A Story Analysis of Demon's Souls

demon souls is a decent game there is a lot to love about this game like its level design and intriguing plots but there's also quite a bit that can be considered disappointing both the bosses and npcs from both a gameplay and backstory perspective are hit or miss the beauty of the souls games when it comes to story is reading item descriptions and putting together environmental details to be able to uncover the whole story and while demon souls definitely does that it's not as consistent as you would expect many of the bosses have the same backstory which not only makes this idea overplayed but also uninspiring and the npcs are completely hit or miss as they're either really great characters with interesting ideas and values or completely pointless there is still quite a bit to love about this game and when the game does something good it does it really well it has some great level design that syncs up with the tone it's trying to portray making the locations you're in feel believable and the initial plot of the game is intriguing enough to get you in that comfortable feeling that you're back in a souls game again due to how mysterious the actual story is which is why it's such a shame that it's surrounded by a wall of the aforementioned mediocre boss backstory and npc personality it's hard to not have expectations when going into a game so it's not the fact that having expectations is the problem it's how high those expectations are that is the problem i went into this game with as little of that as i could because i was aware that this was the first installment things could be bare bones in a sense so i wasn't expecting something close to the modern souls games but despite that i was still left a little disappointed but to explain we should probably get playing so let's get started and also since this video is the final one in our soul series at least for the time being stick around to the end of the video if you want to know what i plan to discuss next so demon souls waste zero time getting started even before the title screen pops up we're showing a cutscene that details some of the story it says that one day man was granted a soul and then the following day a soul devouring demon was born the game doesn't let us know any more than this but that's because the actual intro cinematic is shown after creating our character it states that king allant the current ruler of the kingdom of boletaria found a way to channel the power of souls this brought unprecedented power and prosperity to the kingdom but also brought with it a deep fog this fog cut off bulataria from the rest of the world and trapped all those inside but this fog hasn't just cut off bola taria from the rest of the world it's also spreading and will eventually consume the world if the old one isn't put to rest in an attempt to escape this nightmare a man known as valorfax of the twin fangs was the only one to make it out and use the opportunity to warn those of the impending doom that doom of course being the creature we just mentioned the old one this old one is the sole devouring demon i mentioned earlier upon being awoken from its slumber it awoke other demons that devoured those with souls but these demons also had souls the more these demons consumed the more power that they'd receive and thus had stronger souls called demon souls this power that the demons had within them was enticing enough for some individuals to cross the fog to bulletaria and hopes of power while many are unnamed the list of people we do know is bjor the other twin fang yurt the silent chief saint urbain scurvier the wander santa strya and her night girl vinland and sage freak these characters also happen to be the npcs of the game and even though that sounds like a lot there are still more that weren't mentioned but don't get too wrapped up in their names as we'll discuss them later our character is just like the aforementioned npcs a person who came to buletaria in search of power and just like the other games we aren't given a name only a title the slayer of demons just from the intro you can see how far back the roots of this franchise go demon souls was the first game to introduce the idea of beings having souls and how the world is in a constant cycle once the cutscene finishes we can start the game and this tutorial area is not only to get the player accustomed to the game but it's also a death trap as you're not allowed to leave the area alive the final enemy of the level is a demon known as the vanguard it'll more than likely kill you but even if you survive the game will have a cutscene of you getting killed by another demon but instead of it having a simple you-dyed text pop-up at the bottom it talks about how the player is getting trapped in the nexus shortly after we're then reborn but only as a soul and while we can live on we're stuck here for eternity once again the themes that are consistent across the various souls games originated here like the idea of rebirth being a curse like in dark souls being trapped in the world until the objective is complete like the hunter's dream and bloodborne and even the concept of a fog separating the kingdom from the world like an elden ring with the lands between although that could have just been a design decision regardless playing demon souls first or last has its benefits as you can see what the game started with and see how those grow over time or see those growths first and then find out how they started both of which showcase how demon souls really revolutionized the souls franchise even though every other game is more well-known and possibly more critically acclaimed than demon souls there is still a lot of praise that needs to be given as it was the game that truly started all this was also the reason i was so drawn to demon souls in the first place i wanted to see the series origin and this introduction initially had me excited as i felt comfortable despite the game having the potential to go in a wildly different direction due to it being the first attempt i felt right at home like i was visiting an old friend even though i've never played demon's souls up until this point from the moment i started playing the game it felt natural to me not just in gameplays that's pretty obvious but in its narrative it was a new world with new ideas and themes but have helped strangely familiar and it's because of the future games taking these ideas that demon souls had started with and tweaking them into their own stories that caused me to feel this way many credit dark souls 1 is the game that truly created the genre and in a way they're not wrong but it's important to remember that demon souls still had a hand in its creation and thus needs to be recognized as such the first initial thought you may have when entering the nexus is how do we escape well eventually we will meet the monumental a being who existed back during the first demon scourge and will tell us how they managed to quell the old one the monumental is also assumed to be the person responsible for trapping the slayer of demons here in the first place as we hear its voice when crossing the fog during his time the world was united under the rule of soul arts but just like with king alant and boletaria the learning of the soul arts awoke the old one but they were able to put the old one back to sleep but only after half the world had been destroyed in order to mend the world back together they created these six arch stones that were looked over by the six rulers all the r stones were put in place across the earth but all met at the nexus since underneath the nexus is the old one when we meet with the monumental we'll see other monumentals like them but they've all died it's possible that the monumental either put his faith in us because he believes that we can defeat the old one like they did or he's forcing us here for his own gain regardless it seems that the decision to keep us in the nexus was non-consensual just like the monumental if we actually succeed and put the old one to sleep we become a monumental a half-living being that holds the fabric of the world together so maybe the monumental wanted more monumentals to be born so they can keep up their numbers to defeat the old one we need to conquer the archdemons that reside in the arch stones once they're defeated we can then go beneath the nexus where the old one resides and put it to sleep i keep mentioning this idea of putting it to rest as we'll eventually see the old one is a giant creature and is presumably immortal so it cannot be killed by any traditional wave so putting it to bed is the only way to actually prevent the destruction of the world and