i bought both Demons Souls and Dark Souls at the same time in 2012, and at first i thought i was going to enjoy Dark Souls more than Demons Souls, so i played them in order of release (that way i would save the best for last) but for my surprise Demons Souls just absorved me in its atmosphere, with those incredibly designed worlds those epic bosses and the lore that appears to be very simple but there is actually more to it present in items descriptions and even on the proper levels in a very subtle way, i ended up getting the platinum for Demons Souls and beating the game 10 times (i had 9 new game plus playthroughs), before i even started Dark Souls.
And for my surprise i didnt enjoyed DaS as much as DeS, yes it was open world but there was a clearly intended path that you had to follow, the base speed movment of the character was a little bit slower (which isnt really a problem since its just a minimal difference but the fact that DeS felt a little bit faster was for me an actual difference since i like fast paced games), it had some artificial difficulty in it (like finding your first mimic or riding sens fortress elevator to the "third floor") the archers of anor londo were though guys but that wasnt really artificial difficulty so i wont mention them there despite how annoying they could have been, but the thing that really didnt grabed me on DaS was its lore and how it handled it, you see in DaS for the first half of the game all you know is that you got out of your prision cell and that you have to ring some bells and so little of the story is given to you by the end of the game that you dont know if your decision to link the fire again is the right thing to do or not, and yes i understand that part of the enjoyment of this games is finding out the story on your own with item descriptions, and both DeS and DaS had a lot of their lore behind such item descriptions, but the difference between the two is that DeS gives you the main plot from the get go:
"Kill all the arch demons to lure the old one and then put it back to its slumber"
its pretty straight forward, which leaves the Item descriptions as a way to know more about the lore instead of how DaS handled it which was more of a way to actually understand what was going on.
the final thing that i wish DaS would have done in a more similar way to DeS was the bonfires, i thought they were pretty close to each other, as you people know in DeS when you die you have to start at the beggining of the level but in DaS since its open world you start at the bonfire which normally isnt much of a difference except when you realize that some bonfires are really close to the actual Boss Fights and the level design is so open that you can just run through from the bonfire to the bossfight every time you die at set bossfight, eliminating part of the challenge of the game.
And all those are the reasons why i ended up liking DeS more, BUT Dark Souls did do a lot of great stuff:
1) it fixed the healing system which was kind of broken in DeS
2) it did had the harder Boss Fights (Ornstein and Smough are still the hardest foes ive ever faced on a souls game)
3) it had a lot more to the multiplayer side of the game.
4) it implemented the covenant system
so yeah Dark Souls is still a freaking amazing game and i can understand why some people liked it more.
Finally i cant wait for Bloodborne, not only is Miyazaki taking inspiration from Demons Souls to make this game but its also the most fast paced game in the series and its set in a gothic enviroment... and i love gothic stuff.
also Wright you were complaining about this gen not having many "must have" games, and after seeing how much you like the soul series i must ask, will you finally make the jump to "next gen" for Bloodborne or not?
and finally i must say Congrats Wright for this awesome Thread!.
