kyteki

I thought it was the rats the tight space that made the fight difficult. I used an immediate firebomb to take out one rat then moved around and used another bomb to kill the other. Once they were gone taking on the demon himself wasn't so hard. This was after my 3rd or 4th try at around level 30ish I believe.

Yeah I totally know what you mean by the input lag. Happens all over the game. It's not enough to be a game killer but when the input lag happens it can be devastating. I'm really hoping it's something that can be addressed in the upcoming patch.

Didn't notice a frame rate problem for that boss. Did you try a disc install on your Xbox360? I'm running my game from the hard drive.

I would just play Dark Souls now and go back to Demon Souls if you still got the itch. Online play doesn't seem like that big of a deal. I'm more of a single player type of gamer but I did do some player summoning to help with bosses and had a good time with it. I haven't been invaded yet, but most of the time I'm in hollow form due to dying a lot.

Another thing to consider... I picked up a cheap copy of Demon Souls (have already spent a lot of time in Dark Souls). One thing I noticed right away was how smooth Demon Souls actually runs compared to Dark Souls. The frame rate in Dark Souls is tolerable, but it's not good.