the being who's going to help us do this is the maiden in black a demon in the nexus who not only levels us up but whose sole purpose is to put the old one to sleep she's stuck here in the nexus as she has a nexul binding device on her ankle the same one we received upon being revived here this ends up creating a very interesting dilemma it theorized that the maiden and black or the monumentals are the cause of the second scourge the crestfall of warrior says that the monumental survived the old one on a whim and that they're trapping us here so that they can undo their mistake although this could just be second hand knowledge meaning he's an unreliable source the monumental also mentions though how the pantheon on the top floor of the nexus is to give thanks to the brave warriors who must fight to reverse their sins either he means the sins of man who were greedy and had a lust for power or the sins of the monumentals for reawakening the old one as for the maiden and black she's stuck here in the nexus like we are but it's possible that she's been alive since the first scourge and thus hasn't been able to leave since sue was brought here she also seems to have an odd relationship with the old one she summons the old one to the beach so that we may go inside and put it to sleep but she talks to it like it's an old friend and says that she has done what the old one has asked her to do almost like she and the old one have been working together for some time this would connect to the fact that she is indeed a demon that probably came from the old one but why is she working against him to put him to sleep if she's a demon her demon soul also allows us to buy the soul sucker spell which is almost identical to the spell used by false king alantu we'll talk about later which would mean that she taught him the spell and leads to the theory that she purposely taught alond about the soul arts and the old one with the intended effect that she'll be able to die no matter the outcome and can finally leave the nexus it's an absolutely fascinating theory and creates the sense of dread as it's unclear who we the player should actually be trusting this whole situation relates to another common theme of the souls games and that's cycles demon's souls has its own cycles but it's more in tune with bloodborne's idea of cycles in bloodborne it was the thumerians who discovered the great ones and then eventually after knowledge of their existence had disappeared for a while it was the yarnamites who discovered the great ones again this is just like in demon souls as the people of the world during the time of the monumental's life discovered the soul arts which caused the rise of the old one and now it's old kangalanta has restarted this cycle if we manage to put it to sleep again it's inevitable that the old one will awake again after someone else discovers what was supposed to be long forgotten to actually put this beast away though we need to cut off its supply chains that it no longer has a way to gather souls which means we need to defeat the archdemons there is one archdemon per arch stone which means we need to kill five in order to progress i say five because there is a sixth art stone but it's broken there doesn't seem to be an in-lore explanation as to why but cut content reveals that it was going to be in the game but this was possibly cut due to time or budget constraints so in order to make sense of this anomaly we could just say that the fog had overtaken the archstone and thus made it inaccessible with that in mind naturally we should start with the first archstone which belongs to the small king but demon's souls does things differently with its gameplay think of each archstone as a different world as each one is vastly different than the other this also means that all npc and lore are enclosed within this one world you'll never meet an npc in this game that goes to a different art stone but given how the human brain works we'll we'll just go from left to right in that order but that won't work either each archstone is also known as worlds and each world has levels within them so the very first level of the game would be called world one one after defeating the boss of world one one we then go to world one two until we reach the final level but world one blocks the player from finishing it as it requires the death of an archdemon to progress it sounds like a headache and it is but i love this system as this makes each playthrough unique the concept of worlds and levels is also never mentioned in game as it's only something the community created to help simplify the location names so a new player will have no idea whether a specific world is harder than another and may have to alternate constantly until they finish it's such a fantastic idea as this allows for some replayability as you can switch up which worlds you tackle first but the first world everyone must do is one one this acts as a long tutorial and is such a great start to the game because of what it means for it going forward demon souls is initially a very hard game and it's the only game in the franchise to keep me emotionally in sync with the character i'm playing the main reason for this is two specific decisions demon souls has no bonfires and no infinite healing item every time the player dies they must respawn back at the archstone before the start of the level this plays into some of the level design as there could be shortcuts that make it feel like actual progress is being made but not all of them have this some levels are just genuinely 5 to 10 minute walks to a boss room this ties into the healing system which is similar to dark souls 2 and bloodborne except there's a key difference the main item used in bloodborne regarding healing is blood vials you can only regain them by buying them or finding them as loot drops however they are consistent in the sense they always heal the same amount dark souls 2s of life gems are inconsistent as there's different variations of life gems that heal different amounts of health but that game also has an estus flask so life gems are like a secondary option demon souls has the drop style of blood vials but the inconsistency of the life gems meaning your only source of healing in this game is various different types of grass that all heal different amounts of health and can drop at wildly different rates couple this with the fact that death can mean a complete reset of progress you could be wasting 5 to 10 healing items just to die in the boss room and have to do it all over again with less supplies this is what i meant before by being in sync with the character i was playing more passive than ever before and i was nervous throughout all my encounters because i knew that if i got greedy and tried to speed things up it could cost me the whole run so spending an extra two to three minutes fighting all the enemies in my way was worth it if it meant that failure was a complete reset after some time this feeling went away as i got more in tune with the game's combat and also had a nice steady supply of moon grass but initially it was a very steep and uphill battle just like in dark souls demon's souls has this idea of souls being the essence of life and without souls were just mindless husks if any game had convinced me that i would become a mindless host it was going to be demon's souls some of the levels are painfully difficult to navigate and it has a consistent theme that the levels are harder than the bosses and it's this statement i'm a little torn on the bosses of this game are subpar at best world one probably has the best boss design given the progression of the game the first two bosses of world 1 are the phanlinks and the tower knight both of which are gimmick bosses throughout the level are fire bombs in turpentine both of which do fire damage and the reason they're placed here is that they're getting the player to think outside the box firebombs can decimate the phalanx's defenses which allows you to create an opening so you can hit the core which pairs pretty well with the turpentine as it buffs your weapon with flame damage it's not just showing the player how to use items to their advantage but that the bosses going forward could have alternate ways to defeat them this ties into the tower knight who doesn't really require much thinking but the idea of hitting its legs until it falls over so you can do some maximum damage is pretty cool gimmick bosses are great and i like the idea of making the players switch up their playstyle and forcing them to think more about their surroundings but while the gimmicks are great the bosses attached to most of them are just depressingly bad which is why i'm