Having just finished and thoroughly enjoying Dark Souls, I'm thinking about buying Demon's Souls when I get paid. So I want to know what the differences in gameplay, I'm pretty sure it's not open world, right? Does it control pretty much the same and is it more or less the same difficulty?

It's very similar. But the levels/areas are connected in a different way. You have a hub world and go through different portals to reach the different worlds. 5 portals with 3 levels each I think. Might be a 4th level in the first world. And there are no fires to kindle, and no humanity. You have spice and grass for recovering health and mana. I like Demon's Souls a little more than Dark Souls, but it was the first I played so that may be why.

It is not open-world. There are different worlds and those worlds each have multiple boss fights separating "sections" of the world. Most people will tell you to tackle each world's first section before pushing deeper in. A guide will describe it better than I can.

As far as I remember, it controls identically with a few minor differences. As for the difficulty, I remember having more trouble with Demon's Souls than Dark Souls, but they are probably pretty on par with one another.

There are some differences, yes. The combat itself feels very similar to Dark Souls, but there are no limitations on the use of magic or healing. You can have 99 healing items for example. In that regard it is easier than Dark Souls. It has a hub world, the Nexus. From there you travel to five different locations that are divided into 3-4 stages each, with a boss fight at the end of every stage. There are no bonfires within the levels, but you can open a lot of shortcuts to make the way to and from the Nexus faster. Oh, and you can't jump.

For me personally Demon's Souls is the harder game. There are no NPC summons for bosses for example and the World Tendency stuff is pretty obscure in the beginning (I recommend looking at a wiki for this).

If you enjoyed Dark Souls I'm pretty sure you will enjoy Demon's Souls as well.

If you want to see how it plays beforehand look at a Let's Play of the first stage (EpicNameBro's Demon Days Series on Youtube is a good place to start).

combat sort of feels the same,  I'd say difficulty is a bit more brutal in Demon's Souls mostly because there isn't a bonfire checkpoint system, when you die you basically start the whole level over, unless you open up some shortcuts on the way.  The game is worth playing though if you really enjoy Dark Souls and want more of the same type of game.

I enjoyed Demons more than Dark.

Just make sure you tackle it 1-1, 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, 1-2, 2-2, 3-2. 4-2 etc etc

bows are your friend.

dex builds are pretty insane cos you can forge your weapons for dex scaling in demons.

magic/strength builds also pretty badass. especially if you get a mana regen/magic scaling weapon like the schimitar on 4-1.

Also no armour upgrades. just weapons.

Endurance goes to 40. for every build. no higher. ever. Just need weight under 50% to have fastest roll and run speeds.

Oh and you need mega poison resistance and the ring that lets you walk fast through water. cos there is a seriously dangerously horrible bog that will kick your ass over and over in world 5.

The most important thing for a new player is to kill yourself in the nexus after each boss. In this way you skew all the worlds towards light world tendency. When you kill a boss character you get your body back and the world gains light world tendency which makes enemies hits hurt less and gives you a health benefit (tendencies also effect world events). However if your body is killed in one of the worlds then you gain dark world tendency. this makes the game harder. You can die as much as want as a ghost with no tendency effects.

killing your body in the nexus has no effect.

Do it. Play Demon's Souls.

Do it NOW, while the pure white world tendency event is still going on. Makes a number of events accessible that are HELL to get to otherwise.

And yes, it is the better game in every way possible.

Story is better. Astraea will make you cry.

Boss battles are SOOOO much better.

Difficulty overall is much more satisfying. There is nothing like a phantom black skellie in Dark. There is no section like 1-2 approaching tower knight with blue eye approaching and arrows raining down on you.

Ugh trust me, just get it. :)

-No kicking, instead you get a polite shove

-No jumping, you can still run

-Stack healing items / useable items up to 99

-The storage is done through an NPC in the nexus, if you kill him, all of your stuff that he held is gone

-Maiden in Black is best NPC

if i recall correctly, there's no kick. also no specific falling attack.

other than that it's pretty much the same. make sure you read up on world tendencies at some point, as that can be a bit tedious to figure out on your own.

and haniball's right about a fair bit of things. the story's better, the boss battles are far more interesting, and there are definitely more sequences that require much more care than anything in dark souls. also the music is better.

