History VideoGame / DemonsSouls

* MagicIsFeminine: Women in the setting have an intuitive understanding of the demons' (or rather the Demon's) soul-based magic, as explained by Yuria the Witch, and evident in the majority of powerful human magic users being female, from the Maiden in Black, through Maiden Astrea, to the Monumental. Men, by contrast, obtain their magical power from a long-term study of the souls (like Sage Freke) or from intense ritualistic practices of the Church (like Saint Urbain).

* MightyGlacier: A few. The Tower Knight shuffles more than it actually walks, being a giant suit of armor that creaks as it moves. Garl Vinland is very heavily armored, moves slowly, never rolls and carries an extremely heavy hammer that can kill in one hit.

* StationaryBoss: [[spoiler:The Adjudicator (which isn't actually stationary, but is so immobile it might as well be), The Leechmonger, The Dragon God]].

A SpiritualSuccessor, ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsI'', was released in 2011, and it was the first of [[VideoGame/DarkSouls a trilogy]]. A second SpiritualSuccessor for UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', followed in 2015. Meanwhile, an outright [[VideoGameRemake remake]] for UsefulNotes/PlayStation5 by Creator/BluepointGames and Creator/SIEJapanStudio was released as a [=PlayStation=] 5 launch title in 2020.

** Getting the Penetrator Armor Set in the remake requires piecing together that seemingly unrelated elements introduced in the Remake are actually connected. The set is behind a locked door, which itself is hidden behind a fake wall you need to reveal. Finding the door isn’t difficult but the game doesn’t tell you or even hint at how to unlock the door. [[spoiler:The key required to unlocked it requires trading in several Ceramic Coins, an obscure item only found when entering the Fractured World, a game mode that mirrors the game horizontally but doesn’t appear to do much else. The coins are hidden behind either Pure White or Black Tendency (both are required to maximize the number of coins found) in breakable objects in the environment and don’t have much use aside from restoring a pitiful amount of health, and turn into broken coins when dropped and picked up (preventing players from cheating by sharing coins with each other), save for the one location where they need to be traded at (which itself is in a different world than the locked door). Even if you know all of the above, you won’t be able to get enough coins to obtain the key without going through multiple New Game Plus playthroughs.]] Suffice to say, a new player isn’t going to stumble on the solution by accident.

%%*** GradualGrinder: Status effects and Firespray.

* Cthulhumanoid: The Tower of Latria, now converted into a prison, is guarded by Mind Flayers, who have tentacles growing from their faces and appear squidlike in general, even having the tiny beak associated with octopi. They wield bells and cast magic spells to paralyze the player, then grab them with their tentacles.

* Cthulhumanoid: The Tower of Latria, now converted into a prison, is guarded by Mind Flayers, who have tentacles growing from their faces and appear squidlike in general, even having the tiny beak associated with octopi. They fight by casting paralysing magic, then grabbing their with their tentacles.

* Cthulhumanoid: The Tower of Latria, now converted into a prison, is guarded by Mind Flayers, who have tentacles growing from their faces and cast magic spells.

* Cthulhumanoid: The Tower of Latria, now converted into aprison, is guarded by Mind Flayers, who have tentacles growing from their faces and cast magic spells.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Being the first "Souls game", there are some spots where From and JS were still trying to suss out how best to approach certain mechanics, and they maybe didn't quite hit it on the head this first time around:

* MagicKnight: Moon and Crescent weapons can give any mage power in a melee fight.
* MedievalEuropeanFantasy
* MegaManning: You can learn powerful magic or abilities from boss demons by taking their souls to Sage Freke, Yuria or Saint Urbain.
** By taking them to Ed the Blacksmith you can make powerful unique weapons with different effects and uses.

The game [[TropeMaker introduced]] a unique online multiplayer mode that limits direct interaction. Non-interactive "ghosts" of other players atmospherically fade in and out of the game. This includes interactive bloodstains, which shows a ghostly replay of how other players died. Players can also leave short messages for each other, with those rated positively granting the message writer a temporary power boost. This doesn't stop some players from giving deliberately bad advice ForTheEvulz, however. Under certain conditions, you can receive direct help by sending out a summons that will randomly pull another player into your world, while others are out to kill you for the Souls that you hold and can enter your world uninvited. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. On November 27, 2017, it was announced that the multiplayer servers for the game would be shut down on February 28, 2018, after around 9 years of being online: 9 years 23 days for Japan, 8 years 4 months 22 days for the US, and 7 years 8 months 3 days for Europe. Not that it's stopped hardcore fans from going as far as to setting up their own private servers.

