History YMMV / DemonsSouls

** [[spoiler:After all you've went through getting there, the final boss turns out to be a barely animate blob. Considering the blob's former form was a contender for ThatOneBoss, beating it up manages to be quite satisfying anyway. This is {{Justified}} and is supposed to be a form of irony, but if you were hoping to get a final boss at the end, it ends up being an incredibly anti-climatic finale.]]

** [[spoiler: False King Allant. For someone who is supposed to be the man who started the game's whole mess,]] he is downright ''slow'' in an arena that too long for his own good, and his moveset is rather rudimentary. Aside from his projectiles, you can stay a good distance away from him and easily avoid his attacks until he leaves himself open. For example, his dash attack takes him a second to cross about half of the arena, at which point he halts, and his maelstrom attack takes a while to build up and leaves him vulnerable until it starts to deal damage. Even if you stay too close to him for too long, his short-ranged attacks aren't too hard to deal with.

** The high level of anticipation and demand for the remake upon its launch as [[KillerApp a PS5 exclusive]] led to people nicknaming the console "The ''Demon's Souls''-Station", following in the wake of the PS4 being nicknamed "The VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}} Box."

** [[spoiler: False King Allant. For someone who is supposed to be the man who started the game's whole mess,]] he is downright ''slow'' in an arena that too long for his own good, and his moveset is rather rudimentary, particularly in comparison to sword-wielders who followed him, such as [[VideoGame/SekiroShadowsDieTwice Isshin, the Sword Saint]]. Aside from his projectiles, you can stay a good distance away from him and easily avoid his attacks until he leaves himself open. For example, his dash attack takes him a second to cross about half of the arena, at which point he halts, and his maelstrom attack takes a while to build up and leaves him vulnerable until it starts to deal damage. Even if you stay too close to him for too long, his short-ranged attacks aren't too hard to deal with.

** While the remake has been well received for being faithful yet visually amazing, the music has not been as well received. The soundtrack is grandiose, but many find that it takes away from the somber and bleak atmosphere the game presents, making fights more epic than they actually are. The Maiden Astraea theme in particular is often cited as the biggest offender, as it sounds like it's trying to turn the fight into a grand conflict rather than an unique track.

** The Vanguard that likely killed you in the tutorial returns in 4-1 where he is incapable of moving from his spot, leaving him defenseless against magic and ranged weapons.

* BestLevelEver: World 3, the Tower of Latria. An incredible and varied atmosphere, memorable foes, a harsh but fair challenge, and an overall sense that you're progressing through an enormous, intricately-constructed world. The fact it ends with the Maneater fight hurts the enjoyment for some, but it also serves as a rare fight in the game that stands up to the difficulty established by later Soulsbourne bosses.

** The Mind Flayers in the Tower of Latria are nightmares if not approached properly. At range, they launch very damaging rapid fire Soul Arrows. At close range, they use a sonic blast with a [[HitboxDissonance very weird delayed hitbox]] or fire a bolt of magic that paralyzes you, allowing them to pick you up with their tentacles and stab you through the head. Even if you survive being paralyzed and stabbed, they'll likely follow up with a sonic blast that will hit you before you even have a chance to stand up and evade. To top it off, all their spells deal heavy damage even when blocked and the paralysis spell is unblockable.

** While the remake has been well received for being faithful yet visually amazing, the music has not been as well received. The music is good but many find it takes away from the somber and bleak atmosphere the game presents, making fights more epic than they are. The Maiden Astraea theme in particular is often cited as the most affected example, as it feels like it is trying to make the fight a grand conflict rather than a unique track.

** While the remake has been well recieved for being faithful yet visually amazing, the music is very contenous; with some claiming the heavy orchestra, similar to VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}, robs it of it's original feeling. That being said, the game's original composer, [[https://i.redd.it/w0oqo9e5dox51.png Shunsuke Kida]], has remaked on how much loves the newer grandoise take.
** In the original game, the soldiers in the Boletarian Palace have very low-res, expressionless faces that make them look more like plastic army men than human beings. This is especially obvious in the intro cutscene for the Tower Knight. The valley is at its deepest in the character customization screen, in which any human-looking face is a vaguely malformed, intensely unblinking, low-poly piece of plastic, and it doesn't have the relative benefit of being only a small part of the screen or hidden by the back of your character's head in normal gameplay.
** Fortunately, the remake fixes this with very lifelike faces and a more detailed character customisation system. You can still make a freak of nature with it, but it's much, much easier to make a normal looking human as well, particularly if you just tweak a preset.

