Board 8 > Kinda surprised how short Demon's Souls was (unmarked spoilers in topic)

(+) Yeah! (+)

I beat the whole game in 15 hours and I'm not into NG+ so that's it for me. I know I shouldn't compare a game to its sequel but I feel like Dark Souls 2 took me at least 60-70 hours.

I dicked around in PVP for about 30 minutes and that is NOT for me either.

I was also surprised at how easy most of the bosses were in the game. I feel like half of the bosses were gimmick bosses or only had 2-3 attacks. Even the final boss only took me two tries.

I don't want to say this game is overrated because its 10+ years old and it inspired a lot of GREAT games but playing this fresh in 2021 was kinda boring.

How does everyone else feel?

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A ton of great games take 15 hours or less to beat

You're also comparing it to the most bloated game in the series

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I kinda wish more games had that length today beucase it's getting hard to play through the things you want when everything has to be 50+ hours of mainline content.

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Not going to get into the 7 year old argument about if DS2 is good or not, but it definitely could have had some content cut.

Definitely the biggest fault with Demons are the 'gimmick' bosses.

With that said, also be aware that the more of these games you play the easier they get, so while it only took you 15 hours that might have been much longer if it was your first game. DS1 took me the longest by far, and every game after has seemed shorter by comparison but a lot of that is just due to understanding the games more.

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Yeah, basically what aecioo said. Your first souls will always take longer.

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My first souls was Dark Souls 1 and it did probably take longer than average but I don't remember the exact length. I only remember Dark Souls 2 because it did feel very long.

The short length isn't necessary a critique of Demon's Souls because it was still fun for those 15 hours but I just expected it to be longer. I'm more disappointed by the basic enemies and gimmick bosses but that's the problem of playing the first game after all of the sequels I suppose.

Demon's Souls feels more like you need to create your own fun than any of the other games. I ran through with a Spear/Shield and maybe I would have had more fun using magic or trying a different combo.

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I actually like how weird a lot of Demon's Souls bosses are. There's only one or two truly awful ones (looking at you Dragon God) and the variety of weird fights makes the normal ones like Flamefucker, Penetrator, and False King all the more noteworthy. Of course, it might just be a "you had to be there" scenario if you've already gone through the entire sequel series of circlestrafing big dudes.

However I WILL say that Demon's Souls has several gimmick fights that still haven't been topped. Old Monk is still the best PvP boss variant in the series, Storm King got a callback in DS3 but the original fight is still legendary, Maneaters is still the best "gargoyles on a roof" fight by virtue of being the hardest and worst. Even in the ones that aren't traditionally "good" boss fights there are a lot of off-the-wall concepts that are really interesting that the series hasn't really played with since. I'm thinking of Astrea, Old Hero, and Fool's Idol.

I guess I'd say Demon's Souls isn't really more about "making your own fun" than Dark Souls, but it's full of all these wacky ideas and concepts that Dark Souls has had three games to tweak and perfect. But in the process they also streamlined a lot of the weirdness out (it took them two games to bring back the HP penalty for dying!), but even doing that the series is left with plenty of weirdness to go around. And I mean, despite my love for Demon's Souls I still think all 3 games in the Souls trilogy are better, so your reaction is understandable.

also if you were disappointed by the difficulty then you for sure would not have liked a magic build because magic in DeS is BUSTED

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I kind of loved how short it was after playing it for the first time in years. The flow is so smooth and the goals are so razor focused that I think absolutely nothing if starting a character in the morning on a day off to beat it by that evening (or even afternoon!). I have trouble replaying other games in the series that casually, but I've beaten DeS Remake 5 times on 3 characters. Typically 8-10 hours to beat (15 the first time).

My first time playing original DeS on launch was probably 30 hours or so.

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