The rumored Demon's Souls remake was officially unveiled during Sony's recent PlayStation 5 reveal, and fans of the Souls series are psyched, to say the least. The 2009 game served as the debut of Fromsoft's epic series of loosely-connect dark fantasy RPGs, and getting the change to re-explore its world after two generations of hardware innovation will be an unparalleled treat.
However, though some purists will want the title to remain as close to the original as possible, most will agree that some elements of Demon's Souls could do with a facelift. Here are 10 things we hope developer Bluepoint Games alters about this classic gaming experience.
10 World Tendency Overhaul
Does anyone mind explaining how exactly Demon's Souls' world tendency mechanic actually works? In basic terms, it's a mechanic whereby certain elements of the game are changed based on the player's actions, but the game does a pretty horrendous job explaining exactly how to influence this or what the consequences are.
The upcoming remake needs to overhaul this mechanic, or at least do a better job of tutorializing it. Furthermore, in the original, certain events could only be experienced with pure black or pure white world tendency, meaning that those who didn't understand it likely missed out on important occurrences and items.
9 Upgrade System Rework
Upgrading weapons in Demon's Souls was a meticulous chore. Not only did it have players fumbling to collect all manner of upgrade stones—of which there are a total of sixteen, and they came in multiple sizes—but it required most to consult charts and plan their builds and upgrade paths far in advance.
Though some players found that added to the charm of the game, it's a cumbersome, clunky system that could do with some modernization, and we'd love to see Bluepoint make some alterations.
8 Remove Item Burden Mechanic
Once again, some players will find this mechanic to be a part of the game's strange appeal, but, for those more familiar with the subsequent Dark Souls games, it will come across as annoying and downright archaic.
While FromSoft games usually require players to keep an eye on the weight of their weapons and armor, in Demon's Souls, every pickup had a weight assigned to it, and that meant that players could only carry so much at a time. This was an obnoxious system that made proceedings all the more tedious, and we'd love to see it either revamped or done away with altogether.
7 Rebalance Magic Items
For the most part, miracles and magical items had their place in the Dark Souls games, but it took some know-how to successfully implement them in combat or craft an entire build around them. This was not the case in the series' progenitor, and certain magic spells in Demon's Souls could turn an already overpowered run into an outright broken affair.
We're all for offering alternative builds and methods of making the game a bit easier, but experienced players could use these spells to make an absolute joke of the game, and we think they should be balanced accordingly.
6 Healing Mechanic Revamp
Demon's Souls newcomers may be shocked to find out that FromSoft's 2009 outing implemented a healing mechanic that wasn't altogether all that similar to the one used in Dark Souls. Rather than filling an Estus flask at each bonfire, players were instead forced to farm various types of grasses for health which were found scattered throughout the game.
Unfortunately, players who took the time to farm certain enemies wound up with outrageous amounts of the stuff, meaning that they almost never had to worry about healing. Though purists are likely to enjoy the system, we'd like Bluepoint to implement the Dark Souls method of doing things.
5 Adjusted Ladder Climbing Speed
If you thought Dark Souls got a bit carried away with its ladders, you've clearly never seen Demon's Souls. Perhaps From Software wanted to go for a more realistic approach to ladder climbing, but this is utterly ridiculous. Unfortunately, it's shockingly accurate to the amount of time it would take a regular person to climb up or down in a full suit of armor, and we really didn't need that level of realism. If anything at all is changed in the Demon's Souls remake, it needs to be this.
4 Add PvP Arena
PvP has long been a staple of FromSoft games, and that tradition more or less started with Demon's Souls. Buggy combat and network issues aside, it was a defining feature of the Souls trilogy, and Dark Souls 3 went so far as to include a PvP arena for those who wanted to take their dueling game to the next level.
Obviously, Demon's Souls did a few things to incentivize online play, going so far as to lock offline players out of certain areas in the game's main hub world. However, in the remake, we'd love to see a full-on PvP arena introduced.
3 Soul Form Rebalance
Dark Souls required players to balance the positives and negatives of playing as both human and hollow, but it's predecessor simplified things somewhat by spawning players in "body" form and forcing them to take a "soul" form after they die. In soul form, HP is halved, and human form can, for the most part, only be reattained by beating a boss.
While it's definitely a unique mechanic, we can't imagine that most new players will embrace it, and we believe Bluepoint may want to tinker with how this is handled.
2 Remove Gender-Specific Armor Sets
Another outlandish, out of place commitment to realism, Demon's Souls made it so that players were barred from certain armor sets based on the gender of their characters. Though it didn't have a huge effect on the overall experience, it was a strange restriction.
Later FromSoft games abandoned these restrictions, and, aside from the player character's appearance, gender had absolutely no bearing on the game in the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne. Obviously, we'd prefer if Bluepoint would scrap this entirely, as we're not sure if we want such superfluous decisions to have that much of an impact in-game.
1 Restore The Broken Archstone
Perhaps one of the most famous mysteries hidden in the Souls games surrounds the broken sixth Archstone in Demon's Souls. Allegedly tethered to the land of the giants, it's explained that the Archstone was destroyed because the land was corrupted by the Colorless Fog.
In truth, the area was originally intended to be implemented, though it was eventually cut at some point during development. To truly highlight the leap between console generations, we'd love to see Bluepoint add this area into the remake in some form.