There is MP in demon's souls, and no checkpointy bonfires. But there is the maiden in black.......sweet sweet maidenin black.

Combat is the same, just now you don't have limited healing items or limited number of spell casts as it is based on mana. Spells are also fairly similar though there are some slight differences and Dark Souls had more spells in general. The game is divided into 4 "worlds" commonly referred to by titles like 1-2 meaning world one, the second section.

The biggest difference is that the game is still hard, just never cheap aside from one spot in the game. The levels are better designed with more hidden paths and optional routes. The best boss of either game is in DS (Old Monk). Like Haniball said it is the better designed game. Not that Dark Souls sucks it just tried to fix a lot of things that weren't broke and many of it's changes didn't feel like improvements to me.

@Karkarov: "combat is the same" ...

That, coming from you... Made me question my own opinionated take there for a second :) But... no, it's not the same. Early game yes. Except the rolling is a little more sluggish until you find the DWG ring.

But nowadays? It feels like Dark is more about homing magic, ninja flips, and the backstab box is as big as the ancient dragon..

Demon's is less flashy. But as you say. Moments like the old monk where you actually get to BE somebody elses boss? Priceless. (except the weasly little lizard on that level whom I do NOT endorse!)

@Morningstar said:

It's very similar. But the levels/areas are connected in a different way. You have a hub world and go through different portals to reach the different worlds. 5 portals with 3 levels each I think. Might be a 4th level in the first world. And there are no fires to kindle, and no humanity. You have spice and grass for recovering health and mana. I like Demon's Souls a little more than Dark Souls, but it was the first I played so that may be why.

Each world has different numbers of levels but other then that it's a pretty good summery of the game. I would just like to add that Demon's Souls is much more punishing and that the online is way better.

@_Chad: You've made the right choice, the real demons souls starts here.

@mordukai said:

@Morningstar said:

It's very similar. But the levels/areas are connected in a different way. You have a hub world and go through different portals to reach the different worlds. 5 portals with 3 levels each I think. Might be a 4th level in the first world. And there are no fires to kindle, and no humanity. You have spice and grass for recovering health and mana. I like Demon's Souls a little more than Dark Souls, but it was the first I played so that may be why.

Each world has different numbers of levels but other then that it's a pretty good summery of the game. I would just like to add that Demon's Souls is much more punishing and that the online is way better.

I stand corrected =)

I can understand why some people love Dark Souls so much as I always look back fondly to Demons Souls, those eerie levels and first time discovering all that magic and wonder the game had to offer. The feeling of defeating the Tower Knight and that terrifically spooky Tower of Latria.

Also I think any Demons Souls player has the sedating music from the Nexus firmly ingrained in their minds by now.

I simply didn't get the same sense of wonder and enjoyment out of Dark Souls, but I can see why others do love it so much.

@Humanity: For me I played Demon's Souls first, and tried a few characters, but only finished it once. I didn't properly "learn the game" or get into different builds or stuff until Dark Souls, which I think is why I like that better.

Well, as soon as it gets delivered and get that last miracle in Dark Souls so I have the S rank for it, I'll be good to go. Thanks for the Info guys.

As for how the game controls, I found Demon's Souls to be more squirrely. It might just be because it has less encumbrance grades though. What I really should warn you about though (having gone through the same thing recently) is that Demon's Souls is severely lacking compared to Dark Souls when it comes to equipment diversity. There are classes that can go through almost the whole game without finding an upgrade to their starting armor, as a caster you can pretty much use your starting spell through the entire first playthrough, and other than that once you're free to go where you want it's possible to very quickly stumble on to gear that's just dominates everything else for quite a while.

@JackSukeru said:

@Humanity: For me I played Demon's Souls first, and tried a few characters, but only finished it once. I didn't properly "learn the game" or get into different builds or stuff until Dark Souls, which I think is why I like that better.

Yes it is the same for me, finished Demon's Souls once, imported the Hong Kong version which had an English option, but personally I think that Dark Souls does a lot of things better. DeS had more memorable bosses though, only O&S and the DLC bosses can compare to DeS bosses.

@HaniBall: I wasn't trying to be specific. There are a ton of small differences between the two games combat but in the end anyone who played Dark will be able to get Demon's fast and vice versa. That's all I really mean when I say combat is mostly the same.