I've played them all since the original PS3 Demon's Souls and love the series. I just snagged a ps5, so I'll be making my way through the remake at some point soon. My favorite souls game is Bloodborne by far. I'm always hoping for a sequel of some kind.

It's funny, jumping into the Demon's Souls remake after playing the original many times, it's like it looks how I remember it, even though the visuals are way better now.

I'm loving it, though am I correct in my impression that there's not much integration of the new controller features in this game? It's not like I'm blown away by the controller experience that's hyped as a ps5 feature.

I played it for a few minutes to see the effects. I think the possibilities are interesting. I'm just saying Demon's Souls doesn't seem to have much of that going on, or maybe I'm just not noticing it. I read it does something when shooting arrows, which is something I almost never do.

I once played through the original Demon's Souls solo offline and found it to be quite manageable (especially compared to my failed solo Dark Souls attempt). That was several years ago and maybe I'm a much worse player now, but there have been some struggles on my first playthrough of the remake. Though I did make it through the Maneater boss solo on the remake, so I'll give myself some credit. Just a couple bosses to go.

Are you finding that there are enough players still to co-op on Dark Souls Remastered? Dark Souls at least gives some opportunities for NPC summons for some of the bosses, but once I got to Ornstein and Smough on my solo run, I figured it wasn't going to work out for me. It's so frustrating getting that far and hitting that wall. My Switch experience with Dark Souls remastered was that there weren't enough players, and I similarly hit an O&S wall.

Stick with it. The beauty of Bloodborne level design is that almost all of them have shortcuts you can open up as you progress, so shortcuts end up branching off of the save points, and paths to the bosses after all shortcuts are opened in a level are pretty manageable.

Also, be aggressive! Most levels, you can actually run right through most enemies to get where you want to go. They only follow you so far.

Also, there are a couple of options for first boss. My first playthrough, I completely missed the one people often start with, and found it much later in the game.

For me Bloodborne always felt the most approachable and like it was going to be possible for me to proceed and eventually win. It's a different play style, rewarding fast offense vs heavy defense in other souls games. I can solo the main game and expansion on Bloodborne, making use of NPC summons.

I was able to solo Demons Souls on PS3, but have yet to beat King Allant in the PS5 version.

Elden Ring is along Dark Souls difficulty for me. You hit so many walls of super high difficulty with bosses if you go solo. I can relatively breeze through the dungeons, but the bosses are really difficult. My take on souls games is to enjoy them the first time through and summon other players for help with the bosses. It's so new, with so many players at the moment that you don't wait long finding someone to help you. Solo runs are for the future when it's harder to find other players.

I like some of the visual callbacks to Bloodborne found in some Elden Ring areas and enemies. I encountered a couple of enemies today that bled paleblood!

I find Elden Ring bosses to be more difficult than in Demons Souls.

One major difference is that there are a ton of save points and you can quick travel to any one. On top of that, there's usually a save point very close to bosses, so not much tedious grinding to get back to the boss every time you die.

Note: all souls games become easy if you summon help from other players. If a boss is too frustrating, summon a couple other players in for help and you'll get past it quickly.

I like the spirit summons or whatever they're called. It appears that for bosses that have stock npc summons you can summon them and the spirit summon, but you can't use a spirit summon if you summon a real player. I don't understand the other times you're locked out of spirit summons. I think I encountered a boss where I couldn't use them even solo. Maybe they thought it would be too easy. I usually use the wolves when I can.

My take on Elden Ring so far:
I like it overall, but it can be very frustrating. I either end up in a frivolous place with a boss that's easy, or a more important place with a boss that's impossible. I rarely feel evenly matched with bosses I encounter.

I think I'm far enough into it to say that Bloodborne is still my favorite. I always knew where to go and what to do, and felt appropriately up to the task most of the time.

Elden Ring feels like I just randomly end up in places with little or no direction for what I need to do. I love the open world, but I really feel like they could give more specific directions and more map markers for where you are supposed to go. A dude will summarize all the main target bosses for you, but he can't point them out on a map? I also lose track of quests very easily. It's almost like I would like to see Elden Ring with Witcher 3 map/quest tracking.

I'm in a love/hate relationship with it, too.

I'm at the fire giant and haligtree. I surprised myself and beat the first boss at the haligtree in only a few tries.

My big dislike is the recycled bosses. I don't know if it's just my bad luck in the order I'm encountering then in, but it seems like I have a high rate of finding a duplicate boss that I just fought a couple bosses ago. The game could be cut down in size so that every boss is fought once and I would be fine with that.

Btw, I'm this far in and I have relatively little idea what is even going on in this game story-wise. I felt like I had the general gist of the other From Software souls games. This one I'm supposed to kill some demi-gods and become Elden Lord... Whatever that is. And there's a tree and another tree... And fingers and finger reader crones... And I don't know what's happening! I'm not even entirely sure why I'm in some kind of death loop where I keep coming back. That mechanism was explained decently well in the other games, though probably it makes the most sense in the context of Bloodborne.

Sure. I, for the most part, am in favor of the From Software method. I just feel like ER is making far less sense. In the other games I found enough context in dialog and events and felt like they weren't all that convoluted. This one is all over the place and I feel like I'm not getting any closer to unraveling even a bit of what's happening. Each new place I open up, each boss I defeat, brings me no closer to understanding.

I'm always throwing praise at Bloodborne, but I still think it did the best job at storytelling, and any extra bit you read about in an item or outside sources just enhances the experience, but it's a compelling story, and I was always excited to find out what's next.

