Demon's Souls vs Dark Souls

Now that I've played both games, it's time for the inevitable "Demon's Souls versus Dark Souls" discussion. When I played Demon's Souls back in April, I was immediately hooked. The combat just clicked for me, offering a far more satisfying and engaging experience than any other fantasy combat system I'd ever played. There was such a remarkable precision in every aspect of that game's design, making it one of the most unique and rewarding games of recent memory.

With Dark Souls came a promise of "more of the same" in a supposedly bigger and better package, complete with a new open-world design, more areas to explore with a greater variety of aesthetic themes, new online multiplayer mechanics, and an expanded range of weapons and armor. While Dark Souls does deliver in some aspects of the "bigger and better" promise, there are still a number of things I prefer about Demon's Souls. Detailed comparisons await after the jump.

Demon's Souls is Not That Hard

When Demon's Souls was first released in October 2009, everyone was quick to propogate the hype that it was a brutally hard, soul-crushingly challenging game. After all, it had once been advertised by the publisher, Atlus, as "a game that enjoys the taste of your tears." There are numerous bosses and enemies that can kill you in one hit, and you're expected to be slaughtered to death before even finishing the opening tutorial sequence. When you die, you lose all of the souls you collected (your currency and experience points), you get sent back to the beginning of the level, all of the enemies respawn, and you suffer a penalty to your maximum health.

For a new player unfamiliar with the ropes, this means repeatedly finding yourself back at the start of the level with all of your progress undone, and with no souls to spend buying extra healing items, ammunition, upgrading your stats, or repairing your armor until you can get back to your bloodstain to reacquire your lost souls. Dying once is bad enough, but fighting your way through the level can be even harder the second time around, especially if you used all of your healing items trying to survive in the first place. And if you die enough times in body form, your game's world tendency will shift to black, populating the level with even tougher enemies.

Whereas most games help you get back on your feet after death, Demon's Souls punishes you hard for dying. And yet it's not an unfair game, and actually becomes incredibly easy once you know what you're doing. While virtually every press release has touted the game's challenging difficulty, and many gamers have accused it of being exceedingly cheap, tedious, and frustrating, the simple fact of the matter is that Demon's Souls is not that hard, as long as you approach it intelligently.