LogFAQs > #963464701

I played Demons Souls first when it came out in my region and its easily the weakest of the lot. Still a good game, but the improvements Dark Souls made were significant. The consumable healing items were terrible, the level design was really not great in some areas (see 4-2s infamous boss run), there was little aesthetic variety in the locations, it ran terribly even by the standards if the series, and the visuals were so muddy I could barely play Tower of Latria during the day. Some of those were fixed by the PS5 version which is the one I actually beat for the first time this year. Some are more fundamental issues. Overall I did enjoy it but the games didnt get great to me until Dark Souls.

I will also say, I think people forget how hyped Demons Souls was at launch among enthusiast gaming crowds, and not just the people who were going wild over the Japanese release. There was so much hype on here, it got excellent reviews (the same as Dark Souls) and it won Game of the Year from two major publications, Gamespot and GamesTM compared to zero for Dark Souls though to be fair that had stronger competition. It was also released just when the PS3 was taking off and was held up as an example of why the PS3 is good, actually. The game never saw the mainstream success that all the others did even after the PS5 remake (which may be more to do with supply in fairness) but in the enthusiast press and on enthusiast forums it always had a lot of hype behind it from the North American launch onwards. That is the whole reason I got it and the whole reason Dark Souls 1 launched pretty strong.

Incidentally, Dark Souls 2 is great and SOTFS is up there with the other classics. The answer to this had to be Elden Ring though, its one of the best games Ive ever played and up there with BOTW and RDR2 as the only AAA games that really use the open world as a genuine space for discovery beyond just ticking things off a checklist.