Dark Souls wasn’t a sequel to Demon’s Souls though, it was a spiritual successor. Those were the exact words used by Miyazaki himself. Dark Souls II actually IS a sequel though, so yeah, I think it makes perfect sense why people tirelessly compare the two games more often than Dark Souls 1 gets compared to Demon’s.
I agree about pretty much all of your sentiments towards Demon’s Souls. The pace of combat was awesome, the levels were focused and VERY different from one another, and The Nexus is still the coolest hub out of all the souls games. It’s still a great looking game, the voice acting is great (as it always is in these games) and the soundtrack perfectly supplemented the eerie tone the game constantly had you playing within. Demon’s Souls had such an unforgiving atmosphere compared to the other games imo, which is why for a long time I really thought I’d end up liking it more than Dark Souls 1. Valley of Defilement is still my favorite area in a Souls game period; I could go on for days about how every single nook and cranny of that level’s design is utterly DRIPPING with tension and atmosphere. I used to spend hours upon hours just walking around in the area, wandering, seeing if there were any secrets I’d missed, hoping I would run into an invader or trying to invade others myself. And this was well after I had already cleared out all the bosses. Maiden Astraea is still probably my second favorite Souls boss ever.
Demon’s Souls lore in general is also just incredible.
But does it have better bosses all in all? Naw, I can’t agree there. There’s just too many amazing bosses from DS1 that take precedence over the ones in Demon’s Souls. For me, at least. Orstein & smough is iconic, the Asylum Demon is too. Artorias is one of the most ferocious and well designed enemies I’ve ever seen in a game period, and the way Dark Souls hinted towards him throughout the main game was genius. Then you got stuff like Sif, Seath, Gwyndolin, Quelaag, Priscilla, Gaping Dragon, Manus, ect ect ect…not all of them may have been SUPER challenging, but almost every single boss in Dark Souls 1 is memorable imo. I didn’t feel that way about a lot of bosses in Demon’s like the Penetrator or The Monk.
World Tendency was kind of a cool mechanic at first, but…as I played Demon’s Souls more and more I think I started to dislike it. You pretty much got punished for playing in Human Form, when it was already hard enough to play in that form anyway considering how rare Ephemeral Eyes were. But World Tendency piled on top of it by increasing the enemy difficulty EVERY time you died in Human Form, which is dumb as shit. I also thought it was kind of dumb that playing online made World Tendency random and erratic, because instead of it shifting based on just YOUR actions, it would be a combination of EVERYONE’S actions who were also playing the game online. Which meant one day you’d log into the game and everything is normal, and another you’d log in and all of a sudden all enemies have insane health and are much more aggressive. It included bosses too.
I dunno, to me Dark Souls is like the Metroid Prime 2 of the Souls games. The first game (Demon’s Souls/Metroid Prime 1) was excellent and managed to be an incredible game with lots of charm despite all the arbitrarily dumb things that brought it down. Then Dark Souls came out and it near perfectly fixed anything that could’ve been wrong mechanics wise with Demon’s Souls, while still retaining ALL of the things that made Demon’s such an amazing game. It found a perfect harmony between borrowing concepts from the previous game while also giving itself its own identity.
That all being said, if there’s even a single Souls game you haven’t tried, I would say you’re missing out. But I will always recommend Dark Souls 1 above all else.
you’re introduced to a game where skinny motherfuckers are making you actually feel the weight of their attacks irl, and then, you get put in a room with a GIANT fucking KNIGHT lmao with dudes shooting arrows from the sides