I just got the Demon King Greataxe and am wondering what stats I need to use it. I figure I need to pump up my strength, but how much do I need?

While you have your "cursor" over the weapon, press the, I believe, x button (square on ps3) and in the window that pops up it will show four stats at the bottom right. First one is strength, second is dex, third is probably magic, and the fourth I think is faith.

@ImmortalSaiyan: Yup what SuperWristBands said, though if you go into the equipment screen pressing that button will only unequip the weapon so you'll have to do it in the Inventory screen. The button is tagged "Toggle Display" and you should do this for all possible items to figure out more. The part you're looking for is named ReqParam (Required Parameters),

While we're on the subject the one right next to it is called ParamBonus (Parameter Bonus) and shows you a ranking from E to S (as in E, D, C, B, A and S as the highest ranking, cause Japan). The higher that ranking is the more attack you gain for each point put in that attribute. A normal Hand axe, for example, has a C in Strength and a D in Dexterity, this means that the weapon will get a little more of an attack bonus from points put into Strenght than from points put into Dexterity (and NO attack bonus from points put into Intelligence and Faith).

You can see the number of extra points you get as a bonus by looking at the weapons ATK section at the same screen. The first number is the base stats of the weapon, the second number after the + sign is the bonus.

It took me a long time before I realized this while playing Demon's Souls so I hope that helps out.

@RockmanBionics: I played through all of Demon's Souls a few times and I had no idea how to tell how a weapon scales. Thanks for that.

@SuperWristBands: Yeah it's kind of a bummer and definetly something that should have been explained in the game or the manual. At least it has a tooltip if you press select in that menu in Dark Souls, even if it doesn't show that you can press select at that particular screen...

I only figured it out myself because I was upgrading my Moon Spear in the first game and noticed that the only thing that changed in the later parts of th upgrade path was that the ranking went from a C to a B and the stat went from "115 +30" to "115 +45" or something.