so glad they dropped the gimmicks and made a proper boss fight in the last levels of world 1. funny enough these two bosses the penetrator and the false king alant are my favorite bosses in the game it's funny because these are the final two bosses before you get to the ending it took until the final moments of the game until i finally became invested in the combat these two actually required me to think about their moves and how to punish appropriately rather than just hitting it until it dies with no regard to my health or its attacks the reason i'm torn on the bosses that i don't know the intention behind them many of the modern souls games have bosses be this grand event that is the final challenge of a level they are in a way separate from the main level preceding them because the difficulty of these beings is so drastic compared to the enemies before the fog wall and of course the game also provides bonfires to the player so it feels like a checkpoint demon soul seems to want the bosses to be integrated into the world as part of the puzzle it's like okay so you've gotten through dozens of enemies and managed to overcome all the obstacles we've thrown at you so here's the final obstacle before you officially beat the level but we're just gonna ramp up the difficulty slightly so it's not too easy for you future titles make the bosses feel separate in a way thanks to the bonfires and that's not a bad thing at all the reason i mention this is because if from software wanted to make bosses this grand spectacle and a way to cap off the level like in the future souls games well they failed miserably but if they wanted to make the bosses one more minor hurdle the player has to jump through then for the most part they succeeded because the difficulty of these bosses is laughably easy for a souls game an easy boss is almost a miracle as it makes the long and arduous journey just a little easier but when a majority of the game is plagued with it it becomes a problem especially when the game prides itself on difficulty once again this is a subjective opinion as everyone will have different experiences and that is initially what i thought was the issue since i'm more in tune with the future souls games faster pace so the older games feel a lot slower to me by default to compare though i looked at dark souls 1 as both of these games have slower combat compared to the rest of the franchise despite being similar in pace i still found myself learning move sets and finding punishes in dark souls 1. whereas in demon souls i was just hitting things until i died without even caring about my health this mostly affected the gimmick fights which is a good chunk of the roster but even bosses that were just straight up one-on-one battles like every boss in world 5 were all just defeated using this method i know that's more of a gameplay analysis rather than a story one but the reason i mention this is that boss fights in just about every game especially the souls games are supposed to cap off the journey and the emotional payoff needs to be there in order for it to feel memorable think about all the bosses across the souls games that you enjoy and how their difficulty and challenge lives up to their stories and how these bosses are more memorable due to the amazing lore design and combat surrounding them this is something i'd hope demon souls would have included especially given how much this game had started for the series in general but that wasn't there getting back on track we're still in world 1 which is the kingdom of bulletaria this kingdom as stated in the intro is ruled by king lott the bosses of this area are the phalanx tower knight penetrator and false king alant but oddly enough they're all fakes false king alan drops the false demon soul implying that this is just a demonic representation of the real king alant and not the actual one as for the others well according to an npc of world one called ostrava he says that king alant has a round table of brave knights three of which were alfred knight of the tower metas knight of the lance and longbow ullan and his fearsome legions each of these knights represents the demons we face we also get to see the black phantom versions of these knights and they further connect to the three demons we just talked about alfred being the nut of the tower is pretty self-explanatory but he also wields a giant spear and shield if he needed further connection metas drops the penetrator sword which is the same sword wielded by the penetrator and longbow ullan was a ranged fighter with multiple allies similar to the phalanx who not only surrounds itself with multiple other beings but can throw these spears at range one thing this highlights is demon soul's method of storytelling which is all environmental and one of the most bizarre decisions i've seen from this game it decided to not include lore with the boss souls something that would be a staple for consistent lore starting with dark souls 1 is not present in this game this has its positives and negatives as we'll eventually see but for now the environmental storytelling takes over and it's really well done this carries over to the npcs as well as ostrava has a unique backstory to him olstrava is actually a prince named ariona who came back to bolataria to find his father king alant this random knight is part of the royal family which may correlate to his fighting ability as he seems to get stuck in multiple different places and needs our help every time his equipment references how his weapon and shield belong to a legendary knight which would mean him but if he was so legendary why does he need our help every time we see him this seems to imply that he's trying to be a knight or at least seem like he is one when he really isn't which is a nice play on the familiar trope of people in royalty not knowing how to fight in combat and preferred to fight diplomatically or at the very least let someone else do the fighting for them our final encounter with ostrava is on these stairs before the false king alarmed boss fight where he discovers the real truth it's unclear whether he fought king alant and then succumbed to his wounds or killed himself since he just magically dies here but what's more interesting though is shortly after he invades us as a black phantom this form is similar to the three round table nights from earlier and from what i can gather turning into a black phantom is when someone loses their willpower or purpose similar to going hollow in dark souls this isn't the real ostrava he wouldn't willingly attack us after everything we've done for him and he wouldn't defend the boss as it not only is a fake version of his actual father but he tells us to kill it for him which is why it leads me to that conclusion the key he gives us though will take us to a mausoleum and in here is a weapon called the demon brand i like the connection of this weapon to king a lot as the weapon has a counterpart called soulbrandt demon branch does more damage when a person's soul is more pure and human but soul brant does more damage when a soul is more demonic which makes sense why demon brand is here and why king allant wields soul brand as he was obsessed with demonic power combining the two will actually give us the northern regalia a magical weapon of unprecedented power but stopping us from getting one of the parts of the weapon is old king doran he might also be the being on the arch stone as the green emerald connects to his green color palette and he's also considered an old king plus he's also a demi-god according to various item descriptions so he may have been alive during the time of the first scourge but that's just a theory of mine what is rather upsetting though is that to my knowledge this is the only reference to someone being a demigod in this game and i found this to be a severely missed opportunity it's just sort of left here without any explanation as to why especially when you realize that he was locked in here possibly by false king alant when he took over boletaria which begs the question how this demigod got overpowered by a demon this easily the only thing i can think of is that because he is the royal protector of boletaria he may have just been following the orders of who we thought was king alont until he was then betrayed regardless though it's weird how this is never brought up again they just sort of said he was a demigod and then just left it at that the other notable mpc in bolataria is yuria the witch we can learn about her location from another npc called beor of the twin fangs the other twin fang if you remember is valorfax the one who escaped the fog when it first arrived interestingly though valorfax