Players take the role of an adventurer entering the fog engulfing Boletaria. After being killed, the player wakes up in the Nexus and meets a benevolent demon called the Maiden in Black, as well as various other characters.

Now bound to the Nexus until the Old One is returned to slumber, the player travels to five regions of Boletaria, killing the powerful demons controlling those areas and absorbing their souls to increase their power so they can face King Allant".

THOUGHTS

Well, after a seven month wait from its initial release, I am pleased to say that the Demon's Souls remake is an excellent update to the original PS3 classic game, which sees the game get an impressive visual overhaul with 4K graphics thanks to the PS5's enhanced graphics. However, the gameplay mechanics of the game also remain faithful to the original game too and are also keeping in with the spirit of the other Souls games. In short, if you enjoyed the other Souls games, then you are sure to enjoy this update remake also.

GAMEPLAY 

Now this section will be quite big of course and I will split it as usual like my other game reviews into sub-sections below.

MOVEMENT

Starting with movement, the game follows much the same system as the Souls games that succeed it with a third person perspective view that can be rotated 360 degrees to see the character face on or from behind. The player can also do the usual actions such as attack, run, sprint, walk (of course!) and in addition that was never included in the other Souls games, your character can even climb up ledges! This was expanded a little in the remake as at certain points in the game, your character can vault over walls although this is pretty limited in its use. 

CHARACTER CLASSES AND STATS

Next is of course your character classes and stats, which are of course very important and have a big impact on your overall progression throughout the game. Starting with classes, you have 10 different types to choose from that include a warrior, knight, magician (sorcerer in the sequels), priest (cleric in the sequels), hunter and a wanderer and these can be either male or female. These classes will all have their own individual characteristics that are determined by their stats and these can be altered as you progress through the game and this will also grant them usage of different weapons, spells and other items in the game.

As for the stats, similar to the other Souls games you have a set number that are much the same that include vitality, endurance, strength, intelligence, luck, magic and faith. Vitality, endurance and strength are pretty much self-explanatory whereas other stats such as intelligence affect the amount of spells magic spells you can hold and the magic stat determines the power, which increases as you level up that stat itself. Faith is also much the same in that when you level it up you will gain access to more slots and it will boost the strength of offensive miracles or also increase the requirements needed to use these miracles.

There are also some additional stats that would feature in the other Souls game too such as luck, which boosts your item discovery from fallen enemies as you can increase it. And of course there is dexterity, which is used to handle certain weapons that requirement more refined skill to use such as spears, bows, halberds or katanas.

And before moving on, its worth mentioning of course that these stats are leveled via the NPC known as the Maiden in Black, who appears in the game's main hub, the Nexus, which I will mention in a bit. 

WEAPONS

And this brings us onto weapons and there are plenty of weapons to be found in Demon's Souls just like in the other games in the series and some of these appear in the other Souls games too. And the remake largely keeps the original weapons intact with little new weapons added.

So, similar to the Dark Souls trilogy, you have different classes of weapons such as straight swords, large swords (which are the equivalent of great swords in the sequels) spears, hammers (including clubs I think), bows (including crossbows), katanas, daggers, curved swords (that inflict bleed damage) and axes. And these weapons all have varying requirements when it comes to strength and dexterity although I don't think they require intelligence or faith like some of them do in the Dark Souls trilogy.

There are also a selection of shields in the game too, which you character will use for defense and to block attacks (as you do with a shield!). Again there are different classes of shield such as small, standard and large with a mixture of wood, leather and metal shields with varying degrees of resistance and effectiveness for physical and elemental damage. 

You can still of course use these weapons even if you do meet the requirements for them but it just means, like the DS trilogy you cannot use them effectively until you meet those requirements. However some of these weapons, especially weapons such as large swords, can be used if you meet the dexterity requirement for them and will allow to use them two-handed with most strength weapons proving most effective being held with two hands anyway.

As for the remake, they did add two new weapons which are the ritual blade and the reaper scythe as well as the hoplite shield. The ritual blade is a large axe (although it does look more like a large machete than anything else!) which can be found used by the skeletons in Shrine of Storms. The reaper scythe is a polearm weapon, similar to the great scythe in the other Souls games. Both of these weapons however cannot be upgraded.

