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brycegaeareview · 10 days ago

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Bryce Reviews: Demon's Souls (2 / 2)

Welcome back to the review. Continuing...

Regional box art, Asia. I think both regional box arts for Demon's Souls are good in their own way.

World and Character Tendency

Alright, time for this nonsense.

Tendency (or Soul Tendency) is a very weird mechanic in Demon's Souls. I did not lump this in with the Gameplay section earlier because of just how weird it is. Also, depending on how you play, you might not even notice it.

Before I get into explaining how it works and my issues with it, I would like to show you all the information the game gives you about Tendency.

One paragraph in the manual and three floor messages in the Nexus. At no other point in the game is any information about Tendency disclosed other than what your Tendency levels currently are.

If you are planning to play the game, you can essentially ignore Tendency for your entire playthrough as long as you do one simple trick. I recommend learning this before actually playing. Here it is:

Never, ever, leave the Nexus in human form. Every time you regain human form, go to the Nexus, spend your souls on whatever you want, and then kill yourself. Unless you are absolutely certain that you will not die in human form, play the entire game in Soul form.

Knowing any more about Tendency on your first playthrough would just make you overthink things. If you really do want to learn more about this insane system, continue reading.

There's been a lot of text in this section, I feel compelled to put in a screenshot just to break up the scenery.

World Tendency (WT) is specific to each of the five worlds. Specific actions within a world change its World Tendency.

Dying as a human in a world will shift the WT towards "black" by a good amount. Black WT makes the world harder but in a weird risk-versus-reward way. Enemies are stronger but they give more souls and drop rarer items. Very black WT straight up just adds tougher Black Phantom versions of enemies to levels.

Killing a boss in a world will shift the WT towards "white" by a good amount. White WT makes the world easier. Enemies are weaker and drop more healing items, but drop less upgrade stones strangely enough. Very white WT doesn't do much. Pure white WT does something stupid.

At pure white World Tendency, things in the world unexplainably change. Please look at this screenshot.

There's some extra loot to the right, but the way is blocked by rubble. My character here has neutral World Tendency for Tower of Latria.

Here's my other character in the same level. He has pure white World Tendency for Tower of Latria because I completed the whole world and came back here. The rubble is gone. There are several other piles of rubble within this same level; only this rubble is affected by World Tendency.

Here's another case.

The corpse with an item pickup on this stalagmite cannot be reached when you first encounter it. If you come back here with pure white World Tendency, the corpse will have fallen off of the rock and be reachable.

Isn't this strange? Like I said before, the only way to shift WT to white is to kill bosses, and reaching pure white requires you to kill all bosses in that world without dying in human form even once. When I couldn't reach the items in the levels above, I just assumed there was some alternate path to get to them that I would find later. It's not uncommon for other, reachable items in this game to be placed like that. By the time I beat the rest of the level I had forgotten all about them. There's no indication that any of these objects have anything to do with World Tendency, and even if there was, the game does not tell you which actions cause World Tendency to shift in what directions.

The "Pure World Tendency" NPCs

Each world has one NPC that only spawns (or in one case, can only be broken out of jail) after that world has reached pure white WT. I don't why they have this prerequisite, they just do. Most of them have quests asking you to show them a special item from somewhere else in the world.

Killing any of these NPCs will shift your WT all the way from Pure White to neutral. You might think that's because of some karma system or something, but out of the five NPCs, one of them will try to kill you on sight and another will try to kill you after completing their quest. Both of their deaths will still dock your WT.

Again, too much text at once. Gotta space it out. Check out this bird nest.

You're gonna love this next part. The same five NPCs have evil Black Phantom versions that will spawn instead if you have pure black WT. It's not clear why, I guess the World Tendency got so black that they turned evil. They will always try to kill you on sight. Killing them will have the same effect as earlier, resetting the World Tendency to neutral. They'll drop their unique weapons, which would be cool if getting pure black WT wasn't the biggest hassle in the world.

Remember, killing a boss shifts WT to white, so just the act of progressing in the game will take you further and further from pure black. The only feasible way to intentionally darken your WT that much is to use up the rare consumable item that lets you turn back to human form and then Bill Murray suicide montage yourself in the world of your choice.

There's also a special enemy that only spawns at very black WT. It has a chance (as in, not guaranteed) to drop the only material in the game that can upgrade special weapons. Also they do not respawn and there's one of them per world. And killing them resets the WT too. Doesn't this all feel like it was designed by a crazy person?