may have actually come back but died when reaching the castle bjor has a ring called the ring of strength that is only given to the twin fangs the only other place we can find this ring is underneath this dragon next to a pile of bodies so he may have been defeated by one of the dragons that now resides in boletaria as i said before bjor points us to yuria and her story is quite depressing we can find her in a secret location only accessible to the player if they have the hat of an official these officials came shortly before the demon scourge occurred and will appear in the next world when we discuss that soon they also seem to have a sort of agenda as they hold a great deal of power in bolataria and possibly want to serve a demon king which in this case would be false king alant many of the fat officials are seen in bulletaria guarding the way towards false king alone so this theory could have some weight to it what we do know is that they indulge in very sinful behaviors as they are described as gluttonous monsters which connect to their appearance but they seem to have a lust or hatred towards women stockpile thomas is an npc in the nexus who lost his wife and daughter and we can find their corpses in the first level his daughter's body has an ornament on it but his wife has these raggedy robes just like the ring of strength this clothing item is only found here and on yuria if we kill her it's possible that it could just be a coincidence but assuming there isn't that would imply that thomas's wife was a witch this also connects to yuria as thomas's wife was hung and tortured from what we assume was the practice of witchcraft and it seems like yuria had a similar punishment although hers may be a bit more severe as it seems like they purposely put her in this tower so that they could assault her bjor's dialogue says quote according to that spineless warden a young sorceress is being held prisoner there where she's subjected to um all manner of untold acts in the name of purification end quote this implies that yuria was sexually assaulted and possibly by quite a few officials since this is their sort of secret base for the group only accessible to them due to this she has completely thrown away her reasoning for coming to bolataria in the first place which is to gain power through demon souls as now that idea isn't even on her mind anymore the only thing she can do is become a merchant for the player if they want to learn some dark arts but she'll actually encourage us not to learn her magic as she explains that being a witch has brought her a great deal of pain in her life and she does not want that to come to us it's a really grim backstory but the one reason i'm upset about this is that we never get a quest line for yuria but the reason behind that feeling mostly stems from the fact that yuria is such a sweet and kind person and to have that happen to her really affects you as the player i wanted to be able to help her in any way that i could but the game never gave me the opportunity to do so at the very least it does end up making the player hate the fat officials more as they are clearly shown to be monsters with no concept of morality or even a basic understanding of human rights as a whole boletaria was a great world in demon souls it's not my personal favorite but it was a really great start to the game it ended up being the first and last world i explored due to the progression of the game and because of how well it was crafted it started and ended my playthrough on a really good note stonefang tunnel is our next world and it belongs to the king of the burrowers they're a group of people who lived in these tunnels and would dedicate their whole day to the mining of the tunnels the hearthstone seems to imply that they served under king alan since they were working with bolataria but since it's now been overrun by the fat officials it would seem that they are trying to reap the benefits of the mining town which would explain why there are quite a few of them in these tunnels due to the group's undying dedication to keep mining it's no wonder why so many of them despite being mindless they'll continue to work their condition though does raise a few questions these beings in the tunnels are not the same as the dregling scene in bolataria it seems that the fog released by the old one had changed their appearance and gave these minor scales we could see this on blacksmith ed who we can find down here he seems to be the only sane one left as all the other miners around him have been completely transformed and who knows after some time ed himself may fully turn as well one thing demon's souls really excels in is environmental design many of these locations are built like mazes which adds the overall depth of the level itself 2-1 here for example is quite a complex level and you can easily get lost down here the location is called the tunnel city after all so if it's not built like an ant farm then it doesn't really make much sense at the end of this level is the armored spider and he's a pretty decent boss especially if it's encountered earlier on in the playthrough after it though is where the tunnel city really lives up to its name you thought the first level was complex well you don't even know the half of it as this place is insanely complicated to navigate there are various paths to go through all of which have branching paths from it that can either go up and down completely leaving you confused as to how you just spent 20 minutes down here only to end up back at the beginning if you somehow manage to make it out of the tunnels you'll be shown a pit of dragon bones next to these weapons called the hands of god many of the miners in the city relied on strength as their weapon blacksmith baldwin claims to have defeated quite a few beer bugs in his life with his bare hands but according to these weapons there seems to be a person known as the big m who defeated dragons with his bare fists the weapon placement is also quite intriguing as it's right next to a being called the flame lurker who fights with his fists it's possible that this is the legendary big m or it could be a manifestation to the legend this concept of myths or fictional beings being real is carried over into world 4 so it's not too farfetched to assume the same is happening here this is really the only explanation that can be created as without it the flame lurker has no reason to be here this goes back to the issue with the game not having item descriptions on the boss souls to make things even worse you can't even buy items with the flame lurker soul because it's used by ed so you can upgrade those weapons into boss souls so since we can't buy weapons or spells with the soul specifically we have actually zero information on it that is concrete other than the fact that we know it was sealed down here the issue is we don't know why and this also goes for the armored spider some speculate that it was created by the old monk who will visit in world 3 but there isn't too much to connect the two other than that there are dozens of lizards that can be found in the cave and we can assume that they weren't born this way and obtain this new appearance from the gathering of souls or by consuming the rocks or lava in the mines this might be the only explanation as to why the armored spider's appearance is this way but this too is also a very weak connection this is why the backstory on some of these creatures bothers me so much these two beings are anomalies within the game world and their decision to make the backstories non-existent or a simple the fog did it is not interesting in the slightest there were some theories revolving around the armored spider such as it was a creation of the old monk a creation of the fat ministers or even a mistake due to a blade being located near the boss room that gives the player a weakness to magic similar how the spiders we can assist in magic as well all of which are extremely compelling theories but it feels like we're just grasping at straws we're trying to find something anything to make sense of this boss but it isn't involved in anything if playing these games has taught me anything it's that making wild theories is more than acceptable as long as there's a basic understanding to go off of but with these two there's almost nothing other than an insanely large reach just so that we can say we know something that's why the phrase the fog did it is so compelling it's easy to understand and seems probable which is fine if this is done sparingly but as we'll see not just later but literally in the next few seconds it gets used again and again behind the flame lurker is the final boss of the