ARMOUR

As for armour there is actually a surprisingly small amount of armour sets in the game with just 18 in total to be found and every class has their own individual set. The armour sets can range from very light for characters such as magicians and hunters to the more heavy sets worn by knights and priests. Again the weight factor of the sets will also impact on your equipment load as you will fat roll (i.e. roll slowly) if you are wearing a heavier and don't have sufficient endurance to wear it. 

COMBAT

As for the combat again it is very similar to the following Souls games in that your character uses a mix of defense and offense when taking down enemies with a weapon and shield. You can also as a caster (mage or priest) use spells to take down enemies at range or use a bow or cross-bow to do the same. The game also introduces the parry and riposte system where you can use your shield deflect an enemy's attack and follow it up with a deadly finishing move and addition to this you can get behind enemies and backstab them.

The remake version of the game has enhanced versions of the riposte and backstab attacks, which are altogether a bit more brutal looking in their execution! However, these attacks actually remain faithful to the original take down methods of the original game. 

THE NEXUS

And then we get to what is the game's central hub, which is known as the Nexus and is like Firelink Shrine in the sequels (or Majula in the Dark Souls II) where your character can level up their stats (via the Maiden in Black) talk to other non-playable characters (i.e. NPCs) and purchase items and upgrade weapons. The Nexus also features what appear to be five headstones that allow the player access to different worlds that are the main playable areas of the game but in order to access them you need to talk a specific NPC (the Monumental) to do so.

NON-PLAYABLE CHARACTERS (NPCs)

Then there are the NPCs, who like in the other Souls games can help your character along the way and offer different things such as the Nexus blacksmith, Ed, who can upgrade your weapons and purchase weapons and other items form. There is also an NPC, Stockpile Thomas, who can store items and weapons for you if you become over-burdened with your equipment load and this can happen quite often in the game as you pick up items throughout. Then there are NPCs you can purchase spells or miracles from that you find as you travel through the worlds and you can also trade boss souls with them for additional spells/miracles.

Then of course we have the Maiden in Black, who levels up your character and she also plays a pinnacle role in the end of the game but I won't say much more than that! Plus I cannot forget to mention the one and only Patches, who features in just about EVERY Souls game (bar Dark Souls II that is!). Patches if you don't know is basically a sneaky and untrustworthy merchant, who will screw you over at any given opportunity but can later on sell you stuff that is of good use such as healing items, arrows and rings.  

CHARACTER AND WORLD TENDENCY

Another key aspect of the game is to do with your character and world tendencies.

Starting with character tendency, this affects your character directly based on your choices throughout the game to either help NPC's or kill them or invade online players and kill them. So, essentially you will have either a black or white tendency with the black tendency it reduces your health to 45% and your attack power is increased as an invading black phantom.  White tendency however will increase the player's attack power in Soul form and it will also increase your attack power as a blue phantom (i.e. where you assist other online players to fight bosses).

As for the world tendency, this directly affects the difficulty level of events that take place in the game's different worlds and are specific to that world. So, essentially if you stay in human form and keep dying then this will lead toward the world tendency turning black, which in turn strengthen enemies HP and attack power but they will end up dropping more souls when they die and you will have a better chance at obtaining rare items. Your character's maximum HP will reduce in Soul form also, which can makes thing very challenging indeed! There will also be more black phantoms of standard enemies that appear at different areas in that world as well to challenge you.

As for white world tendency, enemies will have less HP and attack power and will reduce the chance of dropping rare items but they should still provide health items when they are killed. Your attack power is also increased when in soul form and can go up in increments based on how white the world becomes.

SOUL AND BODY FORM

And this brings me onto the two different forms your player can take, which are soul and body form as both these forms have different effects on gameplay.

Starting with soul form, the player will have reduced health but they can as previously mentioned have more attack power in this form based on your world tendency as it will be more if it is white and less if black. They will also appear more ethereal than they would in body form and one benefit also is that they make no noise when they move around. When you are in body form however you will have full health but you will do less damage than in soul form and you will also make audible noise when you move.

ARCHSTONES 

Another key aspect of the game are the archstones, which your character will use to travel between the different worlds and the Nexus and there are often more than one to be found in each world. Each world will begin with one each but as you defeat bosses, more will appear as you progress and they can allow you to checkpoint your progress in the worlds as you make your way through them. You can also use what is known as shards of archstone, that are the equivalent of your homeward bone from Dark Souls that can return you to the Nexus at any time.  