Player Tendency (PT) is mostly separate from World Tendency. It's like alignment for the player, and it's a lot simpler. PT shifts towards black if:

You kill friendly NPCs (including the pure white WT only NPCs, but only the ones who are always friendly)

[Online play] You invade a player and kill them

and shifts white if:

You kill the aforementioned evil Black Phantom NPCs that only appear in pure black WT

[Online play] You kill a player who is invading you

White Player Tendency makes your Soul form do more damage (like how white World Tendency does), including during online co-op.

Black Player Tendency makes your Soul form's health bar cap slightly lower (again, like its respective World Tendency) but boosts your damage when you're invading online. At pure black PT a new NPC shows up in the Nexus (after completing a somewhat drawn out quest with another NPC).

Keep in mind that, like the manual said earlier, the one readily available way to check Tendencies, for both the worlds and the player, is this screen in the menu.

You thought there would be numbers? Meters? No. You're eyeballing that shit. Can you determine what color my Player Tendency (statue in the middle) is leaning towards? Is it neutral or black? If it is black, how black?

I noticed the eye icons at the top left and right of the HUD change color according to Tendency too. Left is Player, right is World. Is this World Tendency pure white? It's really bright, but I can still see dark parts on it. Does that count?

There's just so many things about this system's implementation that don't make sense to me. Why do it like this? What was the intended effect of Tendency on the average playthrough? Is it dynamic difficulty? It can't be; doing well actually makes the game easier. Was it made to compliment multiplayer? Is it actually a morality system?

The strangest part is how little it all matters. The average player will probably stay at neutral for both Tendencies for the entire game, so there won't even be any effects. There's not even any in-setting explanation for Tendency. No character ever mentions it. Maybe it used to be more integral to the gameplay but had to be cut down for release? FromSoftware is pretty well known for doing that...

I think a mechanic like Tendency has the potential to be cool. Intentionally adjusting the difficulty of the game to influence item drops and open certain paths? That could be really interesting. But a system like that would need to convey a lot of information to the player and have solid logic behind its scoring system. Tendency is not that. It feels unfinished.

Like I said before: Stay out of human form and you can avoid having to interact with this system at all. Each world will get a little easier the further in you are, but the game's hard enough as is.

Story

There won't be any spoilers in this section.

Demon's Souls doesn't have an active, involved main story. You get expository cutscenes at the beginning, but apart from that, the main story is just the overarching goal and not something you actively interact with. The premise is pretty interesting; like I said before the tone is a bit more horror than the usual fantasy.

I like that your characters' motivation for doing all of this stuff is up to interpretation, as mentioned a few times by the NPCs. Did you come to Boletaria to be a hero? Or are you just here to collect demons' souls and grow all powerful? Certain, later Souls games (Bloodborne) don't really put in the effort to give your character agency in the plot (I'm referring to Bloodborne) and that can really drain the life out of the story (Bloodborne did this).

Ostrava tells me about the history of Boletaria while taking a rest in the Nexus.

Aside from the main story, each world has its own self-contained story and lore to piece together. It's like solving a mystery. Speaking with NPCs will get you most of the way there, but there will still be gaps that you'll have to fill in by yourself.

Unusual weapons often have lots of flavor text. Unfortunately, the Spiral Rapier is both a very rare drop and probably not that good of a weapon.

Every item in the game has a short text description that says a little about how it works and then maybe a little folklore. There's usually nothing too noteworthy, just some extra world-building details that a detail lover like me would enjoy reading. Some of the earlier items even directly reference things you can find in later levels, which makes the world feel very connected.

These item descriptions are fun and all, but really they're just a bonus. Later Souls games, especially Elden Ring, became very reliant on telling their stories through item descriptions and I'm not a fan of it. I would prefer if they stuck to using the NPCs to tell the stories since they're actually a part of the game's world. Item descriptions are just some disembodied exposition and the games never explain where the information comes from, it's just Word of God. It can also be a real hassle to look for important lore beats in the hundreds of seemingly mundane objects you pick up over the course of a playthrough.

I don't have much to say about this game's characters other than that I enjoyed all of them, save for one or two of the religious guys in the Nexus who only said the same two lines over and over again. Sage Freke always seemed to have new things to say whenever I reached a milestone, so I'll give him extra credit. The voicework is good and the dialogue uses a lot of regional/archaic sayings that I'd never heard before, so it was fun listening.