level and archdemon of world 2 the dragon god just like we talked about before it seems that the fog may have brought this legend to life as the burrowers of tunnel city had found ancient dragon bones and thus built a shrine around it they also made the shrine to seal it inside the city so that it wouldn't escape on the off chance it revived itself however just in case that didn't work their plan b was two giant harpoon cannons that were capable of killing it or at least grounding the towering beast as you would expect the reason for its creation was because the fog had imbued the bones of the demon soul which caused it to be reborn the fight is basically running from one end of the arena to the other and then activating the two guns on the way afterwards the boss just sits down and accepts its defeat while you wail on it the whole encounter requires zero thinking i brute forced the entire fight i wasn't even timing my advances or dodging when needed i was just running a full speed and if i got hit while the moon graphs would have topped me off earlier i talked about how some of the bosses may have been designed as a part of the level's puzzle and not the grand final fight well this is without a doubt not that as the boss arena is inches from the flame lurkers with zero enemies in between so it was meant to be this climactic moment where the player topples a dragon while outrunning its attacks but i didn't have this feeling on top of having a lackluster final boss fight world 2 also has zero interesting npcs three out of the four are merchants and the only one who isn't is scurvier who wandered down here to loot items off the deceased and got himself lost he doesn't serve any purpose than divulging semi-important information about the tunnels and that's it many of the merchants do this too by the way and i'm not discrediting the aspect of their characters when they do this as any information about the level is fine by me but in the actual context of a quest line there isn't any his quest line just revolved around the dragon bone smasher weapon you can find in the dragon god boss room and all he does is just give you an item for it world 2 is pretty lackluster and probably my least favorite area in the game lore wise as it doesn't provide enough information to really get a grasp on what's going on and seems to fall back on the usual the fog did it explanation the level design however was really well done and truly conveys the pure insanity that comes with a city that is underground the land of latria is the third world the player can explore and just from the first few minutes you can tell that this place is not going to have a happy ending to start the player spawns in a cell and soon after we'll discover that we aren't the only ones in this prison not only are there hundreds of other prisoners within these cells but there seems to be these demonic beings that walk the halls waiting for a brave prisoner to make an escape within the cells of the prison are various torture devices and judging from the equipment that is scattered throughout the prison it seems that many of its inhabitants are royalty in fact the only sane being left in the prison is this merchant who was of royalty she explains that lottery was ruled by a queen and her husband but she at some point banished the husband for an unknown reason but this wasn't the end of his story as he returned in a golden garb with demons following closely behind him with this newfound power he pillaged latria and seized control of the kingdom the former husband would then imprison all the royals of latria but promised that they could be granted redemption and ascend if they wanted to however the royal woman believes this ascension to be false already the story of lautrea is starting off incredibly strong and the environmental storytelling continues this streak of content many of the prisoners are assumed to be royalty or at least affiliated with some of the royal family as there is some gear that belongs to the king's spies implying that either king allan sends spies to keep tabs on matria or these assassins belong to the king of latria however being the king of latria would mean that was the husband or at least former king but it's also possible that the queen of latria may have took upon another spouse shortly after her former husband's banishment it's been theorized that rydel is her husband we find him specifically in soul form which would mean that despite dying he isn't allowed to leave the prison which is a particularly cruel fate this would then connect to rydel being her new husband and why the monk imprisoned him eternally however rydel explains that a retainer to the king once held the key to his cell and describes him as an ebony swine with a gluttonous swaying belly which would mean that the fat officials imprisoned him and may have a hand in his current form the only other prisoner of note in here is sage freak on his own he isn't too interesting is he's just a merchant but his presence in the nexus does create a conflict in the nexus you'll notice these giant steps that lead downwards these steps put the lower part of the nexus in half on one side you have the magicians which are sage freak his apprentice and yuria and on the other side are the clerics they seem to be at odds with one another the midges don't seem to hate the clerics but they definitely don't appreciate the harsh words being shouted at them by the clerics it's a really interesting feud but i want to talk more about this later when we meet saint urbain in world 4. earlier i talked about how the tunnel city was a maze-like structure but that's nothing compared to the prison of hope i must have spent an hour in this place trying to find the exit this makes narrative sense as it should be difficult for the prisoners to escape as not only are the guards blocking their path but the layout is extremely confusing speaking of those guards they serve a very important purpose in the prison as not only do they keep watch but they also consume the souls of the beings in this prison so that they can be used by the archdemon who is the husband that was banished called the old monk to get to them though we need to escape this prison and at the very end is the fool's idol this boss is a doll-like version of the queen of latria presumably made by the old monk so the people of the prison don't realize the actual state of the kingdom and still believe that the queen is alive she also has a very interesting gimmick as the servant located above the boss room which can only be found outside the bounds of the boss room revives her if she dies meaning you'll have to take care of him first before entering it unless you want to keep fighting her over and over again the boss fight is pretty simple but i really liked the gimmick that surrounded it according to the royal woman she said that the people would come here to seek redemption and ascend which is a little ironic as not only are we going down but this idea of redemption was a complete lie as these demon creatures swoop in to take us to the next level of latria which is an even more complex and horrific dungeon all beings brought here were most likely tortured and experimented on as these weird scorpion-like creatures could be some of the old monks experiments so this means that the monk wasn't just using demons but creating them in the middle of the dungeon is this fleshy creature that is assumed to be the vessel that gathers souls that it can go to the old monk it's probably one of my favorite levels just due to the convoluted nature of the level itself which fits the tone of this whole arch stone after somehow finding your way through the entirety of the level you may encounter a person called yurt he from the get-go is absolutely lying to the slayer of demons upon his rescue if you go back to the nexus you can find a few corpses that weren't there before he works with a person called mephistopheles and is a part of a group called the soul industry which is a society of people that meets in secret to harness the power of soul arts both yurt and mephistopheles plan to kill anyone with the knowledge of soul arts that includes many of the npcs in the nexus and us i really like the idea of a group of people who are inadvertently ruining your entire playthrough especially when you aren't aware that yurt is the one killing the people in the nexus he's also very hidden so even if you piece together that it's him it's very hard to actually find his location this dungeon you find him in is also an example of a level that has zero shortcuts so any deaths will completely revert all progress and this is made especially maddening when you get to the boss