With some 8 days remaining until Elden Ring launches, it seems unlikely that I’ll finish Demon’s Souls before then, which puts me in a bit of a sticky situation.

Demon's Souls (PS5) - Progress and Plan

16 February, 2022. 519 words.

With some 8 days remaining until Elden Ring launches, it seems unlikely that I’ll finish Demon’s Souls before then, which puts me in a bit of a sticky situation.

Thusfar I’ve completed these areas in the PS5 remake of Demon’s Souls, roughly in this order, to match the progress that I made on the PS3:

1-1 Boleterian Palace (Phalanx)
1-2 The Lord’s Way (Tower Knight)
2-1 Stonefang Tunnels (Armored Spider)
2-2 Tunnel City (skipped boss)
3-1 Prison of Hope (Fool’s Idol)
3-2 Upper Latria (skipped boss)
4-1 Island’s Edge (skipped boss)

That’s how much I finished on the PS3, which, it turns out, is less than the half of the game that I originally thought it was. I then went on to these new areas in the PS5 remake so far:

2-2 Tunnel City redux (Flamelurker)
2-3 Underground Temple (Dragon God)
1-3 Inner Ward (Penetrator)
1-4 King’s Tower (skipped boss because I think it’s the last one)
5-1 Depraved Chasm (Leechmonger)
4-1 Island’s Edge redux (Adjudicator)

Most of that is on my super popular Twitch channel without any commentary, titles, or descriptions.

I looked up a list of the traditional progression path in Demon’s Souls and naturally I’ve been doing it all wrong. You’re supposed to go through just the first (easiest) area of each Archstone first, then go back to do the harder areas later, as opposed to methodically going through each Archstone in order until you get stuck, which was more of my natural inclination.

In typical From Software fashion, there’s no instructions in the game on how to progress, so you have to figure it out in the old school manner by trial and error–finding the places where you don’t get killed. Or just read what somebody else figured out before you.

So with the traditional progression path in mind, here’s my general plan to finish up the game:

3-2 Upper Latria (Maneater, which I couldn’t beat on the PS3, for reasons I can’t remember, but I know it drove me completely insane.. probably because it was such a pain to run back to it)
4-2 The Ritual Path (Boss unknown)
5-2 Swamp of Sorrows (Boss unknown). Heard so many lovely tales over the years about this area.
3-3 (Boss unknown)
4-3 (Boss unknown)
5-3 (Boss unknown)
1-4 The King’s Tower (Boss unknown but everyone in the game says it’s–not surprisingly–the king). Biore warned me to “beware the limits of your own power,” and Ostrava advised me to go get a sword in a mausoleum first (which I did–Demonbrandt).
There’s some optional bosses along the way, like a red and blue dragon, and a Vanguard.

The real point of this post is to write down that progression path, in case I get completely distracted by Elden Ring and forget it.

I only have one more weekend to do all of that before Elden Ring comes out. I’m planning to play Elden Ring on the PC though, which means I’m going to try to use mouse and keyboard, which means theoretically I can still play Demon’s Souls on the weekends and play Elden Ring during the week.

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