Where Demon’s Souls was depressing, Dark Souls often veers into irreverence.Īnd while I can’t quite put my finger on it, there’s just something sadder about the world of Demon’s Souls. There’s this weird friendly monster who appears halfway through the game and speaks to you in a silly voice. You are sometimes called “Chosen Undead,” and many characters pray for your safe travels. Dark Irreverenceĭark Souls is practically the opposite. (I’m a little worried about Dark Souls II using a hybrid system, with both flasks and “lifegems.”) Sad Demons vs. It’s another system that Dark Souls did away with, instead giving players a limited number of recovery flasks that could be recharged at checkpoints. If you want to have lots of spare health, you need to waste lots of time farming for herbs. The health recovery system in Demon’s Souls is also flawed, as it’s based on herbs that you collect throughout the game. It’s a needless limitation that was thankfully scrapped in Dark Souls. The paucity of checkpoints is one of the Souls games’ main concepts, and I wouldn’t give it up, but having limited inventory space means you might have to drop valuable items. Having to limit the items you carry is a major hassle, especially because you can’t return to the hub world without losing all your level progress. …that’s Also More StreamlinedĪlthough Demon’s Souls has sharper character and level design, its basic mechanics are rough around the edges. Even if Demon’s Souls is more tightly designed, it can’t match Dark Souls’ incredible scale. In Dark Souls, early bosses become routine opponents later in the game, and you’ll often fight knights and monsters twice your size. Spend 80 hours in Dark Souls’ open world, and your head will swim just thinking of all the places you’ve been–and there may even be some that you missed.Īnd while Dark Souls’ enemy behavior isn’t much more varied than Demon’s Souls, there’s a kind of grandeur to the number foes you face and the sizes to which they grow. You can’t climb to the top of a castle and peer down at the places you’d explored 15 hours earlier. The flip side is that Demon’s Souls feels more like a construct, with its distinct levels connected by a single hub. The game is packed with memorable confrontations. Demon’s Souls has fewer areas covering seemingly less terrain, but it doesn’t let any of that space go to waste. As others have pointed out, there are chunks of Dark Souls that feel incomplete, especially as you travel farther from the center of the world, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that the game was pushed out the door. Dark Souls has more wide-open spaces and a broader range of environments, but also a lot of empty hallways and areas that seem to end prematurely. There are other ways in which Demon’s Souls does more with less. Dark Souls doesn’t have anything quite like this, and its combat frequently falls into a block and counter-attack routine.” While Demon’s Souls is similar, it throws in just enough curveballs to make its smaller scope work. Before you even bother to engage, you need an airtight strategy. Step out in the open for too long, and you risk being frozen by the Flayer’s projectile, leaving you open to a devastating follow-up attack. The mere sight of one in Demon’s Souls is unnerving, because one misstep can easily kill you. Nothing encapsulates this idea like the Mind Flayer. Despite having fewer enemies overall, Demon’s Souls’ combat is frequently more interesting. The game itself is already hard enough, so lets make this easy and divide it into subsections: Demon’s Souls Does More with Less…ĭemon’s Souls has just 38 non-boss enemies–not counting Black Phantom variants–compared to 93 enemies in Dark Souls, but the disparity often feels cosmetic. I have now poured well over 100 hours into each Souls game–two playthroughs of Demon’s, nearly two playthroughs of Dark, and both games with a third playthrough that I never bothered to finish.īecause any comparisons between Souls games are about to get more complicated, now’s a good time to look back at these two brilliant contributions to modern RPGs–one last set of observations before we see if From Software has improved on its formula. Usually I can’t wait to be finished with any game that takes more than 20 hours. This game, and its spiritual predecessor Demon’s Souls, have a strange spell on me.
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