ENEMIES AND BOSSES

Moving onto the enemies there are is plenty of variety here with no shortage for your character to fight against that range from your low level scrubs that are the dreglings up to red eye knights. There are also some really annoying enemies called fat officials, who are appear in a couple of the worlds who armed with whips or axes and can throw fireballs at you. However in the remake, they decided to redesign the officials a bit by giving them warty skin! There are also plenty of monster/creature type enemies such as giant bugs, rockworms, gargoyles, man centipedes, storm beasts and of course your typical rabid dogs!

There are also hybrid-human enemies such as mind flayers, who are essentially octopus headed magicians that can deal out some pretty nasty damage, shadow lurkers, who are like ghostly spirits that deal out magic damage and of course we have armoured skeletons, who can really mess you up with their falchions (i.e. a curved sword that deal heavy bleed damage!). So there are certainly plenty of bad guys here to keep you on your toes and will test you throughout the game.

There are also another type of enemy in the game that appear as red phantoms and they can interrupt your progress at different times in the game. The phantoms will vary in challenge as you progress and their presence can also be affected by the world tendency of the game as they will often appear more if you have a black world tendency than white.

Boss wise there are plenty on display here and they of course will allow the player to regain their body form if they were in soul form when the boss is defeated. The bosses will of course drop a high number of souls as well as their own soul, which can be traded with the magician or priest NPC's for special spells/miracles. Bosses also come in different types such as humans and monsters and there is plenty of variety on display here in the game in that regard.

The bosses definitely vary in their challenge level and I have to say that most of them are pretty easy in comparison to the rest of the bosses found in the Dark Souls trilogy but some of them are pretty interesting in their design all the same.

RINGS 

Then there are the rings in the game, which just like in the other Souls games, grant the character different abilities and resistances and they can equip two at a time. There are 26 rings in total in the game and as a few examples there is the Cling Ring, which can be used to boost your HP when you are in soul form and the regenerator ring, which slowly recovers your health over time. Other rings also include the Thief Ring, which enables you to become harder for enemies to detect, Ring of Magical Sharpness, which boosts your magic power but also lowers your magic defense and the last one I will mention is The Ring of Herculean Strength, which boosts your equipment load similar to Havel's Ring in the sequels.

WEAPON UPGRADE STONES

Next we have the stones used for upgrading weapons and there is a big variety of stones to be found throughout the game that all have different properties and can add various effects to weapons such as infuse them with fire, magic, bleed or poison.

There are too many to mention here to go through them all but the two primary types of stone you will use in the game are hardstone and sharpstone and they can fully upgrade your weapons from its base level up to +10. These types of stone however are the basic upgrade paths and will not add any additional elemental effects to weapons.

Starting with hardstone, this is used to upgrade weapons such as straight swords, axes, hammers, bows and even shields and they come in different varities that are shards, large shards, chunks and pure stone (maxes out the weapon to +10). So, basically hardstone would be used to mainly upgrade strength based weapons as opposed to dex based ones. As for sharpstone, this is used to upgrade weapons such as spears, curved swords, katanas, daggers and rapiers, which are all pretty much dexterity based weapons. Again similar to hardstone, sharpstone comes in varieties of shard, large shards, chunks and pure stone.   

CONSUMABLE SOULS AND ITEMS

And last of all for the gameplay section, I will mention a bit about the consumable items in the game as well as souls that you can collect throughout. To start with the consumable souls, these are often found on dead bodies and will range in the number of souls they give you from as little as 200 up to 10,000 souls. These are very handy for boosting your souls count when you might be low and want to purchase items or even uprgade weapons or level up.

As for the consumable items there are plenty also to be found in the game and primary ones are for healing your health but some can also be used to cure status ailments such as poison or toxicity. The healing items vary from the smallest, which are Crescent Moon Grass alway up to New Moon Grass, which completely restores your health. As for the status healing items there are three usable ones here that are Widow Lotus that cures the plague, Royal Lotus, which cures poison and Soldier Lotus that cures bleeding.

Other consumable featured also help restore your magic power and there are two such items that can do this that are Fresh Spice and Old Spice. Fresh Spice will only recover a small amount of your magic power whereas Old Space will recover a larger amount of it. These items can also be purchased from different NPC merchants in the game.