** While the remake has been well recieved for being faithful yet visually amazing, the music is the one area agreed to be changed for the worse. The issue isn't that the remixed music is bad, it is considered epic and great to listen to, but there was a charm to the original soundtrack that fit the game heavily. Now the 2020 remake's music sounds over the top compared to how subdued a number of the original songs were. The Maiden Astraea theme is a good example of this: in the original it was a somber song that was radically different from the rest of the themes in the game, which contributed to why the fight became one of the most remembered fights in the game. The new theme is more dramatic and intense, robbing the fight of the intended PlayerPunch.
* UncannyValley:

** [[Creator/BluepointGames Bluepoint Games]]'s 2020 remake of the game has garnered no small amount of this reaction due to the studio's visual choices. This ranges from perceived changes to the game's overall atmosphere and visual style, down to small alterations such as the size of the Vanguard's eyes and teeth, and the "[[GameOver YOU DIED]]" font being changed.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: [[Creator/BluepointGames Bluepoint Games]]'s 2020 remake of the game has garnered no small amount of this reaction due to the studio's visual choices. This ranges from perceived changes to the game's overall atmosphere and visual style, down to small alterations such as the size of the Vanguard's eyes and teeth, and the "[[GameOver YOU DIED]]" font being changed.

** The Dragon God is one of the most heavily hyped up Archdemons, appearing in the opening cinematic, killing you in the tutorial should you manage to defeat the Vanguard and generally being recognized in universe as a major power. Yet its actual "fight" consists of you running behind some pillars, activating a pair of magic ballista and then hitting it in the face while it's totally helpless to retaliate.

** The remake tweaks difficulty in several ways. Bosses are no longer as exploitable, you'll have to finish them off with good old fashioned skill instead of sniping them with magic through the fog gate. Healing herbs also have their equip loads and carry limits adjusted to make the second half of the game harder. In the original game, players would end up breezing through most levels by the halfway point due to having hundreds of healing herbs at a time.
* BestLevelEver: World 3, the Tower of Latria. An incredible and varied atmosphere, memorable foes, a harsh but fair challenge, and an overall sense that you're progressing through an enormous world. The fact it ends with the Maneater fight hurts the enjoyment for some, but it also does serve as a hard fight that players will want to overcome.

** Pure Sharpstone and Pure Cloudstone. Note that first is not the infamous ''Blade''stone. The problem with Pure Sharpstone is that weapons upgraded with Hardstone and Sharpstone are most equatable to Raw weapons from later games. Good base damage, but lacking in stat scaling, so questionably useful for character who have heavy investment into an attack stat, which is most of them. While Pure Hardstone skirts around being useless by also being used for shields to increase their guard power (and bows, for characters without heavy investment into Dexterity), about the only reason one would ever want to use Pure Sharpstone aside from collecting trophies would be for a character with low Dexterity to make a weapon to be buffed with Light Weapon, but simply using a Moon or Crescent weapon instead is a still-effective, low maintenance idea for anyone who could effectively cast Light Weapon anyway. Shards, Large Shards, and Chunks are still useful for the fact that they are needed to bring the weapon to a point it can be upgraded with other stones (or demons' souls, for Chunks), though. Cloudstone, on the other hand, increases the magic resistance of Shields, at the cost of not increasing their guard power. The problem here is much more simple. Cloudstone can only increase a shield's magic resistance to 70%, while there also exists the Dark Silver Shield which has 100% magic resistance and can increase its guard power, at the downside of using Colorless Demon's Souls to do so. To wit, a Knight's Shield fully upgraded with Cloudstone has 70 Magic Resistance and 57 Guard Power, while the Dark Silver Shield weighs the same and has the same stat requirement, but when fully upgraded has 100 Magic Resistance and 65 Guard Power.
** Meanwhile, as far as weapons are concerned, the Gargoyle Crossbow. While there are three enemies that can drop it instead of the infamous Pure Bladestone's two, the availability is still arguably worse since with Pure Bladestone you can ignore the Reaper and Shadowlurker and gun straight for the Black Skeleton, whereas there are at best several Rapier Gargoyles between you and the Crossbow Gargoyles, and at worst several Rapier Gargoyles ''and'' Man Centipedes. Also one of the Crossbow Gargoyles is so far away from the other two that it's completely worthless anyway, and you're much better off taking out one or both of the other two, then leaving and returning to the stage. Not helping is that while the Black Skeleton is easy to loot (and Pure Bladestone isn't actually that bad provided you know how to avoid the quirks relating to its broken drop rate), all Gargoyles are somewhat prone to falling off a ledge where they either fall into the swamp and would require you to traverse half the area to get to, or simply fall out of existence outright. Oh, and the Gargoyle Crossbow itself? It shares its problems with the rest of the crossbows in the game, being pathetically weak even with the strongest bolts available, impossible to upgrade, and not possible to precisely aim.

