Thread 721127481

you have zero clue how insanely profound it was when this game came out. it felt like it was coming at us from the future or something.
it was the kind of game that people had been asking for (an ARPG with actual real-time combat) for years at that point. since the dawn of 3D it was "what if muh oot zedla but not for 5yos?"

and then they fucking just did it. and so much better than literally anyone else (but themselves) was able to even do for years and years afterwards

now are there some wacky, arguably even BAD, stupid ideas mixed in there? oh yeah, definitely. they were throwing everything and everyone at the wall.
and many times it was just broken. i remember spending 5 straight hrs grinding 4-2 for a (singular) pure sharpstone. just so i could then use the dupe glitch. all because some overworked nip salaryman accidentallyed 0.001% drop rate instead of 1% drop. which somehow never got patched lol

didnt matter tho. it was 2009 and everyone else was trying to be oblivion, GTA, or cowadoody
then you had demons souls showing up, making the entire industry stop and turn its head, if only for a moment, to ask, "wtf is that?"
and clearly they didnt get an answer, as only a few years later dark souls did the same thing again, but even louder

now you wanna talk about music?
adjudicator is literally one of the first bosses you fight, and the actual boss is a little baby canary on its head. if i had to hazard a guess, it was supposed to try to spook you out looking at the big scary giant fatman upon entering the room. doesnt really land since the music is too campy. tho maybe that was the point, since the boss is actually a fucking canary.
imo the far more egregious change to music is latria having music AT ALL in the remake. what brainlet thought THAT was a good idea?

>>721127481 (OP)

Demon Souls paved the way for the grassroots success of Dark Souls.

the zeitgeist of the time was "The West is the future and Japanese games are over". certain cliques tried to solidify the standards of what games 'should' be around the late 00's and games like Bioshock, Mass Effect were held up as "objectively good game design"

it;'s worth now remembering that the Good Game Doctrine™ discourse is an argument that's been had before and the conclusion around 2010 was that the West is the future and Japanese games were over because they weren't doing motherfuggin open world and online games well enough. anything that was weird or experimental or pushing the medium forward like no more heroes, folklore, mgs4, was unknown, hated on, or like for meme reasons.

games were "solved" and "good game design" looked like Bioshock, Gears of War, Uncharted 2. "art games" looked like Journey and Braid (lol) and all the other "indie story book" games where some faggot talks to you about his childhood while you do some menial platforming or collection task and the future according to those who went to game school and knew all the rules is that you just didn't DO certain things and then Dark Souls came along and all of those people lost hard forever.

people think of gamergate as the first big gamer culture pushback but I think a minor preceding incident is how a wannabe clique of cultural leaders tried to solidify the standards of what games were meant to be around the late 00's and it culminated in the Mass Effect 3 launch

it really was a "rejected at the ballot box" moment when Dark Souls blew up virally and "Best Practice" video games slowly lost their relevancy. If it weren't for that stifling environment and the seed of Demon Souls I don't think a mid-budget Japanese game would have become an overnight star like it did

viral phenomenon Dark Souls flipped everything on its head

What made Latria so special?

>>721127653
Fantasy Alcatraz

>>721127481 (OP)
This game took griefing to a whole new level and I loved that it was baked into it
Making invaders die and lose a SL, raping dudes with scraping spears, summoning blues and then human reviving them instead of letting them farm souls or eyes like the lazy fags they were, even ganking blues by summoning your friend as a black phantom and letting him surprise soul suck shitloads of their SL away
Fuck man they'd never get away with that shit today
Whiners and secondaries would cry until they nerfed or removed it

>>721127653
it was isolating, oppressive, and dark. like it was pulled straight out of someone's nightmare

>>721127481 (OP)
it's a good game in a series that is nothing but good games
i like the bloom in it

>>721127653
Rydell screaming

>>721128158
>PLEASE!!! HELP ME!!!

>>721127517
>all of those people lost hard forever.
Would that this were true, but they rallied via the indie scene; resulting in rivalry between fun campy slop like Slenderman and Granny, and pseudocerebral assthumbs like Undertale and Stanley Parable.