I have put several hours into it. It's hard for me to get into after Elden Ring. I want so badly to be able to jump... I hope jumping in Elden Ring hasn't ruined my ability to go back and play souls games without it. Nioh 2 just especially ends up feeling like the lack of jumping is artificially making navigating levels harder. I'm running across a roof and a simple log or sandbag it's an impassable barrier? I look over edge and there's an enemy I want to drop down on to attack... Oh, just a step too far away I guess.

I had Mortal Shell in my digital library as a ps+ game from some point. It's not that great looking on ps5, but an interesting take on a soulslike. You switch between a few different bodies and can upgrade a few skills for each. The few available weapons are upgradeable.

An interesting ability your character has is the ability to harden. This ability has a cooldown timer before you can use it again. When you harden, you freeze in the middle of whatever action you're doing. You can sustain it until you are struck or voluntarily come out of it. So an enemy or boss is far away, but approaching and you can start a powerful attack and harden in the middle of it. The enemy closes in, strikes you out of it, you take no damage and your attack resumes, doing its full damage. It's an interesting way to anticipate a future defensive and offensive move.

Once I got the hang of it, it has ended up not being very difficult. I'm at what I think is the last boss and the difficulty for that one really spiked from everything that came before. Haven't beaten it yet, but it's a relatively short game.

I finally got Cyberpunk 2077 and have been enjoying the PS5 version, which is a free upgrade to the PS4 version. The way to upgrade was confusing to me. I waited forever for the PS5 to install what ended up being the PS4 version from the disk. I played it for a while wondering how I could know if it was the upgraded version. Then I went to the ps store and found the download for the PS5 version... And waited forever for that to dl and install a completely different version of the full game.

I tell you what. Gone are the days of opening a new game and playing right away. You can spend hours waiting for installation and updates before getting to play these days.

I got through the main story of Cyberpunk 2077 on ps5. I would say I enjoyed it well enough for the current low price, but don't have much interest in replaying it or doing 100% of all available side quests. It's nowhere near the quality of Witcher 3.

I guess my biggest issues are:
-There's a huge disconnect between what NPCs can wear and what's available to you. You go into a clothing store and there are clothes and shoes on display that have nothing to do with what the store has in stock for you to buy. It feels like an immersion breaking issue for me. Anything I want in this regard is just out of reach. I like open world games where everything that exists in the world is accessible to the player. If an NPC has clothes and happens to die, I should be able to loot them. If a store has an item on the shelf, I should be able to buy it. I think the Elder Scrolls games did a great job of this. In Morrowind, if a guard had an awesome looking set of armor, and I had the skills to take him down, his armor was mine, along with the consequences of doing so.

-That leads to the next point. Nothing you choose to do seems that consequential. The story is pretty linear, or at least that's the impression I got in my playthrough. Even the act of murder has no real consequences. A futuristic world that has all kinds of facial recognition and tracking abilities should never give up on pursuing criminals. It feels like realistically your face would be scanned at every intersection and vending machine, and law enforcement would never lose track of you. Oh and the various gangs that exist seem to not care if you always kill their members every time you see them. I killed every weapon welding group of gangs I came across every time. Then just up the road that gang had a few guys standing around near pedestrians and they don't get aggressive if they see you. Seems like with all the tech they have, a gang would be pretty well in communication with all members to know what just happened a block away. Supposedly you earn "street cred" in this game, but it doesn't seem to mean anything. A gang you've been constantly wiping out should either always be ready to strike back or run away in fear at your very presence. Oh and one more thing I just remembered! There was a side quest with a d-bag club manager early on. I murdered that guy right away. Later there was a related side quest that brought me back there and that dude was alive and well, and part of the quest was to decide whether or not to kill him. How does a AAA game from the same company as the glorious Witcher 3 allow for that to happen?

-Civilians are just filler. You have the option to interact and "talk" to everyone and no one wants to talk. It seems stupid to have even had the option.

I gave up on it at what I think is the last boss. It's just ridiculous compared to anything else you do in the game before it. I stopped enjoying the fight after a few attempts and put it down. If you can get through an entire game using a very specific strategy, and the last boss does a bunch of cheesy stuff to make that strategy less effective, something is wrong with the game. I hate it when games do that. Don't train me to play one way and then demand I switch it up at the very end.

This game isn't that varied in what you can do. There are a few "shells" (bodies) you can inhabit that have different stats and perks, but they're not that different. Then there are a few upgradeable weapons that play differently, but nothing too significant.

None of it changes the reliance on the core gameplay mechanic of hardening into a frozen invincible state, which has a cooldown period before you can use it again. Also, you can be killed once and reinhabit your shell with full health. The last boss keeps starting new phases that just bombard you more and more frequent hits and then starts to summon mobs of 5 or so enemies that come at you while the boss is still doing his own attacks.

I agree. I had not played the others and loved it. IIRC there's a catalog of characters you've met along the way and history about them, if you want to dig into it. I mostly didn't read up on the characters and still enjoyed it.

There's actually a portion of the game where you're questioned about past events. This is meant to be a way for your major actions in prior games to have an impact on the world of Witcher 3. I didn't have any context for what was being asked and just picked some answers. I'm not sure what all impact it has or of it just changes a few minor bits of dialog here and there.

After 3 I was interested in the previous stories. I tried playing 2 and couldn't get into it. It didn't age well in my opinion.