EQUIPMENT LOAD

And lastly in the gameplay section, I will mention more about equipment load as already mentioned, your character can become overburdened by the load that they carry as they pick up items throughout the game. However, you can offload equipment to the NPC at the Nexus called Stockpile Thomas, who will hold your equipment safely for you. However, in the remake, a neat change that has been added is if you are danger of being overburdened, the game will allow you to move any items that would do so to storage, so it can be retrieved at a later date. This is a nice change from the original's rather inconvenient way of forcing you to drop items to or leave them behind due to your equipment burden.

GRAPHICS 

Finally moving onto the game's graphics, well its safe to say that the orignal Demon's Souls graphics were easily the most dated looking of all the Souls games, especially given as it was initially released on the PS3. However even by PS3 standards, the graphics are still a bit behind the times but I guess this might have come down to the budget limitations available to the developers at the time.  

However, this is not a problem in the remake as the graphics are simply stunning in their richness and detail as the environments all look fantastic as they have been given a huge 4K upgrade over the original's dated looks. In fact the game comes with two modes, a performance mode targetting 60fps and a native 4K mode, which runs at 30fps. Character models also look excellent too although I would still say their facial animations looks a bit weird an unnatural at times. Regardless of this though, they still look very impressive.

You also have access a number of visual filters that give the game a different look as the standard look of the game is pretty dark alot of the time, particularly in the Nexus. However, the visual filters allow players to make profiles for the game that appear more bright or vivid, which can prove useful especially in a darkly lit area in the game. 

So, overall the visuals are very impressive in the remake and it does show off the PS5's graphics capapbilities very well indeed.

MUSIC

As for the music, the game features a pretty good score by Shunsuke Kida and it is largely very orchestral and features choral sections also very much like the Souls scores that would follow it but I would still say that the Dark Souls trilogy's music scores were far more memorable than this one here. Regardless of that though there are still some good themes here that include the themes for the bosses, Armour Spider, Tower Knight and my favourite is Maiden Astraea, which is quite different from the rest of score and is easily the real standout of the soundtrack.

As for the remake however, the score has been re-orchestrated by American composer, Bill Hemstapat, who recorded the score with a 75 piece orchestra. The remake score however doesn't bear a great deal of resemblance to the original although some themes do have a familiar sound to them but for the most part, the score is quite different to the original as it is more grandiose sounding in its orchestral arrangements. However, I actually prefer the original score myself as it has more charm to it as I think some of that is lost in translation to the remake one. Regardless of this though, its still a pretty decent score and suits the tone of the game well for the most part. 

FLAWS

So finally moving onto the flaws section. Does Demon's Souls Remake have any? Yep it does but I have to be fair to some of these flaws I will mention as this was the first game in the Souls series, so its only fair to expect that they would need to iron any of the issues featured here in future games.

Anyway with that said, I would begin by saying that one thing that is a bit annoying and a drawback is to do with the equipment load system, which is inferior to the Souls trilogy's. And the reason why is because you can only carry so many items before you get the annoying message "you cannot carry this item. It would overburden you" comes up! Now, the way to deal with this would be either drop the item to pick up the other one, or head back to the Nexus deposit your items with the NPC that stores them for you, Stockpile Thomas.This however has been alleviated somewhat in the remake by allowing items to be automatically moved to storage when you do become overburdened, which does neturalise this criticism to an extent and is a nice change.  

Another issue is to do with the World Tendency concept, which if you are new to the game then its something that might trip you up as it did in my first playthrough of the original (which the save file got corrupted for, so I had to start a 2nd playthrough to finish the game!). And the main problem with this is if you stay in body form and keep dying, the world tendency will turn black as mentioned in my WT section and the enemies become stronger and harder to kill and your max health is reduced in soul form. So, this is a real pain in the asss if you get stuck in such as situation and it can also force to deal with an extra bunch of in-game invaders who also have more health! So, in short you really need to take care when you play this game at first and if in doubt, just stay in soul form to avoid this trap.

Something else that bugged me in the game was to do with how the Maiden in Black keeps changing her position every time you travel back to the Nexus and given it is a pretty big place, its easy to lose track of where she is! I mean one minute she's at the bottom of the stairs and the next she is right up the top where you can't see here without running around or she might sitting down in a crouched pose! So, I wish they would have limited the amount of positions she can move to when you travel back to the Nexus to make your life just that bit easier to find her and level up.