Reminder that Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 are now playable in RPCS3 with a locked 60fps and 4k All Souls games cap at 60fps

>Demon's Souls PS3
>Dark Souls PS3 (Performance is largely a sub-30fps affair for Sony's console. Locked 60fps on RPCS3)
>Bloodborne PS4 (Performance is largely a sub-30fps affair for Sony's console. Locked 60fps on PS5 CFW Bloodborne 60fps patch)
>Dark Souls 3 PS4 (Performance is largely a sub-30fps affair for Sony's console. Locked 60fps on PS5)
>Sekiro PS4 (Performance is largely a sub-30fps affair for Sony's console. Locked 60fps on PS5)
>Elden Ring PS4 (Performance is largely a sub-30fps affair for Sony's console. Locked 60fps on PS5)

Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin has a 120fps mod
https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/1242

>>721127481 (OP)
>since the dawn of 3D it was "what if muh oot zedla but not for 5yos?"
You need to play more games, kid.

>>721127481 (OP)
>you have zero clue
I do, though. I was here, watching streams of anons who imported it. And I preordered the deluxe edition as soon as it was announced.

>>721128247
Oh nice I can finally play pre-patch Dark Souls again.

>>721127481 (OP)
Just the fact that you could get punished for healing at the wrong time was revolutionary back then. Before that it was common in games for you to be able to pause the game and chug all the potions in your inventory (Zelda/Castlevania) or for healing to be near-instantaneous.

>>721128032
>summoning your friend as a black phantom
And... how exactly did you manage that?

>>721128859
Yes, Kingdom Hearts truly was legendary

>>721127653
It's a very tight, constricting journey

>>721127481 (OP)
>you have zero clue how insanely profound it was when this game came out
same energy as retards who claim Halo was the first fps

>>721129180
Only the first part is

It's just inferior Monster Hunter. Somehow cultists found it be a new thing.

>>721129257
It's nothing like Monster Hunter.

>>721129220
dude be honest pre demon's souls the action aspect of the combat just wasnt there

>>721129220
Daggerfall is better than Shart's Field.

>>721129257
>>721129338
Keep up the retarded analogies

>>721129338
Ok, but the point remains OP is a clown who never experienced real gaming.

>>721129257
Lmao Monster Hunter is so dogshit Elden Ring Nightreign a D tier assetflip with Fortnite thrown in completely eclipsed Monster Hunter Wilds.

>>721129338
>game is almost entirely radiant slop
no

>>721129220
games are nothing alike

>>721127653
You wouldn't get it seeing as you're playing the remake

>>721129753
That's the original game.

>>721129532
Nightreign never reached 1 million players nor did Elden Troon.

>>721129818
>Elden Ring made with reused assets and a 10 dollar budget
>a quarter of the players MHWilds had at launch
>10 times higher player retention
>10 times the playerbase still
>MH so bad it can't even scrape by with 7k players
>Capcom openly calling it a failure and has had mass firings over the game already
Lmao you aren't making a good case for it

Demon's Souls was sloppy then and still is today since nobody liked the demake's combat which was exactly like the original's.

>>721127481 (OP)
>it was the kind of game that people had been asking for (an ARPG with actual real-time combat) for years at that point
I basically remember because I was hoping for a game like these myself at the time even if I only hopped on the Dark Souls bandwagon in 2013 when it came to PC. Before, I liked Mount & Blade a lot because of the realtime aspects of its combat added a lot of depth to the otherwise simple RPG system. But in in, every realtime combat section was instanced around time/turn based gameplay for adventuring, it's not like you ever really see your group of hodgepodge of mercs travel along with you or anything like that, there's none of that.
Meanwhile TES instead made the world just constantly continue around you in that same realtime experience, you couldn't get out of your character's skin at any point, but the combat was quite basic in action or for anything realtime about it, and often times the world is a little flat and almost too open to direct you in any meaningful way.

Combining both favorable aspects into an RPG, where you make some mechanically satisfying, tightly controlling melee weapon combat system, in a continuous open world but with tighter, more narrow and clearly-target-defining areas, in hindsight, was always a huge potential being sat on that FROM simply became the first to successfully exploit and set many trends with along with that.

>>721127653
>What made Latria so special?
The part in your screenshot? I think the fact that you eventually actually get to the bottom of the entire high-above dark area you've been wandering for a while by that point.
Mostly just because you first expect a faraway, unseen place like the implied ground somewhere below you to not actually exist because videogames, but then when you do get there it's at least as unsettling as you would expect with the mud and the multi faced monsters and all.