called the man-eater this is the first ever duo fight in the franchise and on paper it's good but in execution it's pretty broken not only does the player have to keep tabs on two demons at once but they also have to pay attention to the arena as it's possible to fall off during the fight to help you though the game provides you with these stone pillars as cover when they start flying but depending on who you are that might actually make the fight even worse in terms of quality the ai has a really hard time trying to land on the ground and if it fails it will just go back up in the air again and try again which in a way is really nice when both are alive but when it's just one of them it's just prolonging the fight not much is known about the man-eaters but they seem to be more experiments by the old monks judging by their humanoid figure but boss weapon descriptions talk about there being a symbiotic relationship between the host and the snake within the man-eater so it seems that this snake being used as a tail is another entity in the man-eater or maybe controlling it in some way past the man-eater is the old monk himself a human wearing a cloak that is bigger than him and stretches to the ends of the room we learn however that the old monk is not in control the golden garb is not just a unique design piece it seems to be a sentient being that was using the monk as its vessel boss weapons related to the soul say quote if you have no future to lose then who could blame you for placing your faith in the golden robes and the old man was nothing more than a medium for the robes that drove men mad the spell reflects the old man's nature to urine for power that was not his end quote it's a genuinely interesting twist as it makes the monk out to be less sinister than what is presumed or at least that's what it seems like the golden garb could have either wanted to create demons for the sake of power or may have taken the emotions and feelings of the old monk a being who was just recently stripped of his power and yearned for more and used that to create what we see in latria now maybe the golden garb isn't inherently evil but rather intensifies the feelings of the user and gives them the means to accomplish their goals and for the monk though that seemed to be quite sinister i would talk about the boss itself but i think it's pretty obvious how i feel on the subject and i've probably already beaten the boss by the time we finish talking about the monk according to the wiki it's possible that a player can be summoned for the fight which is definitely a nice gimmick and one i enjoyed thanks to half light and dark souls 3 but given that i'm playing the game offline and it's from 2009 and i'm 95 certain the server shut down a few years ago no one's gonna be summoned for this fight even though that does dampen the quality of the fight the npc that will appear by default could have at least been a bit interesting but it's pretty bad and that goes for most of the fighting when it involves npcs or humanoid targets this game has poise and stagger weaved into the gameplay like the early souls games so when axe can stagger an enemy pretty consistently and seeing as they refuse to dodge even when caught in this five to six wing combo it makes the fight so much easier i'm not sure how lighter weapons like daggers work but at least for me the axe made the fight laughably easy and this is only going to get worse as we continue lottery though was a great level and had some fantastic backstory that revolved around an entity not related to the old one which gave it the uniqueness the level had despite some minor gripes with the bosses though it was a pretty good level world 4 is the shrine of storms and this level is interesting to say the least the shrine of storms was an island shrine used by the shadow men a long-lost group of people who mourned the dead by worshiping the sky this group of pagans believed in various different beings called the adjudicator and storm king all of whom were related to the process of death in their culture they may have also believed in a being called the old hero but his backstory is a little confusing but we'll get to that in a moment the fog however took this idea and made what used to be an imagination into reality which is why these three bosses are real beings in the shrine of storms it's not a terrible backstory even if it is just a slightly altered version of world 2 except for the fact that the archdemons of both worlds are literally the same thing as they were both seen as gods by the people of that region that have been either created or revived by the old one i just feel like there could have been such better backstories for these demons what could have been an interesting development in my eyes as if the shadow men were actually alive and we got to see their reaction to their gods now made demons and see if they still pray to them or are terrified that something went wrong since the demons are most likely killing people not because they're rituals but just because they're demons i've always been fascinated by what could happen if a person or god someone adores or worships turns out not to be who they think they are does that person lose faith do they continue and ignore it or do they accept it i feel like this could have been an interesting idea to bring into the game but sadly the shadow men are dead so we're never able to explore that what i do find rather interesting is that we inadvertently have to take part in the ritual as the bosses are ordered in the same way the cultural legend is told the adjudicator is the first boss and is also pretty terrible not only is he just a copy of the tower knight but with a different weak point but the moveset on this demon is hilariously bad dodging or blocking is not even a requirement all that matters that you hug its left hip and walk i'm almost certain this boss has more moves on the ground like this but the fact that i can manipulate its ai this easily by just sitting in one location is pretty pathetic the reason for the adjudicator in regards to their culture is that this being acts as a warden of sorts the judge souls that pass on and to make sure they're worthy enough to continue the process past the adjudicator is a catacomb of spirits and skeletons that are possibly the old warriors that passed on ages ago down here is also patches who will kick us into a hole like usual but we aren't alone down here as saint urbain is located here as well he is the main leader of the clerics and is seen in such high regard as one of the members is willing to literally give up all her possessions to urbane to show how devoted she is to god as i said earlier though there seems to be a feud between the clerics and the mages and saint germain is mainly the one to blame for this because he doesn't speak very highly of the mages and says that their magic originated from the old ones however sage freak even agrees with him and just straight up tells us it does but freak also mentions that while it does sound bad at least he admits it unlike the clerics who hide their own god this is tied to various items in the game that seem to claim that the god the clerics pray to is actually the old one and that they're being deceived magical arts are a creation of the old one that means soul arts and miracles the mages saw this as a newfound art with a dark past and the cleric saw miracles as a sign from god to fight back against the corruption of the old one it could also be that saint urbain knows this and has convinced himself that this isn't true which ends up causing a weird clash between the two groups as one accepts their magic is from the old one while the other hides it one thing i found rather interesting about the miracles is that they seem to serve an actual purpose many of the descriptions call the miracles counter signs like god's wrath being a counter sign for the dragon god it's like they're taking the soul and harnessing its power from the demon and using it in a specific way it's not like the future souls games where you can just get a boss soul and then get a lightning spell from it for example even if it does make sense because this seems to intentionally be made this way within the game's lore which fits with saint urbain's dialogue on how he thought miracles were used to fight back against the demons so having miracles be counter signs from a demon's soul makes narrative sense in that hole that saint urbain was trapped in is where the legendary sword called makato resides which we can give to satsuki who claims it's his father's satsuki is lying though and is just tricking us into giving him the sword due to his lust for power but the