** 1-1: After opening the gate to the Phalanx, the staircase down to the gate has several individual Phalanx Soliders, in order to teach the player how to deal with their shielded fronts.

** The remake allows for omni-directional rolling, in contrast to the original title only allowing for four-directional. This makes it a lot easier to dodge and counter enemy attacks.

* BatmanGambit: The Maiden in Black [[spoiler:can wait for someone or a collective to clear the way so she can lull The Old One back to sleep. Of course, the player can decide to double cross her at the end, making him/herself the SpannerInTheWorks.]]

* BlobMonster: Phalanx. Played with however, since it's actually some kind of magical glowing mass of gunk, covered in slug-like, shield- and spear- wielding [[BlobMonster Hoplite]] monsters. Once all the Hoplites are dead, Phalanx itself is completely helpless.

* ButThouMust: When the Monumental tells you its plan to defeat the Old One, you get to decline to helping it. It then points out that your only other option is staying in the Nexus for all eternity, slowly withering away.

** The Tower Knight himself bares a striking resemblance to [[{{Manga/Berserk}} Grunbeld.]]

* ConvectionSchmonvection: The player can walk right up to the edge of lava without injury. Dragons' firebreath has a pretty messy hitbox and may cause damage without actually coming in contact, though a fire that size should still have a much larger area of effect.

* CrapsackWorld: Let's see: there's Boletaria, a kingdom that is considered a paradise on Earth in comparison to other lands, but is supported by an army of slaves (the Dreglings). The land of the burrowers is a dangerously difficult-to-navigate system of mines and caves that go all the way down to molten magma, wherein lie a powerful fire demon and the bones of a dragon god that the burrowers actually expected to revive one day (given that they created a sword with the sole purpose of killing it, as well as two giant javelin launchers to pin the sucker down). The Tower of Latria was taken over by a madman an unknown amount of time ago, but couldn't have been a land of sunshine and roses before the Old Monk showed up, seeing as the place had obviously been set up as a prison from its construction. The land of the Shadowmen is the home of a long lost tribe of warriors who gave far more care to the dead than they ever did to the living, and whose "gods" include a gigantic man-eating monster and a monstrous flying manta ray. Finally, there's the Valley Of Defilement, where all the garbage is sent, whether it's things, animals, or people. It's the garbage dump of the world, and it was a nightmarish place even before the demons came: when [[spoiler:the Maiden Astraea came and became a demon]], conditions actually ''improved''. The water is toxic, poisoning anyone who isn't a local, and there are plague rats, gigantic man-eating insects, the nightmarish plague babies, a monster that is nothing more than a horrendous mass of leeches, and apparently some of the garbage was there so long that it actually gained sentience and started moving around! [[spoiler:And let's not forget: [[DevilButNoGod There is no God, only the Old One]].]] This game brings "Crapsack" to a whole new level.

* CriticalHit: Counter-attacks and backstabs are the most basic ways of achieving this, however some weapons have 'sweet spots' that deal extra damage when you strike an enemy with a certain part. Note that counter-attacks can be triggered on any enemy whose attacks you can block; those Blue-Eyed Knights? One good counter-attack (which is actually easy enough to do ''consistently'') and they're done for the count. You can, in fact, kill almost everything in 1-1 with a single counter attack before you even level up.

* DifficultButAwesome: Some of the higher level spells and miracles, like Firestorm, Soulsucker, and God's Wrath, fall under this in PVE. They do huge amounts of damage to enemies, up to one-shoting the final boss. But their charging times are some of the longest in the game (Sometimes reaching up to 4 seconds) and can only be done at very close range. So using these spells correctly requires careful planning and a lot of knowledge of enemy attacks, so that you can time these attacks well.

** For a faith based character the blessed mace found in 5-1. It'll probably be your primary weapon for awhile since the only place to get faintstone (which is required for blessed weapons) is one of the harder worlds.
** And for a strength character the crushing great axe in 2-1. It can be obtained within soon after Stonefang becomes available and can even be upgraded once or twice if you progress a bit and a willing to do some grinding.

