My final playtime wasn’t padded out by hours spent bashing my head against a wall. That’s the main difference that’s made the Demon’s Souls remake my favorite FromSoftware experience to date. Demon’s Souls isn’t really interested in making players struggle over and over just to get to the point where they can even begin learning. Something like a surprise boulder drop only tends to happen once or is easily avoided once you know it’s coming. The more straightforward areas aren’t as reliant on “gotcha!” traps that are a fun shock once and an annoyance every time after. That same philosophy applies to the levels leading up to bosses too. Demon’s Souls gets to the execution phase of fights quicker by presenting clear patterns that can be learned in one go. I’d spend battles standing around for a minute waiting for an attack string to tie up just so I could get one jab in. Bosses would routinely take me dozens of attempts as I struggled to learn complex attack animations that seemed to never end. Due to clear encounter designs like that, I was able to beat half of the game’s bosses on my first try, sight unseen. I was able to immediately comprehend that the Old Hero is completely blind and will only target me once I make a scene. Each boss is built around a clearly defined central idea that’s easy to pick up on the first attempt. However, the remake is a more legible experience that’s easier to take in at a glance. I hesitate to call Demon’s Souls easy, because even the easiest Souls game is still harder than most titles.

Instead, I completed the entire game in 17 hours with barely any struggle beyond the second boss. When I started my playthrough, I figured I’d poke at it until I got frustrated and quit, just as I did with Bloodborne. The action-RPG features five more linear zones to explore and can be completed in under 20 hours.

Legible designĬoming off of the 100-plus hour Elden Ring, Demon’s Souls is much easier to swallow by comparison. While I love the latter, Demon’s Souls makes me yearn for a more compact, less esoteric FromSoftware experience. After a four-day binge, I wound up loving Demon’s Souls - so much that it made me more unexpectedly critical of Elden Ring.

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