** Messages saying "Sticky White Stuff" placed near [[CuteWitch Yuria]], [[BandageBabe the Maiden in Black]] and [[BreadEggsMilkSquick Ed the Blacksmith's bed.]]

** Old King Dorans scream. It gets really, ''really'' high pitched and loud for no reason then stops abruptly. It sounds like a tropical bird.

** Speaking of Crystal Lizards, another unpopular mechanic that the game doesn't deign to tell you about is the fact that they permanently despawn after they are killed and/or escape enough times, making it impossible to obtain the ores they carry until another New Game cycle and making it impossible to fully upgrade some weapons.
** The camera has a tendency to stay at a medium distance away from the player at all times, even in very tight areas such as the tunnels in World 2 of Stonefang or the shantytown in Valley of Defilement where it would make sense for it to pull in closer, causing the camera to get stuck on scenery or clip outside of the level.
* SpecialEffectsFailure: The rain in the Valley of Defilement. It's basically just a very faint filter over the screen that's supposed to make it look like there's a constant drizzle in the area, but you don't see the water actually getting on any objects in the environment and the effect is visible even in indoor areas such as the cave after Leechmonger, making it feel pretty cheap and unconvincing overall. The remake of it, developed by the very technically proficient Creator/BluepointGames, fixes this with very convincing rain effects.

** The soldiers in the Boletarian Palace have very low-res, expressionless faces that make them look more like plastic army men than human beings. This is especially obvious in the intro cutscene for the Tower Knight. The faces in the remake are much more detailed.
** The valley is at its deepest in the character customization screen, in which any human-looking face is a vaguely malformed, intensely unblinking, low-poly piece of plastic, and it doesn't have the relative benefit of being only a small part of the screen or hidden by the back of your character's head in normal gameplay. Again, the remake fixes this with very lifelike faces and a more detailed character customisation system. You can still make a freak of nature with it, but it's much, much easier to make a normal looking human as well.

* VindicatedByHistory: Very much so. The very abstract game design and brutal difficulty did not impress the Japanese press, who gave it mediocre reviews. However, positive word of mouth led to a Western release, which led the game to be looked upon more positively. The tipping point came with the success of its SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', which benefited this title not long after. Due to its eventual success and continued good reputation, a remake by Bluepoint Games was eventually greenlit and revealed for Sony's Playstation 5 console.

** The item you use to give your weapon magic damage is named ''Sticky White Stuff''.

* SpecialEffectsFailure: The rain in the Valley of Defilement. It's basically just a very faint filter over the screen that's supposed to make it look like there's a constant drizzle in the area, but you don't see the water actually getting on any objects in the environment and the effect is visible even in indoor areas such as the cave after Leechmonger, making it feel pretty cheap and unconvincing overall.

** The valley is at its deepest in the character customization screen, in which any human-looking face is a vaguely malformed, intensely unblinking, low-poly piece of plastic, and it doesn't have the relative benefit of being only a small part of the screen or hidden by the back of your character's head in normal gameplay. The remake of it fixes this thankfully by making the rain look like real rain.

** The Vanguard that likely killed you in the tutorial returns in 4-1 where he is incapable of moving from his spot, leaving him defenceless against magic and ranged weapons.

** [[spoiler:After all you've went through getting there, the final boss turns out to be a barely animate blob. Considering the blob's former form was a contender for ThatOneBoss, beating it up manages to be quite satisfying anyway.]]
* AuthorsSavingThrow: Regarding the 2020 remake by [[Creator/BluepointGames BluepointGames]], many fans of the original game were disappointed at the game's various visual differences, such as the lighting in the Tower Knight's arena, and the head designs of the Fluted set and Flamelurker boss. The second trailer for the game released in September 2020 showed that these design choices were altered to be closer to the original game, assuaging fans' fears.
* BestLevelEver: World 3, the Tower of Latria. An incredible and varied atmosphere, memorable foes, a harsh but fair challenge, and an overall sense that you're progressing through an enormous world. If only it didn't also contain [[ThatOneBoss the Maneater...]]