** The Noble background starts with a wand, the Soul Arrow spell, and most importantly, a ring that constantly regenerates magic. The official guide packed in with the US release outright states that this is overpowered and encourages the player to abuse it. With sufficient Magic and Faith, the Noble is almost unkillable, thanks to long range attacks from Soul Arrow, an easy method of healing with a healing spell (easily obtained quite early), and inexhaustible magic from the ring.

** DualWielding in game is about like DualWielding in RealLife: AwesomeButImpractical. While you can do all sorts of nifty attacks with the weapon in your right hand, the weapon in your left can parry and do a single, half-inept slash.

** The Penetrator, a sword duel against a knight wielding a massive BFS. You can tip the odds in your favor by freeing Biorr from prison however, in which case the battle can be trivialized, as Biorr is an absolute tank.

** The biggest is HP restoration: there is ''no'' Estus Flask-style free HP restoration item. All HP restoration is instead handled by a selection of dedicated healing herbs. While there were some enemies who served as "money" targets with dedicated drops of said herbs (á la ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'' and its blood vials), part of the problem is that the herbs came in ''four different tiers'' – and the higher tier ones only dropped rarely. You otherwise had to buy the healing items you need. To further differentiate the game from ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', healing items in this game do not drop in every area, and not every variety is a common vender item, so you can't replenesh your stock naturally as you play through the game unless you are in certain levels. Needless to say, this was a generally unpopular system due to how much grinding it required, and all the ''Souls'' games which followed would play around with how HP restoration worked and how you gained it.

** Tying in to the "you're a soul spirit" idea, fall damage was vastly more lenient here than it would be in later titles, barring ''[[VideoGame/SekiroShadowsDieTwice Sekiro]]'', whose "You are a master shinobi" logic allows you take falls from up to a hundred feet without damage. The idea seems to be that, as a semi-incorporeal ''ghost'', falling down isn't as big a deal for you... though you can still take equally big plunges as a human. Taking levels in dexterity allows you to take even less fall damage. There's a few places where the game even expects you to make use of your generous fall damage allotment.

** Tying in to ''that'', the game lacks something that will feel jarring to later ''Souls'' veterans: plunging attacks. You can't attack at all while falling, which is likely to feel very, very strange to players of later games. The most you can do is land on an enemey, which will do a few damage and probably stun them.

** The Tower of Latria's prison guards. They have powerful long range attacks that will tear you to bits if your character doesn't have good magic defense, and if you try to close the distance, they can hit you with a paralyzing attack before running over and eating your brain.

* EvilIsEasy: The only way to obtain Pure White Character Tendency is to kill certain Black Phantoms, those being either the Black Phantom versions of [=NPCs=] that appear in Pure White ''World'' Tendency, or invading players. This means you either have five chances per cycle to raise it, or you'll have to fight actual players. To obtain Pure Black Character Tendency instead, all you have to do is pick some [=NPCs=] to slaughter (though invading as a Black Phantom and killing the host works too), with there already being three or four in the Nexus that you won't particularly miss[[note]]The Crestfallen Warrior if you don't run out what he has to say and the Acolyte of God, for supplying nothing but dialogue, Freke's Apprentice for becoming obsolete when Sage Freke is rescued, and the Worshipper of God for only giving you some stuff if you talk to her while your Faith is 20 or higher before rescuring Saint Urbain)[[/note]]. Considering that EvilPaysBetter as stated below, it's hard to see from a pure mechanical standpoint how sticking to Pure White Character Tendency is really worth it.

** The [[spoiler: area below the Nexus]] has insurmountable knee high stone blocks that keep you from just wandering off into the wastes.

* LightningBruiser: Any boss that's sufficiently fast is this due to the high damage output in the game. Notably, the Flamelurker can access anywhere in the arena in seconds and uses its speed to overwhelm the player by closing any safe distance. The Maneaters meanwhile are highly aggressive and frequently charge the player. If they take enough damage, they fly off near instantly to escape the hits and come back just as hard. And there's two of them.

