History VideoGame / DemonsSouls

* BigBad: A toss-up between The Old One or [[spoiler:King Allant.]] The Old One is heavily implied to be a [[ForceOfNature force of nature]] that is simply responding to the misuse of the souls of the deceased. Meanwhile [[spoiler:King Allant deliberately awakened the Old One by reestablishing the soul arts, and making a pact with it to become the commander of it’s demon army, all because he believed the world was too cruel and depressing to go on.]] By the games end, [[spoiler:After killing Allant, the player themselves can chose to become the new Big Bad by backstabbing the Maiden In Black and becoming the Old One’s new servant.]]

* BigBad: The Old One.

* ApocalypseHow: Class 0. The last time the Old One was released, Boletaria went from a united utopia to a collection of small regions, each given an Archstone to be ready in case it ever woke up again. The rest of the kingdom was destroyed, though the separate regions still seemed to do well enough in rebuilding. The regions players travel to throughout the game are all that's left from the last time the Old One woke up, and even among the six Archstones, something happened to the northern giants that prevents their land from being visited, as their Archstone is destroyed in the Nexus. When [[Spoiler:King Allant awakens the Old One again, he hopes to achieve a Class 2 by having the deep fog spread across the whole world, and it’s the players goal to stop that from happening… or to simply take his place.]]

* ApocalypseHow: Class 0. The last time the Old One was released, Boletaria went from a united utopia to a collection of small regions, each given an Archstone to be ready in case it ever woke up again. The rest of the kingdom was destroyed, though the separate regions still seemed to do well enough in rebuilding. The regions players travel to throughout the game are all that's left from the last time the Old One woke up, and even among the six Archstones, something happened to the northern giants that prevents their land from being visited, as their Archstone is destroyed in the Nexus. When [[Spoiler: King Allant awakens the Old One again, he hopes to achieve a Class 2 by having the deep fog spread across the whole world, and it’s the players goal to stop that from happening… or to simply take his place.]]

* ApocalypseHow: Class 1. The last time the Old One was released, the world went from a united utopia to a collection of small kingdoms, each given an Archstone to be ready in case it ever woke up again. The rest of the world was destroyed, though the other regions still seemed to do well enough. The regions players travel to throughout the game are all that's left from the last time the Old One woke up, and even among the six Archstones, something happened to the northern giants that prevents their lands from being visited, as their Archstone is destroyed in the Nexus.

Set in the Kingdom of Boletaria, which was led to great prosperity by [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething King Allant XII]] with the use of the power of souls, until it was beset by a strange [[FogOfDoom colorless fog]] that isolated it from the rest of the world and brought soul-hungry demons with it.

After the world was let known of Boletaria's plight, legend spread of the chaos within the kingdom wreaked upon it by a beast from the Nexus and of the demons that grew ever more powerful with each soul they devoured. Many people went to Boletaria, either to save it from its plight or lured by the prospect of the power of souls, but all were lost in its chaos.

The game is set in the Kingdom of Boletaria, which was led to great prosperity by [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething King Allant XII]] with the use of the power of souls, until it was beset by a strange [[FogOfDoom colorless fog]] that isolated it from the rest of the world and brought soul-hungry demons with it.

** Depending on how you play the game, you may end up facing the final boss with the following equipment setup: The armor of [[BonusBoss an ancient demigod king]], a shield dedicated to the judge of fallen warriors, [[InfinityPlusOneSword a spear that is considered a Revelation From God (and boosted five times from the souls of demons)]], a bow forged from the soul of a DemonicSpider, and a divine talisman crafted in the image of the BigBad. Need I go on?

** The bad ending changes [[spoiler:how you disrespect the body of the Maiden in Black: the Slayer of Demons now ''steps on her head'' and pushes it into the water, much like how the Unkindled grinds the Fire Keeper's head into the dirt with their foot in the bad ending of ''VideoGame/Dark Souls III''.]]

** JackOfAllStats: The Soldier, The Hunter. The Soldier is more or less ''completely'' balanced, with a focus on melee combat with their decent armor, weapons, and shield. Can be spec'd later in most class archetypes. The Hunter is similar, but with a focus on ranged, due to starting with a bow.
** MightyGlacier: The Temple Knight, The Knight. The Temple Knight is this crossed with MagicKnight; they have a very good set of heavy weapon, alongside a powerful halberd and shield, but also begin with a healing spell, with enough faith to wield it. The Knight is a pure tank; with ludicrous health, stamina, and one of the best armor sets in the game. Do not expect to move fast or be able to do anything but fat roll with either of these classes, however.