>>721129793
Wow dude nice job picking on someone with braindamage I hope you're proud of yourself

>>721129073
Kingdom Hearts enemies are nowhere near as good as Souls enemies at punishing your heals. Also you had Donald doing half the healing for you anyways.

>>721130862
>you had Donald doing half the healing for you anyways
He wants to have sex with Sora

What's so bad about the remake?

>>721131676
>What's so bad about remakes?
fixed and everything

>>721128898
The red eye stone, anon
You did play the game...right?

>>721127481 (OP)
>what brainlet thought
Dude, Anon, Bluepoint games is based in Canada. Their collective IQ is in the double digits.

>>721131676
literally everything

>>721127481 (OP)
I do know how insanely profound the original Demon's Souls is, because I was here when it released and was amazed that it was both the first game for the PS3 and everyone was constantly talking about and making good OC for the game itself. It was the one thread on /v/ that was actually, consistently good. I finally played the game a few years later and it delivered on every front, Demon's Souls is a masterpiece of a video game.

>>721133451
Why does DeS lighting and textures look so good for 2009?

>>721133604
Because they put effort into them. It has the best lighting of any From game for some reason.

>>721131676
>ruined art style
>ruined music
>ruined audio
>ruined difficulty
>ruined UI

>>721133670
>It has the best lighting of any From game for some reason.

What about BB/DS3?

>>721127481 (OP)
The beginning of the end for videogames...

>>721131676
niggers

>>721134082
DS3 doesn't have very good lighting, your character doesn't even cast shadow

>>721134082
Both of them have bad lighting.

>>721129220
poseur

Agreed
Demon's Souls felt like the first true RPG

>>721127481 (OP)
Most didn’t pay any attention to this game until DS1 came out. I lived through this

>>721127481 (OP)
It's too bad Miyazaki was a hack who spent the rest of his career mindlessly remaking this with the boss design becoming more and more retarded with every new entry.

>>721134331
Does DS1 even have cast shadows?

>>721129231
The second part still is since the bridges are narrow and over lethal drops.

>>721128213
Retard

>>721129220
Kings field is shit

>>721131676
Added shortcuts, the bosses are trivially easy especially to someone that's played other souls games the levels are the real fuck you part of a pretty short game as is there's no need to make them easier

>Demon's Souls and Dark Souls delivered us from the casualization of video games, even if it ended up taking years for the industry to correct course
>now casuals are more common than ever, they're proud of being casuals, and they loudly bitch and moan whenever a video game challenges them at all (see: Silksong)
What the fuck happened? I hated casuals then and I hate them more now.

>>721133604
The lighting isn't great, but the game knows how to use light and darkness effectively and a lot of games from that era have nice, shiny specular textures that give everything a "wet" look. Furthermore, a lot of detail was hand-painted into diffuse textures to compensate for the lack of technical effects that are much more common today.
These days, developers "let the engine handle it", which often results in a flat, artless look that you're familiar with if you've ever seen a single UE5 game.

>>721135390
>The lighting isn't great, but the game knows how to use light and darkness effectively and a lot of games from that era have nice, shiny specular textures that give everything a "wet" look. Furthermore, a lot of detail was hand-painted into diffuse textures to compensate for the lack of technical effects that are much more common today.

Post more DeS engine and lighting kino

it was breddy gud
Limb decapitation and hitboxes was always something FROM can never figure out even today,

>>721135845
That and camera control

>>721136092
And facial animations/NPC behavior that isn't hostile
And how to proceed quests without reloading an area five times

>>721136731
Man was I disappointed that in the first open world tm souls game the only way to advance world state was still exhaust dialogue - sit at the bonfire.

>>721134705
the original one does I thonk
it's most noticeable in anor londo iirc

>>721137671
I like how they were trying to do roaming enemies as far back as DS1 and they still couldn't make them work in Elden Ring.

>>721137902
Elden Ring is interesting in that it's kind of a dissertation, distillation and attempt at realizing a LOOOOOOT of ideas they've had since Demon's Souls, and following up on a lot of the experimental ideas they had but couldn't do justice with on Dark Souls 2

>>721138048
>Elden Ring is interesting in that it's kind of a dissertation, distillation and attempt at realizing a LOOOOOOT of ideas they've had since Demon's Souls

Like what? What ideas?

