Ever since FromSoftware's Dark Souls released in 2011, the masochistic difficulty of their 'Soulsborne' games have spawned an absolute explosion of popularity, but Demon's Souls, the classic PlayStation 3 title that started it all, is one of the studio's most criminally underplayed experiences despite its plethora of unique elements. The game was recently announced to be remade on Sony's upcoming PlayStation 5, giving players an opportunity to either relive their journey to Boletaria or experience the classic for the first time. Despite its similar appearance, premise, and gameplay to the Dark Souls series, Demon's Souls is a unique experience which contains various elements that make it stand out from the rest of FromSoftware's work.
The first difference comes with the game's level design. In the Dark Souls series, the environments are laid out much like a complex maze in which pathways interconnect with each other and loop back into previous areas. It's not uncommon for players to explore new passageways only to discover they contain shortcuts back to an area that they have already completed, offering an easier route for backtracking. In this sense, the Dark Souls games are comparable to the typical Metroidvania style of gameplay in which the player becomes increasingly more familiar with the entire map as their playthrough continues.
Demon's Souls instead offers players the chance to choose early on in the game exactly where they wish to go. After a brutal first death of which there are surely more to come, the player will spawn in the Nexus, which serves as the game's hub world. In this area, there are five Archstones that will each warp the player into one of the five zones of the game. These areas are separate from each other and don't ever connect, but this offers the player more flexibility when it comes to tackling Demon's Souls' gameplay in whatever order they want. For example, if a player is having a particularly difficult time fighting a boss in one area of the game, they can take a break from the beatdown and attempt a different area instead.
Another major difference between the two games is how bosses are fought. In the Dark Souls series, the strategy and gameplay are frequently the same throughout a playthrough. Bosses have a set amount of health and the player needs to learn their attack patterns so they can dodge and counter-attack accordingly until their foe falls to their knees. Demon's Souls offers many more bosses that require specific strategies in order to take down, almost as if they're puzzles. For example, the first boss, Phalanx, is a collection of goopy blobs that shoot spikes out of their sides. They are extremely resilient to physical damage, but they also shake in their boots at the thought of fire. The Tower Knight's weak point is his head, and the best way to reach it is to attack his feet until he collapses to the ground leaving his cranium vulnerable. There exist bosses in the Dark Souls games that require little tricks like these to take down, such as the Bed of Chaos, but Demon's Souls is more densely packed with this style of boss fights.
Demon's Souls also contains a plethora of small gameplay differences that affect the way the game is played. Instead of healing with the refillable Estus Flasks from the Dark Souls franchise, Demon's Souls uses consumable healing grass items of varying potency which do not recharge when resting at a safe point. By including a system in which grass must be farmed or purchased, this changes the way a player thinks when consuming the healing item. Dark Souls was ultimately a spiritual successor to Demon's Souls that was created by the same masterminds, so the similarities between the games are far more noticeable than the differences. However, even the small tweaks between the two titles change the experience enough to allow Demon's Souls to proudly stand on its own beside the rest of FromSoftware's maniacally challenging offerings.