** You are, however, advised not to attempt to parry Garl's Bramd when he starts two-handing it. He'll just plow through your parry and kill you. Similarly, the Penetrator's most dangerous attack, the lunging impale stab of death that autotracks to an extent, is unblockable and can't be parried, and will almost certainly kill you on the spot if you try.
* 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.

* DarkActionGirl: Mephistopheles, Oolan, Miralda, several unnamed Black Phantom invaders. Most of the women capable of fighting in ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' appear to be baddies.
* DarkIsNotEvil: The Maiden in Black. She has a pretty sinister moniker and an overall creepy vibe (what with her [[EyeScream wax-covered eyes]]), and happens to be one of the most powerful demons around. However, she is the only one who can lull the Old One back to sleep, and wants nothing more than to do so.

** By letting Ostrava die in 1-1 (whether to the hollows or pushing him into the fire), the player can obtain the key to the Boletarian Mausoleum, where Old King Doran guards the Demonbrandt. A fearsome red eye knight guards the door, but it is possible for a skilled or shrewd player to cheese it with backstabs or the nearby stairs. The player can then push Doran off a flight of stairs, collect their armor (one of the best medium sets in the game, although only male characters can use it) and ring (increases stamina regen, making it very good for melee-focused builds), and obtain Demonbrandt. Demonbrandt is unique in that it scales with white character tendency, meaning that you need to be very particular about not directly damaging the two NPC's you need to get it early, but if you can manage to get past all of that with your character tendency at neutral, the Demonbrandt has very high early game damage which will only get higher if you kill invaders or defeat the NPC black phantoms that spawn in Pure Black World Tendency.

** The density of background lore in item descriptions is lower in comparison to later games. For example, this game's Silver Demon's Soul has no lore in its item description, reading: "The Soul of the Demon 'Penetrator'. It radiates a strong power… Grants the holder a large number of Souls when used. Alternatively, it can be made into spells, miracles, or weapons." ''[[VideoGame/DarkSoulsI Dark Souls]]'''s Soul of Priscilla provides a bit more than a list of things that can be done with the soul, reading: "Soul of Priscilla the Crossbreed, trapped inside the painted world of Ariamis. Special beings have special souls. Use the soul of this crossbreed bastard child and antithesis to all life to acquire a huge amount of souls, or to create a unique weapon."

* EvilPaysBetter: The reward for gaining Pure White Character Tendency is the Friend's Ring, which increases damage dealt as a Blue Phantom by 20%. Neat if you tend to do that sort of thing[[note]]Though it's only applicable on private servers and the remake[[/note]], but you ultimately only need the one since you can't equip two of the same ring. For keeping Pure Black Character tendency, you get the Foe's Ring, which is the same thing but as a Black Phantom, but on top of that you get two extra Colorless Demon's Souls, which are difficult to acquire upgrade components of which there are only ten per game cycle, including these two. Not only that, but considering that EvilIsEasy and your Character Tendency has nothing to do with the ending you get, it's certainly the more attractive option between the two.

** There are items that cannot be found without the right World Tendency. Plus there are several visible side areas that can't be accessed and [=NPCs=] with side quests that can't be completed without the right Tendency. It's easy for players to get stuck trying to figure out a side quest or how to get into an area without realizing that they need to change the Tendency (which is itself a GuideDangIt). Probably the most notorious example is Lord Rydell in the Tower of Latria. You find him in his cell easily and you're given a definite clue as to where the key to his cell is, so you just need to find it, right? Wrong. You need to get Pure White World tendency for World 3 and then locate the key in World 3-2. It doesn't help that keys to cells and floors are already all over the first stage of the Tower of Latria and the clue you get can easily be interpreted as hinting that one of the Fat Officials in Worlds 1 or 2 is holding the key (and Fat Officials in 1-3 ''already'' have keys to prison cells holding other [=NPCs=]). The Internet is still rife with gamers demanding to know how they can save Lord Rydell after they've wasted hours trying in vain to find the right key.

