During last week's PS5 reveal trailer, fans of FromSoftware's punishing video games got a blast from the past that may have surprised them. The developer announced a remake of Demon's Souls, a now 11-year-old game that ultimately spearheaded the Dark Souls series. It's still not available for anything but the PS3, unable to even be bumped up to the next-gen PlayStation console, while Dark Souls has even made its way to the Nintendo Switch.
So, what are our hopes for the reborn Demon's Souls? For starters, they could stand to rethink how the grind for healing items works in the game. Unlike the later Souls games, in which you can refill your limited-use estus flasks at any bonfire, Demon's Souls operates more like Bloodborne. Players can get healing items as drops from enemies, or may purchase them for a fee of a couple souls (which might otherwise be used on leveling up).
The catch is that, despite operating somewhat like Bloodborne, the first Souls game was slightly less than generous with healing items. They were comparatively more expensive to purchase for beginning adventurers than in Bloodborne, and dropped from enemies pretty infrequently outside of the beginning world. That meant that if players wanted to restock, they could either shoot their level-up efficiency in the foot and pay with souls, or travel all the way back to the first world to farm.
Demon's Souls also featured the "world tendency" feature, in which a player's actions could directly influence the skew of the land. Killing NPCs and antagonizing other players led your world towards the "Black Tendency," while helping other players and NPCs led it towards the "White Tendency." Oh, and another way to achieve "Black Tendency" is to die a lot. Unfortunately, it's White Tendency that causes enemies to drop more healing items and... you get where we're going, right? Spawned enemies become harder the more often you die, and the drop rate for healing items outside of the beginner's area can only be increased by dying a lot less in a Souls game. It's a really punishing mechanic.
As a Souls game, we expect things to be hard. In fact, perhaps a remake of the first-ever Souls game should be the hardest version of itself as an ode to the series it kicked off. But since there is still a decent way to grind, Demon's Souls might do well to follow Bloodborne's lead on healing item availability, since it was less tedious (and still challenging).