Demon's Souls Remake, the completely revamped version of the forerunner of the souls, is finally available for all PlayStation 5 owners, kicking off the new generation of Sony exclusives with a bang.
While you can expect a lot of better ones that make the experience more bearable, it still remains the same brutal game released in 2009 for PlayStation 3, with all its pros and cons.
In any case, today we will tell you a little about the title and its general characteristics, so that you can have a clearer idea before its purchase and that you can deal with it better.
- What is Demon's Souls?
- Platforms and price
- difficulties
- duration
- Platinum
- All maps in the game
- Trend
- Inventory management
- Anime and character enhancement
- The bosses
- Boss souls
- Rings
- Weapons and Upgrade
- Danni
- Online component (PvP and Coop)
- Is it worth killing the NPCs?
What is Demon's Souls?
Demon's Souls is a title third person action based on dungeon crawling, with an emphasis on exploring large areas full of enemies, dangerous bosses and useful equipment that will make us more efficient in battle.
Developed by From Software and originally released exclusively on PlayStation 3 in February 2009, it was originally designed to evolve the formula of titles such as Wizardry and King's Field (the latter also from From Software) by plunging the player into a world in ruins. extremely dangerous.
In gameplay it translates into very expanded and suggestive maps, aggressive enemies and a constant sense of loneliness, occasionally weakened by the presence of characters who will help us along the way.
Demon's Souls is for all intents and purposes the father of the so-called "soulslike", exploded with the spiritual sequel Dark Souls and now well established within the gaming market.
As such, it has several characteristics that can be compared with them, while still being quite crude and experimental from many points of view (just think of mechanics like the Trend that have never returned).
In any case, it is to him that we owe the birth of this new current, ultimately giving it a much greater importance than could have been imagined more than 10 years ago.
Where can I get the title? And at what price?
Demon's Souls Remake is playable exclusively on PlayStation 5, and for the moment no information has been given on any releases on other platforms.
It can be purchased in physical edition or on the official PlayStation store at the price of 79,99 €. On the store there is also a Digital Deluxe Edition at a price of € 99,99 containing the following exclusive bonuses and equipment:
- Red-Eyes Knight Armor
- Armor of the Boletarian Royals
- Shield of the Hoplite
- Ritual blade
- Packet of splinters and grains
- A legendary hero soul
- Original soundtrack
Is it possible to change the difficulty of the title?
As with the original, it will be available only one level of difficulty offered by the game developers.
So if you have extreme difficulty facing the title, try to change your approach or tackle different areas, at least consult our guides to understand how to go forward without problems.
How long does the game last?
Based on your experience with the original title and the original souls, the duration of the title will vary a lot.
If you have already tried the original, we are talking about a duration of about 20 hours, while if you are at the first playthrough it will last about 40 / 50 hours. To do completism you will need to face more games, and optimizing it will take you about 60 hours to finish everything.
Obviously, if you decide to approach co-op or pvp the title will last many more hours.
Is it difficult to get platinum?
Absolutely not, it will only take several games to get all the necessary items.
For more precise information, I refer you to our guide on:
How many maps are there in the game?
In all you will be able to face 5 main maps with different themes and atmospheres, in turn divided into different micro-areas and accessible through the so-called Archstones in the central area of the game, the Nexus.
Completing each of them will be essential to get to the end, also because at the end of each one will find a demon of immense power.
Starting from the left, the first accessible Archstone will be that of Boletaria, through which we will enter the main fortress of the aforementioned King Allant.
Being also the Archstone that houses the final boss, at some point it will be impossible to continue inside, making it necessary to explore the other 4. It will still be mandatory to take down the first boss inside it before continuing with the others.
Boletaria in terms of atmosphere is the classic fallen fortress, dominated by soldiers in the grip of madness and knights turned into demons.
The second Archstone leads to Stonefang, a series of tunnels in an underground mine that conceal the temple of an ancient cult. Needless to say, the atmosphere here is much more claustrophobic, with narrow corridors and dangers around every corner.
When it comes to oppression and claustrophobia, however, nothing is more iconic within Demon's Souls than the area accessible via the third Archstone, the Latria Tower, which will take you through prisons with tortured inmates and, further on, through the tower itself.
As with most of these areas, not even a single glimmer of sunlight will be present outside, so all the time you will be immersed in this dark atmosphere that will make you very uncomfortable, also considered elements such as the constant screams of inmates in background.
The Stonefang Tunnels 
The Tower of Latria
The fourth Archstone, which leads to the Shrine of the Storms, it will surely give you the opportunity to take a minimum of air at least, since, despite there is a lot of exploration inside the crypts, there will be completely open areas, even if completely grayed by the constant clouds that envelop the sky.
We then arrive at the last Archstone which establishes a constant within the souls, that is the one that leads to the Valley of Corruption.
If you have played Dark Souls and still fear the intricate structures of the Infamous City, the Corruption Valley will create more of a headache for you, as it is always based on the same theme of the destroyed city above a swamp, but far more extensive and intricate in its passages.
The Shrine of Storms 
The Valley of Corruption
A sixth Archstone was also to be included in the original title, which would lead to the lands of the northern giants, but was completely cut out during development. It remains so also in the Remake, since little or nothing has been added regarding new unreleased content.
How does the Archstone Tendency work?
One of the unique features of Demon's Souls is definitely the World trend, which may vary according to our different actions within each Archstone.
It can vary in a range between Pure White and Pure Black, the former decreases the damage of the enemies but also the drop probability of the unique materials, while the latter increases both, as well as making red phantom appear dangerous.