** Maiden Astraea and Garl Vinland, are a more traditional example. Astraea commits to her sacred duties as a saint of the church, and Vinland protects her. Both are utterly devoted to one another, to the point where if one dies, the other can't go on living.

* UselessItem: The Blue, White, Red, and Black Eye Stones, the Friend's Ring, and the Foe's Ring became this once the online servers for the game went down. The Eye Stones are useless during offline play anyway, while the Friend's/Foe's Rings are useless for the boosts they give to Blue/Black Phantom forms respectively: all six items are only useful for 100% item completion purposes.

* 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.]]

* TheBlacksmith: The brothers Ed and Boldwin. The former resides in the Nexus, and the other is hidden in the Stonfeang Tunnel, and is able to enchant your weapons.

** You can also now select an area to warp to when resting at an archstone. You can even warp between worlds.

* PaperThinDisguise: Donning just the hat looted from the Fat Officials is enough to fool both the Fat Official holding Yuria the witch prisoner--who will lower a ramp for you and avoid attacking unless you take it off again--and Yuria herself. Bluepoint amended this in the 2020 remake by creating the rest of the set and requiring it for accessing Yuria, instead of just the hat.

* BlindIdiotTranslation: Fixed in the USA and European localisation. But in the Chinese/English version, while the [=NPC=]s and most important information show SurprisinglyGoodEnglish, some of the flavor text is borderline gibberish.

* WhipItGood: Fat Officials in Stonefang carry riding crops instead of their signature Great Axes. They don't hurt a lot, but if you block it, expect it to take off about 3/4ths of your stamina bar, if not completely guard break it.

** You can also now select an area to warp too when resting at an archstone as long as it's in the same world.
*** You can actually warp even between worlds.

* MissingSecret: The notorious sixth Archstone in the Nexus. According to the lore, six lands survived the calamity which occurred the last time the Old One awoke, with each having a corresponding Archstone in the Nexus. Five of these Archstones act as transport to the corresponding levels... but the sixth, which supposedly lead to the realm of the Giants, is broken in half and inaccessible, with the land having supposedly already been consumed by the fog. With the Archstone being so conspiciously different than the others and the idea raised of potentially glimpsing a land already in the grip of the Old Ones, many players expected the game to eventually provide an alternate way of reaching this sixth land; after all, [[LawOfConservationOfDetail why would the game so pointedly include the sixth Archstone at all?]] Except nope, it really is just a lore detail; the land of the giants never becomes accessible, and the sixth Archstone is never used for anything.

* CallForward: Bluepoint added several to the Remake as ContinuityNod towards the game's famous SpirtualSuccessor, ''VideoGame/DarkSouls''.
** The Archstones were redesigned to include a fiery, inferno motif to their stonework. It makes them resemble ''Dark Souls'' iconic BonfireOfComfort.

** MagicKnight: The Magician, The Priest. The Magician focus on Magic (hence mostly damaging magical projectiles) and has high intelligence, while the Priest uses Miracles (various healing spells and buffs to the player) with high faith.
** JackOfAllStats: The Soldier, The Hunter. The Soldier is more or less ''completely'' balanced, with a focus on melee combat with their decent armor, weapons, and shield. Can be spec'd later in most class archetype. The Hunter is similar, but with a focus on ranged, due to starting with a bow.
** MightyGlacier: The Temple Knight, The Knight. The Temple Knight is this crossed with MagicKnight; they have a very good set of heavy weapon, alongside a powerful halberd and shield, but also begin with a healing spell, with enough faith to wield it. The Knight is a pure tank; with ludicrous health, stamina, and one of the best armor sets in the game. Do not expect to move fast or be able to do anything but fat roll with either of these classes however.
** SquishyWizard: The Royalty. A slightly less intelligence focused spellcaster with a dual dexterity role; they begin with both the Soul Arrow spell, as well as a rapier, encouraging a lot of dodging mixed with magic usage. Most notably for the fact they start the game with the Fragrant Ring; which allows you to regen mana ''indefinitely'', making it infamous for being a GameBreaker and the class most new players should start with.