* JunkRare: Pure Sharpstone and Pure Cloudstone. Note that first is not the infamous ''Blade''stone. The problem with Pure Sharpstone is that weapons upgraded with Hardstone and Sharpstone are most equatable to Raw weapons from later games. Good base damage, but lacking in stat scaling, so questionably useful for character who have heavy investment into an attack stat, which is most of them. While Pure Hardstone skirts around being useless by also being used for shields to increase their guard power (and bows, for characters without heavy investment into Dexterity), about the only reason one would ever want to use Pure Sharpstone aside from collecting trophies would be for a character with low Dexterity to make a weapon to be buffed with Light Weapon, but simply using a Moon or Crescent weapon instead is a still-effective, low maintenance idea for anyone who could effectively cast Light Weapon anyway. Shards, Large Shards, and Chunks are still useful for the fact that they are needed to bring the weapon to a point it can be upgraded with other stones (or demons' souls, for Chunks), though. Cloudstone, on the other hand, increases the magic resistance of Shields, at the cost of not increasing their guard power. The problem here is much more simple. Cloudstone can only increase a shield's magic resistance to 70%, while there also exists the Dark Silver Shield which has 100% magic resistance and can increase its guard power, at the downside of using Colorless Demon's Souls to do so. To wit, a Knight's Shield fully upgraded with Cloudstone has 70 Magic Resistance and 57 Guard Power, while the Dark Silver Shield weighs the same and has the same stat requirement, but when fully upgraded has 100 Magic Resistance and 65 Guard Power.

** [[spoiler:The Old Monk's]] ridiculous hat. It makes him a whole lot less creepier.
** Garl Vinland's squid helmet.

** The remake, which is developed by the ''very'' technically proficient [[Creator/BluepointGames Bluepoint Games]], now includes very convincing 3D rain effects.

* UncannyValley: The soldiers in the Boletarian Palace have very low-res, expressionless faces that make them look more like plastic army men than human beings. This is especially obvious in the intro cutscene for the Tower Knight.
** The valley is at its deepest in the character customization screen, in which any human-looking face is a vaguely malformed, intensely unblinking, low-poly piece of plastic, and it doesn't have the relative benefit of being only a small part of the screen or hidden by the back of your character's head in normal gameplay.
*** Wholly averted with the remake, which features very detailed and lifelike human faces in the character creator.
* TheWoobie: ''[[CrapsackWorld Several]].''
** [[NintendoHard The Player]].

* {{Fanon}}: Due to a line said by Garl Vinland in the boss fight with Maiden Astraea where he claims they were abandoned by "you", a common interpretation is that the Slayer of Demons was formerly a knight or friend of Garl and/or Astraea who traveled with them to the Valley of Defilement but ended up becoming part of the story due to either fleeing on route or while there, or because of some other reason. It should be noted that Garl's line is written and spoken in a way that seems more so to be saying you as in other people, not specifically your character, but the community often takes it as meaning your your character due to the player character having nothing to them background wise.

* {{Fanon}}: Due to a line said by Garl Vinland in the boss fight with Maiden Astraea where he claims they were abandoned by "you", a common interpretation is that the Slayer of Demons was formerly a knight or friend of Garl and/Astraea who traveled with them to the Valley of Defilement but ended up becoming part of the story due to either fleeing on route or while there, or because of some other reason. It should be noted that Garl's line is written and spoken in a way that seems more so to be saying you as in other people, not specifically your character, but the community often takes it as meaning your your character due to the player character having nothing to them background wise.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: [[Creator/BluepointGames Bluepoint Games]]'s 2020 remake of the game has garnered no small amount of this reaction due to the studio's visual choices. This ranges from perceived changes to the game's overall atmosphere and visual style, down to small alterations such as the size of the Vanguard's eyes and teeth.

** The remake, which is developed by the ''very'' technically proficient [[Creator/BluepointGames]], now includes very convincing 3D rain effects.

** The remake, which is developed by the ''very'' technically proficient BluepointGames, now includes very convincing 3D rain effects.