>>721137902
They made roaming NPC's in DeS but didn't implement it in any past game.

>>721127481 (OP)
>it felt like it was coming at us from the future or something.
I played it on release. I was 29.
It was great. But it wasn't from the future. It had NES style game design.
It was a revival of that style, where if you die you have to replay a whole bunch of stuff over again.

Also i later realised, it's basically just 3rd person King's Field with a stamina mechanic.
Still, Demon's Souls is hands down the best thing Miyazaki ever did.

>>721127653
No.
Fucking.
Music.

Most developers have no idea how atmospheric a game came be if you just have good sound design.

>>721135845
>limb decapitation
has no place in a souls game, keep that schlock for RE or WRPGs. The point of a soulslike is that it's extremely videogamey and enemies are SNES-era obstacles that spit canned animations at you and will only disappear after X amount of hits.

>>721134019
Why can't western game devs not into vidya animations?

>>721127517
>the zeitgeist of the time was "The West is the future and Japanese games are over"

which was all a complete and total astroturf campaign pushed by western gaming news mags/sites at the behest of a then-upstart western gaming industry. The West was shitting out Oblivion, GTA3, Cowadoody, etc. at the exact same time japan was still putting out iconic bangers and hits, still taking risks, etc. and all publications like Game Informer and the like had to say about most of it between 2000-2010 was "hurr Japan giving us More Of The Same™, wouldn't you rather be playing jank-ass GTA 3 or Oblivion??" True a lot of the western games became icons themselves, but from an art and technological standpoint, they were janky and held together by masking tape, and with shittier visuals compared to shit from Japan. The burgeoning Western industry wanted their piece of the pie though, and they had the home field advantage.

Fast forward to the present, and Western AAA is STILL dropping buggy, half-finished, patch it day one jankslop that takes six months to a year to finally get satisfactory, where the East for the most part still develops their games like adults and professionals, not lazy faggots fresh from some shitty art school

>>721127481 (OP)
Shuhei Yoshida's angry autism cost Sony ownership of FromSoft and a whole franchise of Souls games, allowing it to become a dominantly multiplat industry darling almost overnight. And they had a second chance with Bloodborne but they promptly squandered that too.

>>721127481 (OP)
>>721127517
Western games, especially WRPGs, have always been trash.
Demon's Souls was just the continuation of Japanese game design

>>721127517
>anything that was weird or experimental or pushing the medium forward like mgs4, was unknown, hated on, or like for meme reasons.
>like mgs4
wait a second what the fuck are you on about here? besides the dubious claim of a linear setpiece driven story game moving the industry forward it was praised universally in the press, backlash was driven by players.

>>721141545
Demon's Souls is Tower of Druaga but in 3D

>>721127481 (OP)
>>721128090
The world would be a better place if all Fromdrone shills died immediately

>>721139379
I still remember how Game Informer gave Gears of War 3 the Game of the Month award (and a higher review score) over Dark Souls.

>>721127481 (OP)
well i'm glad you like demon's souls too, OP. it's still my favorite souls game and one of my favorite games in general.

>>721134019
I remember watching this youtube video a long time ago about the differences in animation style between japanese and western video games. I can't for the life of me remember what the video was called, but this webm exemplifies the main point of the video that western animations have no energy/weight in their animations compared to japanese animations.

>>721138876
They prioritize realism over clarity and principles of animation

>>721143908
Nothing about right is "realistic"

>>721127481 (OP)
I remember. Back in 2010 or so I heard about it, saw some videos of the combat, it seemed surreal, it was exactly what I was looking for.
Then I played it. I was unused to the mechanics at first, but I absolutely loved the combat, the mechanics in general and the ambience. With time, it became one of my favorite games for the PS3.

One other ARPG that had a similar reaction from me (positive expectation and positive experience) was Dragon's Dogma. Also loved that shit.