** The player character and the game's stages are altered by the [[KarmaMeter Tendency]] system, which was tied to both multiplayer and single-player. Negative actions (invading players, dying while in human form) would shift a player/world towards Black tendency, while positive actions (helping players, killing boss demons and enemy phantoms) pushed towards White tendency. This would have various effects on the world, like making monsters stronger or weaker, opening routes to various pieces of treasure, and revealing [=NPCs=]. Moreover, your personal tendency would affect the "Global World Tendency" toward White or Black. To date, no other [=FromSoftware=] games have included a world-altering mechanic like this, and item/sidequest availability is mostly dependent on player choice.

** Since the game was patterned after "older" [=RPGs=] (like From's own ''King's Field''), your inventory didn't exist in a complete {{Hammerspace}}. In addition to equip weight, you had to worry about the overall weight of your inventory, and would be unable to roll or run over 100% capacity. Healing herbs and bow ammunition also counted towards this weight. Every following ''Souls'' game would make inventory capacity nearly or completely unlimited.

** Character death was a bit odd--you have a "dead form" like other ''Souls'' games, but here not only does it make you simply a semi-translucent "soul" instead of a walking Hollow, the dead-form penalty is losing half your max HP. However, most enemies and bosses are balanced around you being in Soul form and thus will do quite a bit less damage than veterans of later games might expect, and the Cling Ring found very early on reduces the penalty to 20% reduction while equipped. This penalty isn't present in ''Dark Souls''. ''Dark Souls II'' played around with the idea of decreasing health on death, but it happened gradually as you died, and it also made sure that "re-humanizing" was much easier than in ''Demon's Souls'' (where revive items are rare, and co-op was a bit harder to pull off). ''Dark Souls III'' would later reintroduce the mechanic, but frame it differently: rather than halving your health after death, your health is increased when "embered", the equivalent of being in body form.
** Tying into 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. Fall damage also works differently in that falling to a certain distance will cause you to ''always'' die, no matter how high your health is. Later games would only tie this mechanic to specific, scripted locations, for example to prevent a player skipping the majority of Blighttown.

** The game is structured into five worlds that are teleported to from a HubLevel, instead of being a connected open world, which is unlike anything in the ''Souls'' series since (games like ''Bloodborne'' and ''Dark Souls III'' included central hubs, but their worlds are still interconnected). You have nearly complete freedom over where to go after defeating Phalanx, with the only restriction being that the second half of Boletarian Palace is locked behind fully clearing any other Archstone. While there is an intended final challenge in the form of Old/False King Allant, the game otherwise can be ended anytime after finishing all of the Archstones, with no dedicated end-game. The later ''Souls'' games and ''Bloodborne'' still allow for freedom in exploration, but tie things into a more solid progression structure with a beginning, middle, and end.

** The game only has sixteen bosses and none of them are optional, except for the Vanguard in the tutorial, which the player is meant to die to and not defeat. The game also largely falls into HardLevelsEasyBosses compared to the games that came after it; while reaching bosses is difficult due to a lack of checkpoints except after defeating a boss (which broke the game up into fairly clear-cut "levels") and a lower amount of shortcuts, most of the fights are fairly simple and slow-paced with a few exceptions. Later games in the same style would make bosses more challenging and more prominent.

* FlunkyBoss: The Phalanx Demon and The Tower Knight. For Phalanx, the boss itself is completely helpless, relying on the swarm of shield-bearing Hoplite soldiers that surrounds it for protection. The Tower Knight is quite formidable on his own, but is assisted by a squad of crossbowmen who constantly fire at you from the ramparts that you need to deal with before you can duel the Knight himself.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: One of the spears you can find is called a revelation from god. It's made completely from wood. [[spoiler: Since there is no god, only the Old One, that means the spear was made from a piece of the Old One himself.]]

* InfinityPlusOneSword: The Meat Cleaver, a large sword made from the Adjudicator demon's soul, has the best stat boosts in the game (it gets boosted by YOUR stats, not the other way around), having A's in strength and dexterity, and an S in Faith, meaning that as long as you work on those stats, its damage scales up much faster than any other weapon in the game. Although it is a bit bigger and slower than other swords, once the player passes a certain threshold, its damage leaves all other weapons in the dust.

** The [[{{BFS}} Dragon Bone Smasher]]. While it has "only" a B scaling in strength, it also has the highest Base Damage in the game, and can be enchanted. It's a bit held back by being very slow, but also has humongous swing arcs.

