Hello! This column is part of a regular series in which we share what members of the Tom’s Guide team are playing and enjoying right now, with a focus on helping you find great games you might have missed. Be sure to check out our latest entry, where we talk about The Last of Us, Part Two.
Earlier this year, like many players, I became totally obsessed with Elden Ring. I’ve had a glorious month playing literally nothing else, enjoying every hard-earned victory and spurred on by every agonizing defeat.
In the past, Souls games have usually failed to catch me, and I usually bounce back after only a few hours, but Elden Ring was different. It grabbed me a lot from the start. And after some particularly tested boss fights – the strong words I have for Fire Giant can’t be printed here – – I did. I have triumphed over the Elden Ring and my stained spot has faithfully taken his place as the newly crowned Elden Leader with honor. As the credits rolled in, I wanted to give the game a standing ovation.
The problem is that after dozens and dozens of hours spent exploring the lands in between, no other game can match. I responded to God of War (2018), and while I was enjoying visiting Kratos and Aretus, he didn’t quite scratch it. Tiny Tina’s wonderland lost interest after a few hours of playing, and the return to Grand Theft Auto IV was abandoned before I unlocked the second island on the map.
I’ve been slowly cutting into LEGO Harry Potter on the Nintendo Switch, but it’s really just a filler of time until Hogwart’s Legacy finally arrives. So, three months after beating Elden Ring, there was no denying that I was in a panic. I was really struggling to find something to get me involved right again.
Faced with the practically impossible task of finding something that could stack up against a game already touted as one of the best ever, I looked back and decided to give Demon’s Souls on PS5 a chance.
After all, demon spirits are basically a precursor to the Elden Ring. The original game was made by the same developer, FromSoftware, before being redesigned for Sony’s next-gen console by Bluepoint Games in 2020. I’m happy to report that Demon’s Souls has obliterated your playing fun with all the power of a gigantic sword swung from its famous boss Tower Knight.
Demon Souls shares a lot of DNA with Elden Ring
Jumping from Elden Ring to Demon Souls makes the transition fairly smooth because structurally these games are very similar. Both are RPGs that are very demanding on the player, not to mention that both are full of hidden mechanics and gameplay systems that aren’t always fully explained – I’m still not entirely convinced that I understand what World Tendency actually is.
Much like Elden Ring, Demon Souls has caught my eye because overcoming the many obstacles you put in your way is very satisfying. The game’s most famous director, Tower Knight, cleaned my watch in the best part of 45 minutes, but when I finally brought down a giant opponent, I was pumping in the living room. That’s the power of Souls in a nutshell.
Although Demon’s Souls is technically the first Souls game, originally released in February 2009 for PS3, I was thrilled to discover that it offers one of my favorite aspects of Elden Ring: flexibility in how you progress through the world.
Elden Ring is now set in a massive open world while Demon’s Souls consists of five standalone levels (which are broken down into more manageable parts). But you are given the flexibility to approach these levels in any order you want after completing a short introductory sequence.
Like all Souls games, Demon’s Souls can be very punishing, but since you can jump between levels at will, it doesn’t get overly frustrating. For example, one of the game’s very challenging levels, Prison of Hope, was causing me grief early on, so I jumped into a different section, scored some new items and XP, and was able to come back to try again much stronger – and this time I came out victorious.
I’ve also been impressed by the group of demons I’ve fought against in my 10 hours of playing so far. The Tower Knight mentioned above is a boss fight that will stay with me for a long time only because of its exciting size, but I equally enjoyed the Fool’s Idol battle for forcing me to switch my approach and think more strategically.
Even if a demon spirit feels a little smaller in scope when compared to the wide openness of the Elden Ring, it’s hard to see someone who loves one but not the other. Demon’s Souls also serves as a great display of the power of the PS5. The game runs at a consistently smooth 60fps and seems to drop in almost every area. The fast load times are also a godsend, especially after endurance Elden Ring Relative Length Loads on me Xbox Xbox X.
Devil spirits show their age
While Bluepoint Games did a really great job of making Demon’s Souls look like a modern version – it actually looks and works better than Elden Ring – the developer decided not to tweak the core gameplay or overall structure. This means that it is still playing as it was in 2009.
This move probably pleased the purists and is pretty understandable, after all, Bluepoint wasn’t the original developer so they probably felt it wasn’t their place to make sweeping changes. But Demon’s Souls on PS5 is a faithful remake that means that in some areas the game feels like a step backwards compared to the Souls titles that followed.
The lack of mid-level fires, which are essential checkpoints in the Dark Souls series, leads to frustrating moments where you have to go back through almost an entire level upon death. But it was the way the game deals with healing elements that caused the most discomfort to me. Instead of a vial that recharges upon death as in the Dark Souls/Elden Ring, Demon Souls’ health is restored by means of grass, which is a consumable item.
This means that if you get stuck in a tough section, you can quickly use up your entire stock of the healing herb. Your choices then are to either be a soldier with the odds leaning more against you, or to pause what you’re doing and go crunching early game enemies to refill your inventory. Crushing things by killing the same basic enemies a dozen times is rarely fun.
But even if Demon’s Souls lacks some of the simplistic improvements that will follow in the likes of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, the core of the game is still that heady mix of unabashedly challenging but deeply rewarding gameplay that makes the Souls series so lovable. If I find myself struggling for something to play after conquering demon spirits, I definitely know which series to turn to to re-ignite that spark.
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