*** this site and youtube videos from same guy/ppl are great at tracing all the influences of Berserk into Souls games. So I'm putting this at the tip top of this post:
https://www.youtube.com/@dondonrv
https://www.knowll.com/e/121/complete-list-of-berserk-influences-on-souls-games
This one at timestamp 3:25 has a chart of Manga and TV and movies that influenced the Souls main guy Hidetaka Miyazaki. Nausicaa, Fist of the North Star, Appleseed, Gundam, .. Record of Lodoss War, etc.
https://youtu.be/Gv1X5I_z_Sk?t=205
My Review... let's say it is a review, even though I'm all over the place
So... it's a great game all around. Looks great, cool options, tons of customization. Difficulty is probably just right... but since it is slow paced, I wouldn't want it super difficult is my gut feeling. Fast games like Cuphead are super fun difficulty on hardest settings, up until the final final boss on max difficulty then in my modern life I usually "leave it for another day".
Back to Demon's Souls the remake on PS5. So let me get the negatives off my chest:
1. Panderverse. There, I've said it for real this time. Let's keep things cohesive. I'm all about other cool cultures and peoples and stuff, but it needs to fit. This game is like 95% medieval European armor and weapons... with some Japanese stuff mixed in (plus of course a bunch of monsters and a dark horror vibe). Feels correct if you stop there. These last few Hollywood and political years have been a strain on the entertainment industry... they are being lazy and not doing other cultures justice, while simultaneously screwing up the actual entertainment they are putting out by cut and pasting certain folks into something. OK, I hate politics, forget I mentioned it.
2. Slow paced. Yeah, even Dark Souls felt awkwardly slow, and I never honestly "got it", but I went with it. Feels a little too... Street Fighter made by Japan vibe. Reward defense more than offense in most cases. I mean it works and all, but I still like twitchy fast stuff the best. The realism parts and hit boxes are pretty cool.
3. Rolling... I just realized I finally didn't "notice" rolling when I was playing, since it's the 3rd game to do it like this. Back in the other games, it stuck out like a sore thumb b/c it was so unrealistic in a pretty darn realistic physics feel game... and maybe b/c of input queuing you often rolled a 2nd time and died b/c of it. But yeah, thinking about it, rolling looks silly, you can't say it doesn't.
4. The damnable input buffering thing. Oh my God, that is annoying still. You have to rework your brain to only press a button ONE time. It's stupid how far ahead I can queue up moves, it feels just like Windows XP with too many programs running and that delay on your inputs. For instance in the game, ... as a Temple Knight (paladin)... clicking the buttons to:
-holding block with shield
-switch to faith casting item with shield hand
-heal spell
-switch back to shield in left hand
you can queue up all that and sit around for many seconds (it feels like, maybe minutes... ok ok but it is slooow)... and all that crap executes while you are just waiting around for it.
Do the same thing, but queue up a weapon switch in your right hand after the shield swap, and if I recall, it'll do everything, skip the shield to left hand, but still switch your right hand weapon. Janky? Yeah janky. I'd prefer a zero input lag, zero buffer system I think very much. All the Souls games I've played so far suffer from this, so it just is what it is.
5. OK, the giant silly weapons need to go. I think I complained somewhere about this already. Sure Berserk has a bunch of cool visuals, but I'm afraid I can't "get" the giant silly weapon thing. It looks goofy and fake, and breaks the physics/reality for me.
Good stuff:
1. I'm reading this other IGN review to prompt myself on things to think about. They sum this part up very well https://www.ign.com/articles/demons-souls-review-2, btw great review, y'all:
"World 1 is tough because you frequently have to contend with an obnoxious dragon that spends its whole day roasting each of the bridges you need to cross in order to proceed; World 2’s enemies are resistant to most damage types outside of piercing; World 3 is a labyrinth that’s easy to get lost in and is guarded by tough mind flayers that can kill you in just one or two hits; World 4 has highly aggressive skeletons that are also resistant to most weapons outside of maces and hammers; and World 5 has a ton of enemies that are easy to kill, but have a nasty habit of swarming you with rapid hits and wild attack patterns. Not to mention the whole “lake of poison” thing."
Yeah, I agree with all of that. And whoops, didn't realize the skeletons are resistant to things outside of maces/hammers... well duh, that's very D&D of them, bones don't get cut they need to get broken.