The unfortunately named Filthy Woman gives me the latest gossip from the Valley of Defilement.

Comparing Demon's Souls to the later Souls games, it was kind of a relief to have more than one character who felt like a normal person. Dark Souls and its sequels really overdid it with the gloomy doomer NPCs. It gets really grating after a while when everyone you meet says something along the lines of "The world is ending... that sucks... you will be killed probably..." and then laughs for like ten seconds. Demon's Souls has one of those guys, but everybody else feels like an actual person instead of a wet blanket. Some of the characters are even pretty funny.

Lastly, the finale of the game is awesome. As in, the literally definition of awesome. Awe was inspired in me. It's going to stick in my head for a very long time. There's also a kind of Greek tragedy conclusion to the story concerning King Allant that I appreciate. There's two endings, good and evil, but they're just last-minute choices. Thank God it's not based on Tendency or anything like that. I enjoy both endings, but I wish the evil ending cutscene was longer.

Conclusion

It's weird how I avoid playing this game for years, an actual decade I think, then come back to find out it's one of my favorite games. So many things about Demon's Souls just click for me. And it must have clicked with a bunch of other people too, because the Souls games are a household name now. Elden Ring: Nightreign just came out, the latest entry in the Souls pseudo-series, and it's some kind of weird co-op roguelike. I'm not interested in playing it, but if we're at the stage where FromSoftware is just screwing around with turning Souls games into different genres, I'm interested in keeping up with them. Sounds fun.

I recommend Demon's Souls (the original version) to anybody who found this review interesting and wants a tough but memorable single-player experience.

Holy peak.

If you're interested in playing some of the later Souls games like Elden Ring but find them intimidating, Demon's Souls offers a slightly simpler version of basically the same system while being decently short once you get the hang of things.

There are a few options for actually playing it. A disc is probably hard to come by nowadays. The PS3's Playstation Store has a digital version, but I'm worried they might shut that down any day now. Emulating is probably the best option, but I don't know anything about PS3 emulators so I can't help you. I think I remember hearing that emulated Demon's Souls has an awful framerate, but that might be fixed by now.

Thank you for sticking around for the entire review. I encourage you to leave a comment on this blog (are they called comments on tumblr? I don't know how this works) if you have any questions or just want to talk about the blog itself. This is my first one and I'm still getting the hang of it, so the structure of the next review might be different. Don't expect another review any time soon, I have no plans to make this a regular thing.

Until then...

Goodbye!

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brycegaeareview · 10 days ago

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Bryce Reviews: Demon's Souls (1 / 2)

Demon's Souls is a 2009 action role-playing video game made by FromSoftware under the supervision of Japan Studio. Releasing exclusively on the Playstation 3 in 2009, it was received pretty well, more so by Western audiences than in its home country of Japan.

Regional box art, North America and Europe.

Most people today know Demon's Souls as the predecessor to the infamous Dark Souls, which released two years later. Dark Souls was a smash hit, grew into a trilogy, and "Souls-like" is now an entire subgenre of action RPGs. Of course, this has led to Demon's Souls being a bit overshadowed by its relatives, even though it was the first to do it. Poor guy.

Personal History

I bought this digitally on the PS3 a long time ago. I tried beating it back then, at least two separate times, but it was too hard for me.

Years after I last touched Demon's Souls, I became a wind turbine of Dark Souls and played through all the games in that pseudo-series (Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne, and now Elden Ring). I avoided going back and beating Demon's Souls during this time, but I'm not really sure why. It's very rare that I don't finish a game I bought.

I finally decided to go back and beat it this year. It was a real hassle to get my dusty PS3 to stream footage to my computer (for screenshots), but it was worth it because I ended up actually really enjoying this game.

The Nexus, the main hub area of the game.

Last thing I need to mention before I get into the actual review part of this. I am aware that this game got a remaster/remake for the PS5. I am going to avoid talking about it. Just know that I am very angry about what they did to the art style of the original, and I hope that a remaster like that never gets made again. Just terrible.

Overview

Demon's Souls is primarily an action and exploration game complimented by role-playing elements. The whole gist of it is pretty straightforward. You enter a level, clear out enemies, find items, defeat a boss at the end, and use the Souls you gathered from all of that to level up and get stronger.

Exploring the Nexus' upper levels.