I invite you again to consult the our guide to platinum for more precise information about it.
Is weight management in inventory as cumbersome as in the original?
Fortunately no, as this Remake has added the ability to send items collected in the Nexus storage directly from the inventory at any time, without therefore forcing you to constantly interrupt the adventure to make unnecessary trips.
The weight of the equipped items, however, has not been retouched, so always keep it under control if you don't want to risk limiting your movements without realizing it.
What are souls? And how will it be possible to use them to enhance the character?
As for the various titles of the Souls series, also in Demon's it will be possible to enhance the character using the anime that the enemies will release.
Put simply, each enemy killed will release a certain number of souls that you will lose if you die and then don't recover them later.
Souls are the currency of this title, and can be used to buy various items from the game's characters or to increase your character's stats.
To do this last operation, just talk to the Maiden in Black and select the option “Seek Soul Power”, then increase the attributes you want.
Below the game will show you what each attribute will increase, and you will see in real time the affected stats, so the whole process will be very clear. The higher your level, the more souls will be required to get to the next.
But remember that there is no way to cancel and redo upgrades from 0 like in Dark Souls 2 or 3, so think about what build you want to create for your character right from the start and raise attributes based on that.
In addition to the normal souls that you can find there will also be the souls of the bosses, which we will talk about later.
How many bosses are there in the game altogether?
In all you can deal with 17 main bosses in the title, 4 in Boletaria, 3 for each of the other 4 Archpieces and one final.
And if you are looking for optional challenges, the two dragons in Boletaria e two avant-gardes, one in the first tutorial section of the game (then not replayable if you lose) and one in the first section of the Shrine of the Storms.
If you also bring the Tendency of a World to Pure Black, in each Archstone you will be able to face an optional boss called Primal Demon, which will allow you to get a total of 5 Colorless Demon Souls (a useful material to upgrade the weapons obtained from the bosses).
How are boss souls usable?
Each boss faced and killed will give you aunique soul, consumable to obtain a large amount of cores or exploitable in other ways.
In fact, some can be merged with specific weapons that have reached a certain level of enhancement, giving you a completely new weapon.
For example, using the Old Hero soul on a Falcione at +8 you can get the weapon he wields in his battle, which will have unique characteristics but can only be upgraded in one way.
To get similar weapons you will first need to bring the soul of the Flaming to the blacksmith Ed, found at the beginning of the first area of Stonefang.
Keep in mind that boss souls will not always allow the creation of weapons, but they can often be exchanged for magic and miracles, and from the same soul you can create more unique objects (thus requiring different matches in case you want to achieve completism).
How many rings will be obtainable in all?
By continuing in the game you will be able to obtain 30 rings, including 26 from the original title and 4 unreleased from this remake.
The 4 new ones are, respectively, the ring of providence, the sodden ring, the ring of irregular scales and the ring of longevity.
For more precise information on where to find them all, I refer you to our guide on:
How do weapons work? And how will they be affected by attributes?
Another feature of the souls is the wide variety of weapons, which in Demon's will be divided into 16 categories, including fast, slow, low range or ranged weapons, not forgetting the talismans and catalysts so dear to magic and miracle users.
Each weapon may also have a letter ranging from E to S in Strength, Dexterity, Magic or Faith. This will indicate the so-called scaling, or the damage multiplier that it will receive based on how much we have invested in the attribute in question.
The multiplier will vary according to the letter, so at E it will be very low while at S it will be as high as possible. Certain weapons will have multipliers in more than one attribute, thus receiving bonuses from multiple statistics at the same time.
Each weapon can be upgraded using specific stones that we will find within the game, and there will also be different upgrade paths that will give it secondary effects or affect scaling.
Are there any other ways to do more damage than upgrading the weapon?
Yes, it will be enough for you to resort to objects that infuse your weapon with some element. Compared to subsequent titles in the series, here it will be possible to infuse only two elements, namely fire and magic.
Furthermore, for non-boss humanoid enemies, it will be possible to exploit two types of particularly harmful blows, the repost damage (commonly called parry) and critical damage to the shoulders (commonly called backstab).
For the first you will have to deflect the enemy attack with L2 and then press the attack button in front of him, while for the second you will have to get behind the enemy and attack.
The parry will not be immediate immediately, and you will have to do a little practice to master it, while the backstab will come to you much more intuitively and will be useful from the beginning to easily deal with different clashes.
How does the online component work?
Online you can, respectively, leave messages, invade a player as a red phantom, be summoned as a red phantom or help with a bossfight.
To leave messages, simply select the appropriate option in the menu and leave the message you want.
To help co-op an ally, just kill Phalanx and use the stone that the Maiden in Black will give you.
As an added requirement, you must be in soul form and leave the summoning mark in an area that allows it. You can only be summoned by players in a level range of (your level) ± [10 + (10% (your level)].
To invade, instead, you can search for players without their consent, and then use the stone given by the red phantom on the staircase at the end of the Latria Tower, or leave a mark on the ground and be summoned, then using the stone that the Maiden in Black will donate you towards the end of the game.
In both cases, you can only invade players of a level that varies according to the formula already mentioned above for the coop.
Is it possible to kill the various allied characters in the game?
Yes, most of them can be killed, but in practically any case it won't be worth doing, as you would be precluding entire storylines or useful items.
The only time this is highly recommended will be if you find a character named Yurt, as bringing him into the Nexus will mean the gradual killing of all characters there.
If you are into Pure Black this choice will also make a second NPC called Mephistopheles appear, so killing him is recommended in any case.
