Demon’s Souls

2020 · Bluepoint Games · ~30h to finish

The combat is the gentlest in the family and the systems are the cruellest — dying moves you to soul form at half health, and the game never says so.

soulslikeactionrpgPlayStation 5

Global—UNRATED

Baseline difficulty6.7PUNISHING

Sustained pressure. Progress is earned.

Part of

FromSoftware, Demon’s Souls to Nightreign6 of 8 to play

The prototype. Everything the others refined is here in a rougher form, including a world tendency system none of them kept — which is why it reads better as an artefact once you know the finished version.

Before it: Sekiro: Shadows Die TwiceAfter it: Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First SinStart with Dark Souls or Bloodborne or Elden Ring

The fingerprint

12.55.07.510

Obscurity

8.4

Punishment

7.4

Learning Curve

6.8

Reaction

5.8

Grind

4.8

Execution

4.8

Strategy

4.2

Puzzle

1.5

PUBLISHEDHARDEST DEMAND FIRST

Assist options shave roughly 0.6 points off, if you use them.
Not available on any platform you own.

These are generic numbers. Calibrate and this whole page re-scores around you.

Calibrate

Screenshots

IGDB

Where it bites

SPOILER-SAFE BY DEFAULT

START25%HALFWAY75%CREDITS

4% · ~1hObscurity
the tutorial boss you are supposed to lose to, which nobody tells you is scripted
▲ 17
30% · ~8hObscurity
the hidden stat that quietly makes every world harder or easier and is never explained
▲ 22
55% · ~15hPunishment
the swamp level, which is poison, dark, and the only place a whole build can stop working
▲ 22

Assists & accessibility

0/2 SOURCED

MOTOR & INPUT

Fully remappable controls [unsourced]

HEARING

Full subtitles [unsourced]

Claims marked unsourced have not been checked against a published accessibility review. Nothing here is inferred from genre — where we do not know, we say nothing.

What it is

A remake of the 2009 original that started the genre: five worlds picked from a hub in any order, each a linear gauntlet ending in a boss, with no shortcuts back once you commit.

Where to go from here

Argue with these asks

The same shape with the volume down, for when that one took it out of you.

Lords of the Fallen

2023 · Hexworks · ~40h

6.0STEEP

Its difficulty is crowd control, not duels: the game throws groups and ranged attackers at you constantly, and the second world doubles the population.

UnratedREA 6.6PUN 6.6OBS 6.3

PUZ 1.5PUN 6.6OBS 6.3

Mortal Shell

2020 · Cold Symmetry · ~12h

6.2PUNISHING

Short and dense, and almost nothing in it is labelled — you learn what an item does by eating it and finding out.

UnratedOBS 7.8REA 6.4CRV 6.2

1.6

The Surge

2017 · Deck13 Interactive · ~20h

5.9STEEP

You choose which limb to cut off, which means every fight is a decision about what you want to be wearing afterwards rather than only about surviving it.

UnratedREA 6.5PUN 6.5OBS 6.5

1.8

The same shape with the volume down, for when that one took it out of you.

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