Demons Souls Remake Review
Author: Griffin.
Genre: Action Adventure, RPG, Souls.
Demon’s Souls directory.
Here is our Demon’s Souls Remake Review giving you a subjective, unbiased review helping you make a more educated decision on whether or not the game is for you.
- Release Date: 12-Nov-2020.
- Platforms: PS5.
- Price At Launch: £69.99.
- Developer: Bluepoint Games.
- Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment.
- Genre: Action Adventure, RPG, Souls.
The game
The original Demon’s Souls released back on the PS3 on the 5th-Feb-2009 and became a genre defining masterpiece that every single gamer out there should experience and attempt to get through as well as they could until ultimately giving up due to the blistering difficulty. Cripplingly wonderful boss battles and a story that even the developers couldn’t fully understand.
Demon’s Souls Remake is all that and so much more!
The Remake has been fully rebuilt from the ground up for the PlayStation 5 bringing you beautiful, smooth as velvet textures and gameplay whilst staying as true as it can to the original.
Every boss from the original game from the Phalanx in the Gates of Boletaria to the infamous Flamelurker is here, fully realised in beautiful 4K.
Once the opening cutscene has rolled, you are free to create your character and go off through the land of Boletaria taking down Demon’s of all shapes, sizes and abilities utilising either magic, faith or melee builds or a combination of them all if you choose.
You are free to get through the areas of the game however you choose, if you want to hold a staff in one hand and fire off multiple spells whilst wielding a battle axe in your other hand, go for it.
If you want to be a pyromancer burning everything in your path with a Dragon Bone Smasher in your other hand then you do you.
That’s the beauty of the Demon’s Souls Remake, whatever works for you, you can do it. Want to be a tank that take a fair bit of damage before falling or a light, agile mage who can roll out of danger? As long as you have the stats, you can.
As you make your way through the game and take down the various enemies, you can then go to the Nexus, a base essentially where you can level up, equip your gear then use any of the available archstones to go off through any of the 5 worlds exploring and taking down all who stand in your way.
The good
In the Demon’s Souls Remake, you have the ability to play however you want as long as you learn what stats should go where to benefit you the most. You can start off the game as a mage and end up as a greatsword wielding tank or vice versa.
There isn’t many greater feelings in gaming than getting your arse handed to you by a brutal boss then going off, painstakingly levelling yourself up and enhancing your weapon then coming back and finally getting the win.
Demon’s Souls birthed a fantastic series of gaming, not just Dark Souls and Bloodborne but so many more besides.
Being able to revisit every area of the original and take down the original bosses watching modern day graphics sweep pass you as cut down waves of Demons is absolutely spectacular.
It is entirely up to you how much levelling you want to do in order to get through an area, if you want a challenge then either don’t level yourself at all or very little which can make the latter areas nigh on impossible or if you want to walk through the areas like some overpowered god of demons then invest a serious amount of time into levelling up.
The choice is yours to make.
PVP is a very welcome addition in the Demon’s Souls Remake whereby you can lay down a sign letting other players know that you wish to be invaded.
You can then fight against other online players, sending them back to their world if you vanquish them successfully or play the game in human form which leaves yourself open to invasion at any time, increasing the difficulty exponentially.
The not so good
One of the things that I’m not a fan of having played through the Dark Souls Trilogy and Bloodborne is the World Tendency mechanic which is brutal for experienced players.
Let alone newcomers and I fear it will put a lot of newcomers off as there is little to no explanation of World Tendency and the implications of it in the game.
If you die in Human Form (full health bar) you are then sent to the Nexus and are now in Soul Form where your health bar will be halved! Making the game more challenging.
Now there is a ring, the Cling Ring which can be found in the first area to raise your health to 75% as well as having items which can restore your Human Form. But. The more you die in Human Form, which restores as soon as you kill a boss the more the game shifts to Black Tendency which releases incredibly tough Black Phantom enemies which can easily one shot you even at high levels.
So essentially, the more you die in Human Form, the harder the game becomes which then forces you to play in Soul Form with greatly reduced health increasing your chances of dying.
Thus bringing additional challenges to an already challenging game. I am very glad they removed Tendency from the Dark Souls games as I think it may have put the majority of less hardcore / experienced players off.
Online
Demon’s Souls Remake can be played completely offline if you choose to or you can dive in to PVP or go online and request a summoning partner to help you take down a boss or get through a particularly challenging area.
Again, the choices are entirely yours, depending on how you want to play the game.
Trophies
There are plenty of trophies to be earnt as you make your way through the game including taking down bosses in a certain way or acquiring certain rare weapons.
You will also need to collect every spell, miracle and ring in the game, however, there are 4 new rings in the Demon’s Souls Remake 1 of which is a trophy breaker as if you don’t select the Providential Ring as a starting gift when you first create your character at the very start of the game.
The ring is then completely missable and the only way to unlock the King Of Rings trophy is to start a brand new character and go through the entire game again, collecting the other 29 rings which given the difficulty.
I believe this is a very poor decision on the developer’s part and is something that should be addressed quickly and be patched with the location in the patch notes to avoid people possibly never getting a trophy they may have otherwise spent 10s of hours trying to unlock.
Click the link to go to the complete Demons Souls Remake Trophy Guide.
Gallery
Here are a series of photos to show you how the game looks;
Overall
Overall, the Demon’s Souls Remake is a fantastic game and an essential game for anyone fortunate enough to have a PS5 console, once you get pass the brutality of the difficulty, the game really opens up and is an experience like no other.
The original Demon’s Souls on PS3 defined a genre, it defined the acceptable difficulty a game could push to without being unfair.
Yes, the game is nasty, it will chew you up and spit you out, force you to learn the mechanics, learn every enemy, master every boss in order to bring them down, but once you do.
There isn’t much else out there like, especially not with the graphical fidelity the Demon’s Souls Remake brings.
Which is why I’m awarding the Demon’s Souls Remake a 10/10 Must Play game
Final Score: 10
That’s our Demons Souls Remake Review I hope it helps you decide whether or not the game is worth your time and money.
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