It can also be pretty difficult, but never in a ridiculous way. It's not an uphill battle, just regularly challenging. It's rare you're put in a fight that is outright unfair. But you should know I'm probably not a very good judge of difficulty since I played this only after playing through all the other Souls games. The learning curve might be nasty, I can't make any comment on it.

Muted but distinct color palettes help cement the tone of the game.

The setting is one of the things that I find most interesting about Demon's Souls. It's a dark medieval fantasy, but most of it leans more towards supernatural than magical. I think the best term for it would be horror-fantasy. The Dark Souls series has a similar dark fantasy setting, but Demon's Souls' world feels completely distinct from it. I'll go further into this in the Presentation and Story sections.

I played through the game twice with two different characters. You'll notice some of my screenshots are a guy wearing the armor from the box art and others are a lady magician. I didn't have my screenshot button set up during most of my "box art guy" playthrough, so I took most of his screenshots in New Game+.

Gameplay

If you're familiar with Souls series gameplay, it works largely identically. You can block with shields, use light and heavy melee attacks, roll to dodge incoming attacks, and lock the camera on to enemies. Magic-users get a variety of spells that range from buffs to attacks. If you're going to play this, I recommend you read the manual before starting. I miss when games came with manuals. They're so helpful.

Fighting soldiers on a bridge. Enemy aggression range is short, so it's easy to lure out individual enemies from groups to avoid getting dogpiled.

The role-playing part of this role-playing game is growing your stats and customizing your playstyle. "Souls" are your currency both for shops and for leveling up. Every level costs a bit more Souls, when you die you drop all your Souls on the spot of your death, et cetera. The usual FromSoftware format.

My magician casting the powerful "Point" spell. The special effects you get from wearing certain items are shown by both icons under your stamina bar and (annoyingly) colored auras surrounding your character.

Something I noticed early on is that shields are very useful in this game. Most enemy attacks are bounced back by a shield block, and enemies take more damage if hit during the bounce animation, so defensive playstyles are in for a cozy experience. Of course, some enemies use heavy guard-breaking attacks (although it's rare) and giant enemies might ignore shields altogether.

The main way to heal yourself in this game is by eating different types of Moon Grass, and the main source of those are random enemy drops. It's one of those old game approaches to self-healing that's been getting phased out recently. It's not terrible, but there's always the problem that players who are already having a hard time end up running out of heals.

I ended up raising my Luck stat to the teens at the beginning of the game when levels were still cheap just to get around this. That way enemies were always dropping enough supply for my demand. Once I was decently into the game, I could use the increased amount of Souls I was getting from later levels to buy Moon Grass in bulk from merchants and never had to worry about running out again. That's a thing I've noticed after playing a lot of older RPGs. By the end of it you become a kind of medicine stock broker.

Passing the time by reading item descriptions in the game's storage box. Upgrade stones can be used directly from storage at the blacksmith (thank goodness). Note the "Item Burden" count on the right.

There's an Item Burden (inventory weight) mechanic which might surprise new players since the game doesn't seem like the kind that would have one. Dark Souls and all subsequent sequels completely got ride of it and it's never once returned. I can't argue with that decision. This system really got on my nerves sometimes. At least the dedicated storage NPC is a nice guy.

Levels have lots of verticality. You're usually traveling up and down just as much as you are traveling forward.

Exploring the levels and learning to navigate them is the best part of the game. Levels are very winding, dense paths to a single goal: the boss. There a tons of short and sweet side areas to reward exploration while on the journey there. I noticed that if you ignore those parts the levels themselves can be pretty short. That's probably why shortcuts are kinda rare.

Demon's Souls differs from a traditional RPG in that once you've completed the first level of the first world, you can travel to any of the four other worlds without having to go in a determined order. The level scaling of the areas might nudge you towards a certain track, but with clever play you can get past all the enemies and grab valuable items early. This makes for some absolutely wonderful replayability. I took full advantage of this system when I began my second character, completing level 3-1 early to learn one of the best spells in the game before having to fight enemies that were weak to it. Very satisfying.

There's no way to jump, but some flat ledges actually can be climbed. You just have to press against them for a second and your character clambers up. Novel idea, really surprised me when I found out. I can't shake the feeling that if Dark Souls 2 had that the whole game would be five minutes long.

Battling the boss "Adjudicator." This screenshot was taken the exact moment I realized he was able to hit me from down there.