>>721143941
That just means they failed at their own goal

>>721127481 (OP)
>how insanely profound it was when this game came out
no
>it felt like it was coming at us from the future or something
no it didnt, it was extremely wacky and undercooked, absolutely outdated by the time of release
>it was the kind of game that people had been asking for
no it wasnt by a long degree
you are retarded

>>721128247
I've never played Demon's Souls before, how is experience on the 'eck?

>>721127481 (OP)
>Sony execs played it, thought it was fucking shovelware
>goes on to become one of the most influential video game series OF ALL TIME
From Chadware

https://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/02/10/shuhei-yoshida-interview.aspx

>>721133604
Baked lighting + sovl and passion from the devs

>>721135713

>>721127481 (OP)
>you have zero clue how insanely profound it was when this game came out
It was shit.

>>721146836
ok zoomer

>>721150221
>Baked lighting

Don't DS1-3 have baked lighting?

>>721129257
Monster Hunter is a dogshit grindslop skinnerbox for mentally ill people

I finally played Demon's Souls in 2025 after having been a strategy /gsg/ nerd for a decade. It's the best game I have ever played.

>>721127481 (OP)
Demon's Souls will always be underappreciated. I've had arguments with souls fans every year since Dark Souls released. Today's gamers define quality by hype and subjective difficulty alone. They don't give a hoot about immersion.

>>721141545
Demon's Souls has more in common with WRPG's than any moviegame JRPG

>>721127653
>Please. Help me!
>AAAAAAAAARrrrrRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrGGGGGGGGHHHHH
kino

What mods should I install for Dark Souls remastered on PC? I ask since I assume they fucked something up

>>721127481 (OP)
Everything was game journo slop so it instantly stood out.
Then it turned back into slop with later entries, the more it pushed the "souls hard" brand the worse it got.

>>721142480
The world would be a better place if you realized that you will never be a woman

>>721127481 (OP)
I remember when it was only available in Japan, SK and Hong Kong, with the only version in English being the one from Hong Kong.

We had to wait a long time to get a copy and the threads of people just telling their adventures and the things they've found before everything was figured out were comfy AF. It was probably the last time we will experience something like that in a videogame.

>>721151771
Westoids always love to spout this but there are literally ZERO western games that are like demons souls before it released. And no, some clunky WRPG with braindead gameplay doesn't count.

WRPGs to this day can't replicate this boss design. More than that, there are VARIOUS western devs even proclaiming that "Bosses as a game concept are dead".
I wonder what these devs are doing now? Maybe releasing another walking Sim with 5 players on Steam

>>721143908
>They prioritize realism
They prioritize lameness

>>721151421
What's gsg

>>721127481 (OP)
I bought my PS3 literally just for this game and played it on my brand new Sony KD-34XBR960 and I regret NOTHING

>>721154241
But Demon's Souls is also clunky and braindead easy.

>>721131676
They fixed the framerate/improved graphical fidelity but unironically removed every ounce of SOUL
As a musicfag the soundtrack was the most egregious change

>>721154241
Batman Arkham Asylum released that same year and is 10 times better and fun.

I was around /v/ when this came out. People were scrambling to import this from Japan. The hype was unreal.

>>721133670
Because of Playstation Team
>>721132080
Servers were random in Demon Souls and it was not possible to reliably interact with friends unless you put a sign down and they exited the game over and over until they hoped to find it

>>721154641
Even now they're still doing it with GoT and GoY

>>721154537
>Spiderman font
SOVL

>>721127481 (OP)
Miyazaki is gotto confirmed
affirmative
roger that
medic!

>>721154604
>As a musicfag the soundtrack was the most egregious change

What's wrong with the music?

>>721154386
Map games from Paradox. I used to play games like Victoria II, Crusader Kings II and Hearts of Iron III. But Paradox ruined their sequels, made them less historical and into meme sandbox games with a very arcadey approach. So I have been looking for other games to play. I might come back for EU V, but the playtesters have already reported that the economy operates with shadow demons from another dimension again like in Victoria 3.

