A few weekends ago, when everyone and their undead mother was diving into the Dark Souls II beta, I took advantage of a different opportunity: the chance to revisit the game that started it all, 2009’s Demon’s Souls. I was late to Demon's Souls, only coming to fully appreciate it after a long love affair with Dark Souls – and by the time I'd arrived, the party was over. The servers were bereft of other players, and I was traipsing through Boletaria feeling even more alone than the game clearly wanted me to.

The Nexus is the hub of Demon's Souls, a ghostly place that links to five cavernous locations. But whether I wormed through Stonefang or crept through Latria, the most I'd ever see of others was a bloodstain – the odd message, perhaps, and every so often a glimpse of white ghosts. I'd never fought a single other player. I’d always dreamed of the Old Monk fight, one of those things that seemed too perfect in theory to ever be borne out - basically, it involves another player being called in as the level’s boss. But I’d missed out on that. It would never happen again.

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Or so it seemed, anyway. The Demon's Souls community isn't active or huge these days, but the Return to the Nexus by Peeve Peverson, an ongoing and simultaneous runthrough starting the game afresh, caught my eye. This was a chance to play through anew, in the presence of others - and as it turned out, the Souls fans would be there en masse. Demon's Souls is forever destined to be compared to its spiritual sequel, but the air in Boletaria smells different. This is an ascetic, almost a colder experience. And the way in which players interact is much more simple and in some ways preferable than it would later become.

“ This is an ascetic, almost a colder experience. And the way in which players interact is much more simple and in some ways preferable than it would become in Dark Souls.

Demon's Souls online is a much more streamlined system and – crucially – has its own servers rather than the peer-to-peer system favoured by Dark Souls. I play Dark Souls PvP regularly, and Demon's Souls is a superior experience for this reason alone. What I mean by that is the Dark Souls community accepts constant connection issues, lag, backstabs and phantom blows as the downsides of an otherwise captivating experience – if you love something enough it's amazing what you're blind to. Playing Demon's Souls is frankly a stark reminder of how good it could have been. Whenever I saw a summon sign, not a single one failed.

A key factor in Souls multiplayer is the element of mystery. You could call it ‘unknowing’. The game goes out of its way to keep players at the fringes of each others' worlds – white phantoms, bloodstains, the scrawls of a thousand fellow inmates nudging or jeering at you. It is a brilliant balancing act, managing to maintain other people as a consistent yet ephemeral theme in your world – which is why it's all the more shocking when, unbidden and uninvited, another player slices through this fog and invades.

In Dark Souls, you can tell someone’s going to invade by looking at whether certain items are greyed out. In Demon’s Souls, there is no advance warning. You're alerted that someone else is here, and there's an icy wave across the stomach as you accept the level is now a cage – locked, until only one of you still stands. When you die, it feels like you've been mugged. I can tell that other people feel the same way because, every so often, a player will disconnect rather than fight. Very few games make their inhabitants turn off out of simple fear.

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Speaking of fear, my PvP experiences for some reason clustered around the Tower of Latria. Latria begins in a prison that freaks you out with sound, as Cthulu guards tinkle bells and tortured prisoners scream in the distance. Its cells and hidden passages gradually become more outlandish and deadly, while the audio becomes even more dissonant – in one section a soprano voice rings out, holding a high note with a wavering majesty that, after ten or twenty repetitions, begins to flay your mind. Audio even weaves into the boss fight against the False Idol – an image of Latria's former queen resurrected by an organ's droning tune (you have to find and kill the 'musician' before taking out the boss).

“ Mephistophea is the name of the player I summoned, a friend in need if ever there was one, but our first try went badly.

It was in Latria's gigantic second stage I found most other players – a vertical level that resembles some futurist vision of hell, with burnished chains supporting a rank and beating heart. The narrow walkways, set fatally high above the ground, led to my first death at an invader's hands; nothing more glorious than rolling backwards at the wrong moment.

I worked my way through 3-2, managing to kill one invader and lose to another. By this time I'd cleared most of the level and found my way to the Maneaters, an accurately-named :D pair of bosses. I got stomped multiple times, and this is when I met Mephistophea.

Mephistophea is the name of the player I summoned, a friend in need if ever there was one, but our first try went badly. We got battered, and after several close calls I basically got uppercutted off the bridge. I resurrected cursing my luck, and after a minute or so found the blue flicker of Mephistophea's sign, ready for round 2. It was a corker. Last-minute dodges, clunking great whacks dealt out with every misstep, and finally the Maneaters fell. Mephistophea faded away as we both bowed and, because he or she had fought so well, I awarded them S-Rank and the lion's share of the spoils (a cool feature lost to Dark Souls).

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Each location in Demon's Souls has an Arch Demon. In the final stage of Latria, 3-3, it is the Old Monk – the region's former king, possessed by a demon and now almost burned out. In fact, he is. When you enter the Old Monk's inner sanctum he casts around for another powerful demon to be his host. Nearby players. Players with their Summon signs down in 3-2.

“ Demon's Souls simply arranges the setting, and then it is infused with drama by players.

'The Phantom Mephistophea has invaded' ran the bare text. A winding staircase leads towards the Old Monk's room, and I approached with especial care. Stepping through the fog I saw my former saviour with the dead king's robes wrapped around his head.

The reason I'm telling you this is that so often in videogames we are asked to care about the relationships of fictional characters. The old friendship, the ultimate betrayal, the once-mentor, all of these cliches abound. Demon's Souls simply arranges the setting, and then it is infused with drama by players.

Mephistophea went for me. Sheer instinct took over, I two-handed my halberd and chopped away in a berserker's panic, taking off half of the demon's health in the first exchange. We circled away, and danced back and forth for several minutes, with both sides scoring glancing blows. But the real damage had been done and eventually the pressure told – Mephistophea backed onto the chairs that surround the room, and when they tried to roll away the halberd's beautiful roundhouse swing did the rest. The Demon Was Destroyed. GG Mephistophea, GG Latria, GG Demon's Souls.

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I never realised it at the time, although I do recall one Keza MacDonald shouting it from the rooftops, but Demon's Souls is probably the most revolutionary game this console generation has seen. It throws aside almost all of the encrusted trappings of RPGs, in favour of a mechanically outstanding combat system and a narrative model of enormous originality and subtlety. And apart from its spiritual successor, not a single other game has got close.

Even now, especially now in fact, Demon's Souls is an endlessly dark and surprising world where your brain's more important than reflexes – whatever people say. Boletaria feels like a place constructed by its bizarre inhabitants rather than a team of game designers. And that's why, from now until the servers are finally shut down, there will always be others on the fringes waiting for a friend, or a victim, or perhaps a little of both. So I salute you, Mephistophea! What a superb demon – but maybe next time.

After this article was written, one of the Souls community’s biggest and best streamers organised another synchronised playthrough of Demon’s Souls over the Thanksgiving weekend. You can check out EpicNameBro’s documentation of the adventure on Youtube

Rich Stanton is a Terran freelancer who spends most of his free time in Lordran. Check him out on IGN or Twitter for all of your sun-praising and Zerg-smashing needs.