Bosses in Demon's Souls, very much unlike the Dark Souls games that succeeded it, are often not straightforward battles. Most bosses are gimmick/puzzle bosses, usually with a weak point that needs to be exposed before you can do real damage. Kind of like Legend of Zelda games now that I mention it. As a result, a good handful of bosses are easier than the levels you have to get through to fight them.

In the event that you die as a human, you come back to life in Soul form. Your health bar is noticeably capped, but nothing else is lowered. It's a weird system that all the Souls games do that I still don't really get. I've found it's best to just get comfortable being a Soul and pretend like that extra part of your health bar doesn't exist. Human form is mostly for multiplayer features anyways, and the servers were shut down in 2018. I found a ring in the first level that raises your Soul Form's health cap from 50% to 75%. I put it on and never took it off.

Chatting with Graverobber Blige. You rescue him from a prison cell when you first meet him, after which he decides said prison cell is actually pretty comfortable and starts running a shop out of it.

The game has a nice cast of non-playable characters, most of which are some kind of merchant. In addition to shopping, they'll talk with you a bit about the backstory of the level you found them in. This is the kind of game where you press "talk" on a character until they start repeating themselves if you want to hear everything they have to say. Most of them also react to events that happen as you progress with new dialogue, so it's good the check in on them every so often.

Blacksmith Boldwin plays a vital role in keeping the player well-equipped, but he's also kind of an asshole. I appreciate that about him.

I've mostly only covered the positives, so I need to mention the negatives. There are parts where Demon's Souls is very rough around the edges. For one, movement feels floaty and just... off. You spend a lot of time in this game walking, but you never once feel like you're actually making contact with the ground. Of course, the game is chock full of bridges without guard rails and drop down platforming sections.

The lock-on camera can be a pain in the neck as well. The point of view is too high up and looks down too steeply. Any kind of low ceiling often ends up with you not being able to see what you're fighting. I recommend playing the game unlocked for the majority of the time, but some weapons like thrusting swords and ranged magic basically require an enemy lock to connect.

Use your lock-on camera near a doorway at your own risk.

And don't get me started on the goddamn dragons. I hope whoever approved all the dragon sections in this game gets shot. Now I understand why Gwyn in Dark Souls killed all of these assholes. I'm getting furious just remembering those parts.

I guess it doesn't matter too much though, because in the big picture, the positives of Demon's Souls' gameplay outweigh the negatives. And I know it might sound weird, but I kinda like that those janky, crummy parts of it exist. New games are too polished nowadays. Where's the heart? Where's the soul?

Before I wrap up this Gameplay section, I need to mention one last mechanic that I think is bizarrely stupid. I can't decide if it objectively sucks or not, I just know that the way it was implemented doesn't make any goddamn sense. It's called World and Character Tendency, and it's unique enough and weird enough to warrant its own section later on in this review.

Presentation

There are not a lot of cutscenes in the game, but they all have great framing and camera movement. Reminds me of Resident Evil 4.

Lately, ever since I emulated Monster Hunter Tri earlier this year, I've been falling in love with the look of old 3D graphics. Not the super old stuff like those blocky character models from Final Fantasy 7. I'm talking about the era of PS2/Gamecube to early PS3, right before realistic visuals became widely available. Video games were a little ugly but in a charming way. Demon's Souls' visuals fit neatly into that category.

The first thing that makes me uniquely fond of Demon's Souls' graphics is the textures. The game has this smoothed-over finish to most materials. It gives everything this kind of unnaturally perfect look. It's appealing in an unrealistic way, like model train sets.

The loading screen renders give a perfect demonstration of what I mean when trying to describe the textures. Yurt's armor is smooth like marble and seems to diffuse rather than reflect light.

And the second thing that makes me uniquely fond of Demon's Souls' graphics is the lighting. It's not a very advanced lighting system. I think it's fair to say that the engine treats light more like a colored fog than actual rays. That being said, it still works well. Light sources are soft and glow-y but also vibrantly colored; environments feel very ethereal, which works with the whole "soul" theme the game is going for. And of course I need to mention the bloom. I love a game with heavy bloom, and Demon's Souls has enough bloom to rival a Team ICO game.

Even an objectively dull room looks good with strong, intentional lighting.

Is there a thing as too much bloom? In this instance, yes.