** And every enemy in the Valley of Defilement. All that filth must be very very flammable.

* LastOfHisKind: The Monumental. It sits on the higher of two floors, each with long walls lined with dozens of its similarly-dressed companions, all dead, each with a snuffed candle in front of them. The one living Monumental is the only one with a lit candle.

* TheMagicComesBack: The awakening of the Old One marked the return of the long-forgotten Soul Arts. Magic could be cast and miracles of God could be invoked again.

* MoneyIsExperiencePoints: Not only can you use souls to buy items, you can also use it to level up your stats.

* ObsoleteMentor: In a weird gameplay sort of way, rather than a narrative one. Freke's Apprentice will teach the player basic spells that only require regular souls to learn, and can set or change the player's loaded spells. When Freke is rescued, he does the same things on top of having a selection of spells that use boss souls instead, so Freke's Apprentice becomes the obvious obsolete mentor (The Disciple of God doesn't count, as he disappears outright once Urbain becomes available). The weird part is that this also applies to Freke himself, as Yuria also allows the player to manage their spells, including those taught by Freke, meaning that if you bought all of Freke's spells then there's nothing he can do that Yuria can't do just as well. Why this pushes Freke toward this position instead of Yuria is because of Mephistopheles. In order to get the Colorless Demon's Souls rewarded to you for killing Patches and Biorr, you also need to take out Freke and Urbain first. Yuria, on the other hand, is the final target given to you by Mephistopheles and killing her gets you the Foe's Ring, which on top of being useless offline is something that you would only ever need one of since you can't wear two of them at once (whereas Colorless Demon's Souls are used to upgrade special weapons and shields, and the ten per playthrough you can get is only good enough for two items). Thus, spellcasters who already have all of Freke's spells have nothing to lose by killing him for Mephistopheles since Yuria has them covered on everything, making him the second obsolete mentor.

* PinataEnemy: The miners with sacks and the Crystal Geckos. Both appear only a set amount of times per playthrough, making them very, very valuable.

* PurelyAestheticGender: Gender doesn't affect base stats; though it does affect which armor the player can wear. Female characters have exclusive access to Silver Bracelets (a gauntlet which increases the amount of souls you get every time you kill an enemy), the Binded armor set (light armor with high fire resistance, zero stamina regeneration penalty, and can be acquired as early as after the first boss) and others. On the other hand, males have exclusive access to the Old King armor Set (heavy armor with high fire resist and no stamina penalty), Dark Silver armor set (heavy armor with remarkably high magic resistance), and others. Overall, men get more suits of armour.

** Yet, when you get close to the blue dragon, it's swinging tail will suddenly aim at you & try to crush you. Maybe he's just pretending to take a nap.

** Another example is simply having 99 on all stats, due to the insanely curving amount of Souls needed to upgrade the more you go on. Full Brushwood Armor set (heaviest in the game) and dual wielding the Dragon Bone/Keel Smasher (also the heaviest in the game), ''and'' still able to keep it under half maximum equip burden for normal rolling? Experienced players' responses would be somewhere along the lines of: "Been there, done that."

* ShieldBearingMook: Hoplites, most [[HeavilyArmoredMook Blue-Eye and Red-Eye Knights]], certain Black Phantoms. Also includes a Shield Bearing Boss: the appropriately-named [[spoiler:Tower Knight, who bears an appropriately-sized tower shield for his stature, and spans several stories in height]].

** 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.

* StationaryBoss: The Armor Spider, Dragon God, and Leechmonger are all stationary, and the Adjudicator is so slow-moving and has so little room to move around in that it might as well be. Borderline cases include the Phalanx, the Dirty Collossus, and [[spoiler:the real King Allant]]. Whether or not [[spoiler:Maiden Astraea]] counts depends on whether you consider her the actual boss of her level at all.

* TurnsRed: When his health is getting low, the Flamelurker burns brighter and he attacks a lot more aggressively.

* WasOnceAMan: A number of bosses and enemies were normal humans before the fog consumed their souls and turned them into demons, for example the trio of black phantoms you meet after the dead dragon in 1-4. [[spoiler:They were the humans that turned into the bosses from 1-1 to 1-3]].

* XanatosGambit: The majority of the game involves the protagonist doing the legwork for one, since [[spoiler:the Old One will not allow the player near it until there are no longer any demons left to feed it souls. The protagonist has to go out and do the killing before anything can be done about the Old One. So either you feed it souls like it wants, or refuse and wander the fog until you wither away or something kills you, which would also please the Old One.]]