** This is because has the full Brushwood set, a Purple Flame Shield, and possibly a Flame Resistance Ring, meaning that he laughs at flame attacks. This set up can in turn make Flame Lurker reasonably easy as barring his claws, he loses much of his fire power.

* PlayerKilling: Invasion is a mechanic allowing Soul Form players to enter the games of Body Form players in order to revive into Body Form themselves. Invaders are called "Black Phantoms" and use the Black Eye Stone in engage this mechanic.

* SerialKiller: Yurt, who begins killing people in the Nexus if you free him and do not immidiately kill him.

** Many fans are convinced that the game is full of [[http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o312/oracrest/Demons%20Souls/1271717936246.jpg references]] to {{Manga/Berserk}}, although most of these things are widespread enough that they could have come from from other sources and Miyazaki's mention of ''Berserk'' in a certain interview has been [[GodNeverSaidThat blown out of proportion]] by the fans.

** Magic is fueled by the energy of souls. The npcs are pretty verbal about this, and is part of the reason why magic in any form is considered a dark art by the church.

* StormingTheCastle: The entirety of the Boletarian Palace is essentially this spread over the whole game. Along the way you'll end up killing most of Boletaria's remaining knights and soldiers.

* WhamEpisode: The final stage of the Valley of Defilement. All the previous zones have had massive, near-godlike Archdemons as their bosses, demonstrating that the Fog is capable of corrupting damn near anything into a serious threat. The Valley's Archdemon is [[spoiler: Maiden Astraea, the helpful WhiteMage you've been hearing about. In a twist, not only is she still in control of herself, but she's actually ''helping'' the Defiled Ones of the valley and easing their suffering. Unfortunately you still need to put her down since the mere presence of the Archdemons is corrupting the world. As the player approaches Astraea's abode, her protector Garl Vinland fights them delivers a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech to the player and Boletaria in general for abandoning the people of the Valley, and Astrea's entourage, to die in the terrible conditions of the swamp.]]

* WreakingHavok: There's plenty of destructable set pieces in all the worlds, but the real fun comes from killing basic enemies and running into their corpses and enjoying the subsequent flailing of disturbing creature's ligaments.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: ''Bluepoint's'' remake added quite a few; polishing the game's somewhat archaeic systems without changing the core gameplay structure. Many of these have been taken from later entries in the ''Souls'' series, such as ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'' and ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}''.
** The remake allows for omni-directional rolling, in contrast to the original title only allowing for four-directional. This make's it alot easier to properly dodge enemey attacks, and counter them.
** The player is able to use multiple soul items at a time, rather then being forced to go into the menu again and again after each usuage.
** While inventory weight is still present, the remake now gives the player an option to directly store found loot in the Nexus, rather then being forced to drop held items to make room in the inventory.
** Weapons and armor are grouped and sorted in the player inventory by how powerful there stats are.

* DevelopersForesight: In the Bluepoint remake, there's an unmarked sidequest to collect 13 Ceramic Coins to open up a hidden door. If you try to trade with another player to get 13 coins without collecting them, the coins shatter from being dropped on the ground.

* MultipleEndings

* OminousFog: With soul-hungry demons in it.

* OurSoulsAreDifferent

** The Old Monk, master of the Tower of Latria, who overthrew the rightful king and queen of Latria and began to conduct foul magical experiments on their people, turning them into the army of demons you face in the level. [[spoiler: He's eventually revealed to be a mere pawn for the possessed magical robes he wears, which are the real demon you need to face]].

''Demon's Souls'' is a UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 game made by Creator/FromSoftware (in collaboration with Sony's JAPAN Studio), directed by Creator/HidetakaMiyazaki, and published in the US by Creator/{{Atlus}}, Europe by Creator/BandaiNamcoEntertainment, and Japan and SE Asia by Sony. It is most notably the TropeMaker for the entire Main/SoulsLikeRPG sub-genre.

A SpiritualSuccessor / NonLinearSequel, ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsI'', was released in 2011, and it was the first of [[VideoGame/DarkSouls a trilogy]]. A second SpiritualSuccessor for UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'', followed in 2015. Meanwhile, an outright [[VideoGameRemake remake]] for UsefulNotes/PlayStation5 by Creator/BluepointGames and Creator/SIEJapanStudio was released as a [=PlayStation=] 5 launch title in 2020.