Demon’s Souls wastes little time getting to the point: Boletaria, the imagined kingdom the game takes place, is a brutal place to spend time in. It goes without saying that the trailblazer for the Dark Soul’s franchise is difficult, but that difficulty seems like an extension of its universe rather than a key point of development. Characters speak wistfully of lost homes, family members and belongings. The various architecture is run down and decripate. The soil beneath is washed and colorless. Whatever good that thrived in this world previously has been driven out, and passage through Boletaria seems like an immeasurable task. Yet, through incredibly precise combat and brief rays of catharsis, Demon’s Souls beckoned me forward.

While hardly plot centric, Demon’s Souls expertly build its world around the idea of invasion and the subsequent isolation. A deep fog has detached Boletaria from the rest of the world and the only evidence that a “rest of the world” even exists is because of our self-named protagonist (and others like them). Sent from boarding territories to rid Boletaria of its demons, glorious knights and mages are burdened with the responsibility of breaching this deep fog. These warriors are found scattered through the kingdom (many of whom can be found in the game’s wondrous hub, The Nexus), each more besmirched than the last. Often as they are not, they are already dead. I appreciated the sense of enthusiasm that many of them possessed, like the widower Stockpile Thomas, who abandoned his wife and children in order to pursue a safe haven. Thomas, understandably, doesn’t want to dwell on the past, but the more trust the player enshrouds in them, the more he opens up. There are tiny bits of fascinating exposition infrequently sprinkled over the brutal adventure you are (largely) alone in undertaking, making each detail more valuable.

The game’s combat is like a sink that slowly unclogs itself over time. Things seemed to chug at an unreasonably slow pace early in my time at Boletaria, but once I became nuanced in the mechanics of the leveling and a grindy weapon upgrade systems, something clicked shortly before the halfway point. Demon’s Souls tends to lean pretty heavily on its precision, with long bouts of exploration without any kind of checkpoint. Lesser hitboxes or unreasonable combat systems would have made for intense frustration. That occasionally becomes present in moments of poor design, such as the Valley of Defilement, which uses winding pathways with no room to use the game’s mobility mechanics (the roll and backstep). More often, the levels play as a loose string tightly wound at the tips. What lies between the beginning and end is usually a semi-linear space, ripe with interesting items and non-player characters. Demon’s Souls occasionally tinkers with shortcuts that loop the aforementioned string into a more tightly wound knot, but it does so far too infrequently – making the “boss runs” a disheartening quest. It’s fortunate, then, that these bosses are rarely too punishing. Instead, they are thematically and mechanically apt. While not all of them are memorable, there are a few boss fights that will be difficult to etch out of my brain. For instance, the Old Hero, which swings a gigantic sword made of crystal. The Old Hero swings blindly at the player, presumably because he lost his eyesight as some kind of recompense. This unpredictability, matched with an equally somber score, makes for an unforgettable fight.

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