Furthering the ethereal look of the lighting is the fact that the game uses plenty of darkness. And I'm talking real dark, like close to pitch black dark. It's good stuff. Light sources are always visible regardless of distance, which I feel is pretty impressive for this era of consoles, and as a result they can be used as landmarks for navigation in some of the more wide-open and darker levels.

I don't really know anything about how video game graphics were put together back in 2009; for all I know, the visuals are like that because of hardware limitations. But what matters is that it does look like that, and it gives the game such a unique look that perfectly matches its tone. And I know I was going to try and avoid talking about it, but goddamn did that PS5 remaster ever butcher this part of the game. The lighting looks incredibly generic, like it was ripped from every other AAA game that came out in 2020 and pasted in. Just terrible.

Now I can move on to the art design of Demon's Souls. It can be a little inconsistent sometimes, but I like it overall.

The game's art has two sides: grounded medieval and fantastic horror. Sometimes it even goes all the way to eldritch horror. Most things in the game are visually realistic, like the armor, clothing, and weapons, but that just paves the way for the other stuff to really stick with you. There are enemies and environments in Demon's Souls that wouldn't feel out of place in a survival horror, and I think that's wonderful.

The environment design might just be my favorite part. I just can't get enough of this stuff. The lights. The architecture. Makes me wanna jump through the screen and just start gnawing on the scenery. It's not the most screenshot-able game, but I did my best.

Boletarian Palace has a surprising amount of different environments despite all of it taking place within one giant castle. It's also probably the most realistically arranged fortress in a FromSoftware game.

Fictional castles tend to be very ornate, but it looks like King Allant went for a "less is more" approach. Those tower tops in particular make me think that Italian castles were used as reference.

Stonefang Tunnel starts strong with a cool and really fun first level, but it becomes more of a generic lava zone as it goes on, which is a bummer.

As you travel deeper, you'll find some things that predate the mines.

Tower of Latria is a scary place. Even out in the open air you feel trapped. It's that kind of primordial, biblical fear.

"Abandon every hope, all you who enter." For being so cool, I give Tower of Latria the esteemed title of Bryce Level.

Shrine of Storms is a cliff complex surrounded by nothing but overcast sky. The whole area feels dead, and I think it's on purpose. I just love the look of it all.

From clifftops to catacombs, this area has it all. Please also mark down Shrine of Storms as a Bryce Level. An impressive two Bryce Levels in one game. That's quite the feat.

Striking a pose in The Gutter the Valley of Defilement, an archetypal Souls game "wooden shantytown built over a toxic swamp" zone. The noisy texture in front of me appears to be rain, but to be honest with you I can't say for certain. There's no rain sound effect and it shimmies side to side more than it falls.

There's an odd rendering glitch in the giant swamp where the top half of the atmospheric effects is blurred. Being able to see the glow of torches all the way from the other end of the valley is oddly cozy.

It's a real bummer that this game doesn't have anti-aliasing. Lots of the nice visuals end up looking pretty crunchy.

Moving onto audio, I wont spend a lot of time on sound effects since I don't know a lot about them. Most effects sound a little stock, but they're put to good use making immersive ambience. Also I find it funny that your character doesn't make footstep noises in Soul form.

Voice acting is, strangely enough, very good. Every single NPC I encountered gave a good performance, and several actually stood out to me with how great they were. If I had to pick a favorite, it'd be Blacksmith Boldwin. This is one of those Japanese video games with exclusively English voices. That's an oddly common occurrence. I should find out why.

The music, which only plays in the Nexus and during boss fights, is one of Demon's Souls most memorable aspects for me. The game has a very understated, slow-paced orchestral score. There's prominent use of low brass and harpsichord, which are two sounds you don't hear a lot in video game music. If you're interested, I recommend checking out the tracks Armor Spider, Tower Knight, Old Monk, Fool's Idol, and my personal favorite, Souls of Mist (the main menu music).

Demon's Souls' music was surprising to me considering the incredibly grandiose scores that the Souls games after it eventually came be known for. Looking back at it, Demon's Souls' more passive style of music partially stuck around at first, but was gradually replaced over the years. The DLCs for Dark Souls 2 were the tipping point, then by Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 the series had a whole new music identity.

The music in the PS5 remake... uh... nevermind.

That about wraps up the Presentation section.

End of Part 1

This website limits the amount of images that can be put in one post, so I'll need to split this review into two parts. The second part will be named: "Bryce Reviews: Demon's Souls (2 / 2)" Link directly to next part.

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