fight and quest pretty much all end here and it's really boring the reason is because it's once again affected by demon souls combat where i can drain half his health bar in just a few seconds it just makes the whole encounter really pointless as his entire quest starts and ends the moment you talk to him so he serves zero purpose to the level at the end of this specific level is the old hero he's a fairly decent boss fight and the gimmick for him was something i found rather interesting he is blind so by equipping the thief ring it makes the player harder to detect which causes him to swing wildly at anything he touches which allows you to get more hits in the beauty of the gimmick is that there are only two rings found in this game and they're only in two different worlds that aren't world four so it's not like the failings fight where the items are within the level you have to go out of your way to find this he's also pretty quick pace wise so it was definitely a really solid fight the old hero's backstory is pretty interesting as this backstory isn't that concrete but the interpretations of his story are rather fascinating one is that he is the ideal representation of a soldier in their culture there is very little lore to go off of to prove this point but given that he's mere inches from the storm king arena and dressed in these ornate pieces of jewelry perhaps the shadow men spoke of a being called the old hero a being who was dedicated to the storm king and was thus granted a proper burial and that his journey should be the template that those of the shadow men should follow if they want to appease the storm king however on the other hand it could also be an interpretation of the opposite as you can see him tied up in the intro cutscene and given various item descriptions calling him the seeker of storms it's possible that he wanted to conquer the storm king instead of appeasing it this could correlate to the ruler weapon in the arena behind him which does damage to the storm king as we'll see also considering the fact he's tied up it's possible that the shadow man caught wind of this betrayal and forced him to watch as better warriors go on into the afterlife in peace while he's stuck here for life i'm genuinely fascinated by this boss as there's so many contradicting ideas that his imprisonment here and his relationship with the storm king could mean anything and speaking of the storm king he's our final boss in the archdemon of world 4. this boss just like the previous two also has a gimmick involved but it requires the use of the storm ruler modern souls players will recognize the name from the yorm boss fight in dark souls 3 and this is where the inspiration came from it's exactly like that fight as well as it's a giant beast that can only be defeated by the use of one weapon this of course means the fight will be quite simple and it is but the presentation of this fight is exemplary the remake also makes this look even better since it adds weather effects to the arena making it feel like an actual storm is present the storm king also has one of my favorite character designs in the game due to its alien-like features making it really feel like a true spawn of a demon the shrine of storms is pretty hard to rank as there was a mixed bag of fantastic and questionable additions within this level the npcs were pretty dull boss fights were hit or miss and the backstories were similar in that respect the fact that to progress in the level we have to take part in the cultural ritual was pretty cool but i do wish more could have been done surrounding the shadow men and their gods as the dynamic between them and the inevitable destruction that could have followed could honestly been one of the best worlds in the game the valley of defilement is our final world and if you ever wondered where miyazaki got this idea to start adding swamps into souls games well it probably originated here because this place is an absolute mess never mind the fact that this level is a convoluted jumble of trash and filth but couple that with the game's core mechanics we talked about you're gonna be running through this area a lot just to find your way back it's incredibly annoying but it's one of the best looking levels in the game and is in complete sync with the tone that surrounds the level itself similar to blighttown and the gutter that would shortly follow after this game this place was just a trash heap of the kingdom where all the beings that were seen as unfit to live in the kingdom were put here anyone from criminals to neglected and abused citizens would be down here after hearing about this society of people who were thrown away a woman named saint estrella came down here in order to help these beings and traveling with her was her night girl vinland however despite her good intention she may have actually been causing more pain than before estrella seemed to believe that the only way to save them was to put them out of their misery which is why she became an archdemon and outtakes their souls souls in demon souls are the essence of life so by taking that away she'd be ridding him of all their thoughts and feelings but while this may take away any happy emotions it would also have removed the bad ones making them a mindless creature in the process it's a heartbreaking tale as she probably had good intentions but the actions that followed were anything but one of the miracles you can buy from her soul really says it best quote estrella who willingly accepted the corrupted and corroded naturally became the most corrupted of them all and quote it's a shame that her altruistic mindset was pushed this far as it caused thousands to suffer because of it the reason things got this way was that she was starting to lose faith in god she was confused as to why something like this would be accepted under god's rule and was concerned if she was truly serving a being worthy of her praise as i said earlier in world 4 i love this idea and being able to see what occurred as a result of her losing faith was fascinating but before we get to her though we need to fight two bosses the leechmonger and dirty colossus one is a sentient being that was born when various leeches were combined with the demon soul and the other is a sentient creature that was born when various pieces of filth and trash were combined with a demon soul noticing a pattern well that's one interpretation of them in the valley of defilement are a few weapons one of them is called the estrella this weapon increases the wielder's resistance to plague and poison and was wielded by a holy knight who most likely either accompanied saint estrella down here with garl vinland or came here to find her once the news of her abandonment had spread this is rather interesting as the legimonger's boss soul can create the cure miracle which increases resistance to plague and disease this means that this could be the holy night similar to how the tower knight is a modified version of alfred knight of the tower this could also be a stretch and most likely an attempt by me to avoid having to say the phrase the fog did it again but i won't have to wait too long as the dirty colossus seems to be just that there doesn't seem to be any defining items or details that point to it being anything other than that however what this boss means is rather interesting as it's basically a manifestation of the valley itself this beast is covered in death decay filth and trash all of which are present in the valley so essentially this is the living embodiment of the location once again i think you can already tell how much i don't like these fights from the gameplay which is a good thing because i actually want to focus on the next boss which may have created the funniest encounter i've had in the soul series to date the final boss of the level is made in australia you don't actually fight her as she will summon garl vinland to defend her and if you happen to defeat him first then she'll commit suicide shortly after fighting girl vinlan is a cakewalk not only does he suffer from the same issues as the old monk but from software for some reason decided to place the guy with the largest hammer possible in the lowest ceiling possible meaning his hammer will bounce constantly i think what was meant to happen was the player was supposed to fall in the pit beside him and fight him there which would make things definitely harder but if that was the case then make the pit the only part of the level so they're forced to fight him there he'll also come back as a black phantom if you revisit the area and the same issue occurs there defeating garo will make him drop his family crest which can be given to his