Demon's Souls (2009 video game)

International boxart, depicting the Slayer of Demons in the Flute armor

***Demon's Souls*** is a 2009 action-role playing video game developed by FromSoftware with supervision from Japan Studio and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 console. It was internationally published by Atlus and Namco Bandai Games in 2010.

*Demon's Souls* is set in the decaying kingdom of Boletaria, which fell to ruin following the release of a mysterious being known as the Old One through the usage of forbidden techniques known as the Soul Arts. Players take the role of a nameless hero referred to as "Slayer of Demons" as they are brought to Boletaria in a quest to kill its fallen king and stop the Old One. *Demon's Souls* places emphasis on challenging, time-focused combat and resources management, with gameplay revolving around player death and respawn mechanics. The Slayer of Demons has a large variety of weapons and armor pieces to choose from to allow several play-styles. *Demon's Souls* features a hub area called the Nexus, from which they can venture to five different locations. A central feature in the game is the inclusion of online interactions in which players can both cooperate or invade each other into player-versus-player scenarios.

The game was originally pitched by Sony's Japan studio, with FromSoftware brought in, but development was plagued with lack of clear vision. FromSoftware employee Hidetaka Miyazaki took over the development and helped turning it in the game it would become. Miyazaki placed focus on challenging difficulty to evoke classic video games and allow players a sensation of accomplishment throughout the game, while the online functions of *Demon's Souls* were inspired by Miyazaki's own experiences. *Demon's Souls* was announced in 2008, and early reactions were mixed-to-negative, with criticism towards its difficulty and design, including from SCE executive Shuhei Yoshida. Japanese press gave the game mixed reviews, echoing pre-release complaints; this led Sony to pass publishing the game oversees.

Despite lack of marketing and early mixed reviews, *Demon's Souls* enjoyed critical acclaim and commercial success upon its release oversees, and was seen as a sleeper hit by western critics. It was praised for its innovative online aspects, poignant art direction and music, obscure storytelling and difficulty, which was seen by critics as challenging but fair. *Demon's Souls* won a variety of end-year awards and has been hailed as one of the greatest action-role playing games of all time. The game's success led to a series of spiritual successors in the form of *Dark Souls* published by Bandai Namco, the first game which is credited as one of the most influential games of the 2010s. A second spiritual successor, *Bloodborne*, was released in 2015 with Sony as publisher. A remake by Bluepoint Games and Japan Studio was released in 2020.

## Reception

### Reviews

Upon its release in the Americas and Europe, *Demon's Souls* received critical acclaimm. It holds a score of 89/100 on review aggregation site MetaCritic based on 81 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".