>>721143490
I think you got it wrong, japanese animation is really stiff and usually "locked in", while mostly looking fancy
western animation is more based on physics and more "loose", while being more grounded
it's really apparent with controller in hand

>>721127481 (OP)
I remember seeing it in magazines and feeling already that it looked like my ideal game. I had this pit in my stomach that it would be shit but I bought it at launch anyways. I agree with what you said exactly, this was the mature OoT I had been waiting for. This was a game that never disrespected the player with irritating junk plot and humor. The game respected you enough to sucker punch you and it activated something in my brain. It's not like its ballcrushingly hard it was more like being woken from a coma by a game that actually put a modicum of thought into how the player was going to interact with the environment on more than one or two stages of intelligence.
Not to mention the lighting and voice acting are uniquely beautiful most games aren't able to strike their own tone like this. That's probably the worst thing about most Western games, being either corny pastiche or completely toneless.

>>721154819
Not him, but it's documented how the demaked it.

>>721155036
Yeah... I dunno about that, play any action game, or Open World, or whatever

>>721127481 (OP)
I don't understand what is hard about demon's souls, the only bosses that managed to hit me a few times are flamelurker, king allant and the penetrator- every other enemy is a joke

I heard people cry and moan for a decade about how "awful" valley of defilement is and it was a complete fucking cakewalk with the final boss being a bitch that stands there and an npc with a hammer that can be backstabbed repeatedly

Started to think people were making up demon's souls difficulty and then I realized they were all assassin's creed players used to winning with a button press, somehow this made from cuckware a multibajillion company? ok then, god what a shitty meme series

>>721133670
I stopped playing DkS1 at Blighttown because the lighting is so horrid I literaly can't see shit.

>>721155149
play any japanese game lol
japanese animation looks better, western is more fluid

>>721127481 (OP)
It was notable because it was released during a time when video games were getting increasingly streamlined and easy. If it was released on the PS2 barely anyone would have paid attention to it.

>>721155278
Give me the examples of more fluid animation and I will check them out without bias

>>721131676
total sovl removal

>>721155323
It has less depth than bamham combat and that released around the same time.

>>721155324
any western game that doesn't lock you into an animation where you can't do anything until that animation is over
those usually happen for special actions in western games, but in jap games those happen for literally anything

>>721127481 (OP)
Nah back then we had a lot of experimental games like that one, most led to nothing. I remember playing it when it came out and thinking
>well this is a neat idea, it'll never catch on
And most original games back then never caught on. Anarchy Reigns isn't a franchise. Deadly Premonition shouldn't have been a franchise. Vanquish came and went. The list goes on

>>721155153
It was hard at the time because you had no clue what to expect from the game. You didn't know what stats to level up, what weapons to use, what tactics to employ. You weren't used to the ambushes and unfamiliar with the items. There were no guides to help either. It was a confusing experience, and that was on purpose too. A lot of mechanics were barely explained
They're still barely explained in souls but at this point we just know how they work through experience

>>721156616
He's doing le epic 'I barely got hit or died' larp that has been popular since the games got popular.

>>721155153
>how "awful" valley of defilement is
>slap HP regen ring on
>almost outheals the poison
I appreciate the game more for what it did than for what it is.

>>721127481 (OP)
kinda crazy how the series went from being on the cutting edge of game design and going against the direction of the industry at the time, to now becoming the hot thing that gets copycatted itself

>>721128247
why would any sane person play DS or DS2 on RCPS3? are you stupid?

>>721160297
In case of DS1 you can perhaps play the pre-patch version where you got jack shit for souls and curse stacked, I guess.

>>721133670
I miss old From so much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIW7Ho4xMa4

>>721138749
But it was a feature in DS1 and DS2.

>>721160508
every Souls-game is nu-From

too bad the remake is stuck on the worst console of this generation that has literally zero other games

>>721131676
It's still Demon's Souls

>>721151841
PTDE with dsfix

>>721156616
all those things apply to most games made for the NES but I never saw anyone hail them as the saviours of videogames, in fact people hack them when emulating or use savestates

>>721156919
>being this mad
let me guess you are so zoomer you don't even know "git gud" was an ironic phrase that is used unironically by retards today

>>721160647
the remake is shit, no one should play that

>>721155324
>>721155278
this guy is nuts
compare okami, mario, or nier automata to god of war, asscreed, or GTA

fluid western games are rare, like jak and daxter or whatever.

>>721160647
>same levels
>same combat mechanics
>same controls
>same storyline
>same NPCs
*remaster

>>721127481 (OP)
It saved gaming. Everything would've been Ubislop otherwise

>>721142480
TRVKE