sister but nothing really comes of this she basically came here in search of her brother since saint estrada had left the church and she was trying to see if the rumors were true but she got stuck in the valley of defilement and couldn't find him despite some of the initial criticism from a pure story perspective this is the best world in the game the level design upholds the tone of the levels and not just in the fact that it is a headache to navigate but in the smaller details like the primitive design of both the buildings and the creatures equipment the backstory about sainastra changed my mind about this whole area and made me look at it from a different light as not just a place that was dying but a place that was subjected to punishment then only be subjected to more once a person with incredible privilege thought that they could make the world a better place because they're such a nice person with a kind heart during our journey through demon souls you may have noticed more negative opinions than i usually display and this is ultimately due to the way the game handles its core story the premise was great and was able to captivate me from the very beginning but what i was worried about ended up coming true writing about demons can be boring as they all fall back on the same story that they were all created from one being or one event and that they don't have any other reason for existing other than the fact that they just do that's what many of the bosses in this game could be boiled down to demons who were created due to the fog and the power of the demon soul more than half of this 17 boss roster falls into this category so it's no secret why i enjoyed world 3's bosses so much because it actually decided to do something different the golden garb to our knowledge is just another entity although it's possible the fog may have created that too regardless it wasn't a normal story about demons being created since it involved a former ruler who was wronged in his life and wanted revenge what could have been a nice change was taking the idea of creating demons and twisting it such as my idea for world 4 which is that i wanted the shadow men to see their deities and gods and then uncover what they would think about this discovery i wanted something more to be done with the three demons of world one why them specifically was it pure luck or were their souls more demonic than it seemed there's never an answer i wanted the fog and the old one to bring out the worst in people and their thoughts not just create things for the sake of creation and if i'm being honest i probably would have accepted that last part too but only in small doses to our knowledge all the bosses of world one two four and the dirty colossus of five are just creations of the fog three of the knights of the round table now have demonic versions of themselves but we don't know why them specifically the armored knight flame lurker and dragon god just seem to be creations of the fog as nothing else opposes this idea all the beings of world 4 are pretty obviously creations of the old one and the fog and the same probably goes for the dirty colossus that is a lot of bosses and that's upsetting because the bosses are a major part of this game's story and it's these beings that were treated the worst but now that we've killed all the demons in our way and shut off all the supply chains that the old one relied on we can now enter the land beneath the nexus and confront the old one the maiden in black takes us down to its layer and we can enter the beast itself the reason the old one accepted us so willingly is that we cut off its way to gain more souls and thus more power so now it lets us in with the hope that it will join it and become its new host like kangalant speaking of kangalan to get to the old one we need to kill him first and in typical souls fashion it is a very anti-climactic but very intentional boss fight the way king alont has presented to the player is showing to them that being the host is not the correct choice and that this idea of gaining power is not worth the suffering that has been endured if we accept the old one's offer despite this kangalan still agrees with his decision it even calls us a fool for killing him and says that no one wishes to go on anymore king allant believes that the world would be a better place if everything was wiped out which is likely why he joined the old one in its quest to eradicate the world but king elon's opinion doesn't matter as he's not the slayer of demons from here we're given two options let the maiden and black fulfill her duty and let the old one sleep or kill her and join the old one like king a lot if we do the good ending we see the maiden in black and the old one are sent back to where the old one came from all knowledge of soul arts is a race though which means magic and miracles are gone but at least the world isn't on the brink of extinction none of the souls that were lost during this time though will not be returned to the owners so anyone who died during the scourge is going to stay dead and the slayer of demons also becomes a monumental and will likely watch over the nexus until the next scourge if we do the bad ending well it's actually pretty much what i just explained we join the old one and eradicate the world simple as that surprisingly these endings don't leave a lot up to the imagination they're pretty self-explanatory which is honestly a welcome sight for the series considering how wild some of the endings will get in the future titles but these are the two endings of demon souls which means we've now officially come to the end of the game it takes a lot for me to truly hate something and demon souls is no such game i still plan on playing this again i have various magical builds i'd like to try out and i haven't even played the remake yet so i still have more to experience with this game but even though i will continue to play and enjoy the game that doesn't mean it's without faults depending on the level the bosses and their backstories were hit or miss there were fantastic stories like the old monk and saint estrella but there was also some pretty mediocre ones like the armored spider and the dragon god one thing that was easily one of the best parts of this game was the level design each one was excellent and i can't think of a single level i genuinely hated the value of defilement is one of the best levels i've seen from this series to date and stonefeng tunnel has such a wonderfully confusing and infuriating design that perfectly mimics a tunneled city this division between content that was good and content that was bad though makes it hard to say for certain whether the game is truly good or bad which is why i consider it decent no game is without faults this much is true but it depends on the severity of those faults the pushback from content that doesn't contain any faults and how much it affects the player's experience as a whole and demon's souls had a lot i like and quite a bit i disliked but ultimately i still think it's a game worth playing as i said earlier this is the final episode of our soulsborne series eldering is still in its infancy and i want to wait to all the dlc is out before i make a video on it as some of the main game's questions could be answered with a dlc so in the meantime it's time to discuss some other games there is a lot of series i would like to discuss that fit the current genre of what we're talking about the third person rpgs but also plenty of other games and other genres as well so expect those videos to have the same level of quality as these did just on different material before we jump into a series though i may also look into a few souls likes to really put a cap on this whole thing but i'm either debating on doing a dozen or so with short summaries in one video or having dedicated videos to just a couple holodine and blasphemous for example have been on my radar for quite a while and i feel like they might need their own videos but do let me know what sounds better to you regardless thank you girl for watching today and be sure to like and subscribe if you're new as always thank you to my returning viewers for coming back to another video and with that take care everyone goodbye you

Channel: Gingy

Views: 337,171

Keywords: demon souls, demon souls story, demon souls story explained, demon souls lore, demon souls lore explained, demon souls ending, demon souls ending explained, demon souls bosses, demon souls old one, demon souls king allant, demon souls review, demon souls video essay, video essay, gingy

Id: uEswFUu8xFU

Length: 53min 36sec (3216 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 07 2022