*The skeletons! Forgot to mention how they aren't really skeletons, it's almost like skeletal armor on top of ... a skinny mummy or something. You can even see that it is tied on top of their "real" arms and such like metal armor would be.
INFLUENCE: I've seen this look before, very Japanese. What was it in... ??? Well, the Giger Pilot is always an original influence no doubt. And Jason and the Argonauts with the stop motion skeletons are always an influence on D&D skellies which influence all of this, of course. But what else has skeleton armor on the outside... some Japanese anime or something from a while back. Well probably the not-loved-by-me Attack On Titan, yuck... well, wikipedia says "It was serialized in Kodansha's monthly magazine Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine from September 2009 to April 2021,"
And look at this: https://narutofanon.fandom.com/wiki/Skeletal_Armor:_Catacombs
... this is randomly relevant, but in 2014 they unearthed a 3900 year old bone armor in Siberia. Once again, global warming leading to finding ancient weird old frozen stuff:
Well get ready for a shock... but apparently it was again Berserk the Manga that influenced the bone armor / skeleton monster things:
https://www.knowll.com/e/123/complete-list-of-berserk-influences-on-dark-souls
2. I do like the relative shortness of this game. Elden Ring and other open world games have waaaay too much walking around for a long time doing nothing, not to mention the ease of getting lost. This game doesn't have that issue, thanks thanks. And maybe I'll finally do a NewGame+ since I'm not totally burnt out by the end. I hope.
3. Bosses. Well I'm like 1/2 way through the bosses or something, but I had a ton of fun figuring out a couple of bosses. It does get old and does sort of ruin the fight having to look up videos in the interest of saving time to see what the movesets of the bosses are and what strategies work. But when you just figure it out on the fly, very fun feeling. I figured out the leech monster monger on the fly, that was nice. Sort of figured out the demonic Dragon God thing, while watching the kid fight it. Beat my head up against a wall figuring out the tower knight... b/c my God if you don't stay in the correct range, and stay behind him and get him in a loop he will bore you to death until you make a mistake (worst kind of death in Souls games... i got bored, so I jumped Ryu's fireball knowing he was going to dragon punch me but damn it I hate waiting in games that are supposed to entertain. I really hate waiting in line for anything, it's an issue.). The fire demon before the dragon god is very similar, you don't dare go too far away or he'll pounce and screw up your stupid button queuing thing to get you frustrated and kill you. No, I don't care what people say, the frustrating parts of boss fights aren't fun. Again, give me Cuphead hard with speediness, and I'll have more fun. I say this, I dunno, these Souls games are fun, maybe I just can't accept it's tied up with the slowness of them.
4. Weapons. It is interesting that they designed it so you can dragon sword your non-NG+ playthrough, then eventually you'll want scaling weapons to get higher damage in NG+ and up. Seems very intential, I'm sure it was. And it's all over the place, nothing is plug and play between weapons. I guess Elden Ring is like that but not nearly so clear. And the kid likes to remind me that when you get good in Elden ring (and high level) you can use and do whatever, doesn't exactly matter.
5. EDIT, CONTINUING a week or two later, after I'm basically at the end of the game:
...
So yeah, beat all the bosses but the final final boss (I think), not including Pure white world black world tendency stuff. Got overleveled on both accounts, so it's like too easy now. Or maybe "over-weapon-upgraded" is more accurate for the weapon-dependent character. Anyway, good game, kind of ready to be done and move on. Maybe NG+ maybe not. The kid also right at end end of the game, did all the PWWT stuff.
Random comment: The billion arrows to kill a dragon... that doesn't move at all... is just weird. Why so many shots, is that fun? Why doesn't it move, it acts like a dumb computer? Forces you to upgrade a bow to max... or use magic with potions. Meh. Dragons look very birdlike in this game... not horrible but not the absolute best dragons.
Other thoughts:
I wish they'd take out ALL the goofy stuff in all their games. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I still am sore from the giant boss #2 Radagon(?) dude on the tiny little horse in Elden Ring. Elden Ring also had the bizarre long necked people... I mean it kind of worked, but they sure were weird and not really in a cool way. I don't think Demon Souls as anywhere near as much of that goofy stuff... other than the big goofy weapons. I guess rolling skeletons is always going to be goofy though. Overall, definitely like the serious aspects of the design, and it does a lot for the game.
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