* By letting Ostrava die in 1-1 (whether to the hollows or pushing him into the fire), the player can obtain the key to the Boletarian Mausoleum, where Old King Doran guards the Demonbrandt. A fearsome red eye knight guards the door, but it is possible for a skilled or shrewd player to cheese it with backstabs or the nearby stairs. The player can then push Doran off a flight of stairs, collect their armor (one of the best medium sets in the game, although only male characters can use it) and ring (increases stamina regen, making it very good for melee-focused builds), and obtain Demonbrandt. Demonbrandt is unique in that it scales with white character tendency, meaning that you need to be very particular about not directly damaging the two NPC's you need to get it early, but if you can manage to get past all of that with your character tendency at neutral, the Demonbrandt has very high early game damage which will only get higher if you kill invaders or defeat the NPC black phantoms that spawn in Pure Black World Tendency.

* By letting Ostrava die in 1-1 (whether to the hollows or pushing him into the fire), the player can obtain the key to the Boletarian Mausoleum, where Old King Doran guards the Demonbrandt. A fearsome red eye knight guards the door, but it is possible for a skilled or shrewd player to cheese it with backstabs or the nearby stairs. The player can then push Doran off a flight of stairs, collect their armor (one of the best medium sets in the game, although only male characters can use it) and ring (increases stamina regen, making it very good for melee-focused builds), and obtain Demonbrandt. Demonbrandt is unique in that it scales with character tendency, meaning that you need to be very particular about not directly damaging the two NPC's you need to get it early, but if you can manage to get past all of that with your character tendency at neutral, the Demonbrandt has very high early game damage which will only get higher if you kill invaders or defeat the NPC black phantoms that spawn in Pure Black World Tendency.

** The crescent falchion in 4-1. Although it can carry you pretty far into the game if you know what you're doing.

* {{Antepiece}}: Several. Generally speaking the level following each archstone will teach the player how to deal with elements that will appear in the boss for that area:

** The player inventory groups and sorts weapons/armor by how powerful their stats are.
** Weapons all now have a small durability bar underneath their icons displayed on the item selection portion of the screen, and is especially useful for low durability equipment like the various katana's.

* ArmorIsUseless: The difference in defense provided by clothing and metal armor is surprisingly small--it matters a little in the early game, but is utterly dwarfed later on by how much defense you get from leveling up. By contrast, the equipment burden difference is ''enormous'' (the Fluted Set weights over three times as much as the Leather Set), going above 50% gives you a worse roll and slower stamina recovery, and heavy armor has its own stamina regeneration penalty even apart from equip burden percentage.

* BossArenaIdiocy: [[spoiler:The Dragon God has parked itself right in front of two ballistas, which were placed there by the Burrowers to be used in the event it ever resurrected. They perform their duty admirably.]]

* CallForward: Bluepoint added several to the Remake as ContinuityNod towards the game's famous Spirtual Succesor, ''VideoGame/DarkSouls''.
** The Archstones were redeisgned to include a fiery, inferno motiff to their stonework. It makes them resemble ''Dark Souls'' iconic BonfireOfComfort.
** Crests depicting a stylised sun have been added to the Royal Knights armor with their newly added FlavorText mentioning the royalty bears the sun as their crest. The Sun was a ''very promient'' ArcSymbol in ''Dark Souls'', and was the primary thing associated with the Royal Family of Anor Londo.

** FragileSpeedster: The Thief, The Wanderer. The Thief is focused more on the dodging and running aspect, while the Wanderer get's enhanced damage with their Falcion and Dagger.
** GlassCannon: The Barbarian. Armed with a club and heavy strength, but quite possibly the worst starting gear otherwise.

** SquishyWizard: The Royalty. A slighty less intelligence focused spellcaster with a duel dexterity role; they begin with both magic missile, as well as a rapier, encourging alot of dodging mixed with magic usage. Most notably for the fact they start the game with the Fragrant Ring; which allows you to regen mana ''indefinitely'', making it infamous for being a GameBreaker and the class most new players should start with.

* PaperThinDisguise: Donning just the hat looted from the Fat Officials is enough to fool both the Fat Official holding Yuria the witch prisoner--who will lower a ramp for you and avoid attacking unless you take it off again--and Yuria herself.