Another problem found was to do with the lack of archstones at times in the game, which can cause much frustration in certain areas, particularly in the Tower of Latria world, as I had found myself having to do a massive runback from the second archstone to try and progress through the swamp area and up the top. However, when I did this one time, I was killed en-route to the top by a gargoyle and another time I carelessly jumped off a lift taking me up, which meant I had to start all over again! So, the lack of archstones really does force you to be extra careful in these areas, which can also be pretty challenging.

Then there is of course the issue relating to the sheer amount of upgrade stones throughout the game as there simply too many to choose from and they are quite confusing in what some of them even do! In fact I think overall there are 16 different types of stone to be found in the game, which is too many if you have ask me and serve more to confuse the player than help them.

Another thing that might also be a big problem in the game is that there is no forgiveness system like there is in the Dark Souls games, where you can be pardoned for your sins if your accidentally attack an NPC either in the Nexus or in the worlds. And if you make this mistake that means you are pretty much scuppered with dealing with that NPC, so if you e.g. unwittingly attack the magician, Freke, then he will refuse to deal with you and will try and kill you instead, leaving you no choice but to kill him. So, if you are a mage then that's you pretty much screwed!

I also noticed in the game that there are certain weapons that cannot be upgraded, which I found a bit annoying such as the crossbows and certain shields like the leather ones. Now I can sort of see the point of not necessarily wanting to upgrade a leather shield but a crossbow?! I mean come on! A crossbow can be a pretty essential weapon in the Souls series and to not allow it to be upgraded is frankly ridiculous! So, I'm not sure what the game director, Hidetaka Miyazaki's logic was here when he made these upgrade decisions in this game.   

Another issue I have, which is specific to the remake version is to do with killing the crystal lizards in an area, because in the original game and other Souls games you could just reload the game from the menu and the crystal lizards would reappear. However, in the remake, you cannot do that here as you need to travel back to the area to reset it, so you can kill the crystal lizards you missed. This is an annoying change especially when it comes to having to kill the surrounding enemies over and over again and probably one of the poorest changes in the remake. 

Another remake issue is to do with the new recording of the NPC dialogue, which has been altered somewhat and feels like its lacking some of the character and personality in the original. A prime example of this is the character, Boldwin the blacksmith at the Nexus, who was a grumpy Scotsman in the original game but here they've made him more amicable sounding. So, instead of his grumpy sign off of "You come back alive! I need your business!" its now "Do come back alive. I need your business" which makes him sound more submissive and wishy washy! 

Another example of this comes in the form of needlessly changing the dialogue from the original with the worst offender being the Maiden in Black's dialogue when you finish leveling up your character. And in the original, the Maiden at this point would ask "Art thou done?" but they changed it to "Art thou finished?" in the remake! Now, this to me is totally pointless and adds nothing to the game whatsoever other than maybe annoy or irk some fans of the game, who would also feel these choices are largely pointless. 

I also felt that some of the sound effects in the game where a bit off and overblown sounding and as an example, casting certain spells such as soul arrow sounds more like you are firing a laser gun than doing a spell cast in a not so futuristic setting! Then there is the Storm King boss, who sounds more like a giant whale than anything else and this is a bit of a naff change. So, yeah I felt the sound effects in places definitely could have been a bit better,

Another issue and one of the more disappointing aspects of the game is how just easy most of the bosses in the game are to defeat. I mean the final boss of the game, King Allant, who is essentially a large grub is ridiculously easy as you can even just finish him off with magic spells without even going anywhere near him! There are still a few tricky bosses in the game but to finish it all off with a "boss" that has zero challenge to him, is pretty disappointing. Although at least with the remake, they kept the difficulty level quite consistent with the original game overall.

Anyway that's it for the flaws.

SUM UP

So to finally sum up, Demon's Souls Remake is an excellent update to the original game and its enhanced, stunning visuals really show off the PS5's graphical abilities. The gameplay also remains as enjoyable as the original and with a few tweaks here and there, it gives the game a more modern feel to its combat, which is a good thing. 

There are a few issues however with the gameplay here and there and the sound effects and some changes to the voice acting are a bit annoying and disappointing in places. However all that aside, Demon's Souls is still an excellent upgrade to the original game and if you are lucky enough to get a PS5, then its certainly worth a look to anyone, who fancies giving the Souls games a try.

So, I will give Demon's Souls remake a rating of: 

9 out of 10 

OK, that's it for now and I will be back with another review next month.

Till then its bye for now.

Umbasa!