Demon's Souls

2025-08-30
Picture this: a lonely freshman holed up in his dorm room on a Friday night in October 2009, "choosing" to abstain from going out to parties with his other dorm neighbors, because he had to play this new game that only True Gamers knew about. He purposefully keeps the door open, ostentaciously, so that someone passing by might look in and say "Huh, what's this? This game looks very cool. Demon's Souls, you say? I've never heard of it. You must be a very interesting person. I would like to become your friend." Needless to say no one cared that I was fighting Tower Knight. Well, okay, some drunk girl wandered in at some point and that turned into a whole sojourn of breaking into some campus building to steal kisses in betwen swigs from a water bottle of vodka, and eventually after several weeks would end in heartbreak--but that's outside the remit of this post. She certainly wasn't interested in the fact that I chose Wanderer as my starting class.

I remember the hype of this game coming out in 2009. The buzz from journalists playing import copies was that there was a new action RPG on the block that had, unfathomably, honest to god good combat and controls like some sort of Capcom game or something. As someone who held Devil May Cry 3 as one of the greatest of all time, I knew what good combat was and I also knew that every action RPG I had played up till that point never punched above "serviceable" in that department. Needless to say in October 2009, little more than a month into my first year at college, I grabbed a copy of Demon's Souls.

It was immediately one of my favorite things ever. I mentioned DMC but my other one true love was the Elder Scrolls, so the sheer amount of customization and stats on offer here couldn't have been a more enticing combination. It's hard to look back clearly, as we're so entrenched in everything Demon's Souls laid out, but when I opened that menu and saw different weapons and armors and level ups affecting such a wide array of stats, many of which I didn't really understand, it felt like I was like an archaelogist opening up some long lost tomb, the light revealing glinting, golden artifacts everywhere. Gah and that customization. Again, Bethesda spoiled me, with the whole "you put on a piece of armor or weapon and it changes the way your character looks." There's a choice to what you look like, there's a story in the objects that adorn your body. And for how hard fought every item in Demon's Souls often is, it takes that concept to an entirely new level.

And, all of this, all of this potential, and you fight the first Dreglings on that bridge in Boletarian Palace and it feels good? Are you kidding me? No, "good" is an understatement. It feels amazing. No "amazing" isn't enough either. It is sublime. Through my thumbs and these analog sticks I am communing with the work of god made manifest in this shitty used PS3 sitting on the furniture nailed to the wall in my prison-like dorm room. As much as my exhaustingly anxious and approval-seeking teenage psyche wanted to rip me away, I was fully immersed.

The rest is, as they say, history. If you're reading this, you've almost certainly, directly or indirectly, been affected by the release of Demon's Souls, it's currents of influence seeming to move an entire swathe of the games industry in a new direction. And you've almost certainly formed your own opinion on whether that's a good or bad thing and whether you like the games at all. For myself, I just enjoy going back to where it all began. When things were simpler, when I was sadder. When there were no guides and you'd just get your ass rocked by Armor Spider and call it a day. When there were no YouTubers with video essays to pick apart games till their hollowed carcasses, bereft of mystery, were left to rot in the sun. When you'd play a great game and enjoy it for what it was. Ah, Demon's Souls, you're still my favorite.

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The game that started it all (IMO). I have a very clear memory of playing this in college alone in my room while everyone else was going out to parties. Weirdly enough I think that's how I met Emily. Anyway, unlike that, this ended with good memories lol! I remember I beat that giant titan boss for the first time in college. I think I only actually ever fully beat Demon's Souls after I finished Dark Souls? Or maybe I beat it just before Dark Souls but it was years after it came out. I think I got stuck at the spider boss the first time. Because you can't win unless you do something very specific and I didn't know what it was. This was before everyone looked everything up online I think lol.

What's interesting is though I started it soon after it came out I bounced off pretty hard because I was bad. Then I tried again at the beginning of college and you can see I defeated the tower knight on 10/12/2009 but then I think I got stuck at the spider (mine) boss and gave up till 2013 when I beat the game. I think at this point I might have beaten Dark Souls. Unclear.