5 years later, this excellent remake is still a defining PS5 game

The PlayStation 5 just turned five years old, and, as with any new console, it's the launch titles that make or break it. With the PS5, however, it's hard to overstate just how integral its launch titles were, considering the time Sony's ninth-generation console came out in. Between Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Demon's Souls, it's impossible to look back at the latter without reverence.

This brilliant remake of the PS3 exclusive that birthed the Soulsborne genre was essentially the PlayStation 5's thesis statement, and five years later, it holds up incredibly well, remaining one of the best exclusives on this console. Demon's Souls remake on the PS5 brought with it a new generation, and became a crown jewel for Sony that still shines brighter than almost anything else in its library.

Demon's Souls was the first true 'next-gen' showcase on the PS5

Everything else could either be played on the PS4, or wasn't a proper AAA title

At launch, the PlayStation 5's console-only exclusive list wasn't a long one. In fact, outside of Demon's Souls, there was just Astro's Playroom — a short technical showcase, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (a PS4 remaster), Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which was the only other AAA action-adventure launch title that was a PS5-original and exclusive, and even that was a cross-gen game. This made Demon's Souls the first and only PS5-exclusive, next-gen AAA game at launch.

It was also the closest thing we had to a next-gen tech demo that was also a masterpiece. Every inch of the game screamed, "This is what your new console can do." The instantaneous load times between zones felt otherworldly, and the glistening reflections off your knight's armor just commanded you to stare in awe. This was the PS5 flexing muscles we didn't know consoles could even have.

Then, there was the jump to 60fps. Sure, PCs had been there ages ago, but at 4K resolutions on consoles, 60fps had only been a dream until 2020. Moreover, every clang of a sword and burst of flame in the game reverberated with the crispness of the DualSense haptics, feeling like yet another revelation back then.

We'd grown accustomed to thinking that "next-gen" meant just photorealism, but Demon's Souls reminded us that true immersion comes from cohesion, and it showed us a perfect example of it with its lighting, sound design, performance, and responsiveness, all working in tandem to prove that the next generation of gaming was upon us. Five years later, very few games have managed to replicate that same sense of discovery and awe.

Demon's Souls is still quintessentially "PlayStation"

Half-a-decade later, it's still the PS ethos on a disc

Every generation has had its defining "PlayStation" moment. On the PS2, it was undoubtedly Shadow of the Colossus. On the PS3, Uncharted 2. The PS4 had too many to pick from, but 2018's God of War felt defining. For the PS5, it was, without a doubt, Demon's Souls. No, it is not the console's best-selling game. It's definitely not the flashiest or the most accessible, either. But it feels quintessentially PlayStation — confident, beautiful, challenging, and introspective.

Bluepoint's remake embodied innovation through artistry, spectacle through subtlety, and it was a love letter to the past as a demonstration of what the future could look like when handled with care. It almost feels poetic in hindsight — the PS5's defining launch title being a remake of a PS3 game that never quite got its due. It was a full-circle moment, with the underdog that started the Souls phenomenon finally returning home, but this time as a king.

I might be part of a minority here, but playing Demon's Souls in the winter of 2020 felt like a powerful moment where Sony stayed true to delivering standalone experiences instead of leaning into service models and Game Pass expansions. I remember the feeling of standing before the Tower Knight for the first time, my heart pounding — the DualSense still felt like a stranger in my hand, the frames and visual fidelity were hard to believe, and as I sat there completely immersed, it was all I could to do to not say "that's PlayStation" out loud.

This became the perfect remake

It became the only way to relive the birth of Souls

Bluepoint Games had the unenviable task of rebuilding one of the most revered (and misunderstood) cult classics in modern gaming. 2009's Demon's Souls on the PlayStation had made its way to shelves after climbing out of development hell, birthing the entire Soulsborne genre as we know, and consequentially changing gaming forever in its own way. Demon's Souls stumbled so that its future siblings could run, and Bluepoint gave it the reverence it rightfully deserved.

With 2020's Demon's Souls, Bluepoint improved Boletaria in every way, and I'm so glad they never tried to "reimagine it". The punishing difficulty was kept intact, the labyrinthine level design was unspoiled, and the strange, melancholic tone that kept making the controller heavier every hour was left undisturbed. The changes they did make were all for the better — environmental detail, character models, and boss animations. In fact, even those were remade with an incredible amount of restraint. There's no denying it when you see the Tower Knight looming over you, or when the Vanguard Demon crushes you like an insect — the spirit of Demon's Souls was kept absolutely intact.

Now, I know a lot of people have their fair share of complaints about the newer soundtrack, but it was still just as haunting, and it gave the original PS3 game's musical motifs new life. There's no way to overstate just how brilliantly the eerie, isolating stillness remained pure in Bluepoint's remake. The PS5's Demon's Souls is quite literally a time machine, letting us revisit the same world the way we remembered it in our heads from when we played 2009's original as teenagers.

It's still the quiet masterpiece it has always been

Both Demon's Souls versions have always gone criminally underrated

Looking back, Demon's Souls doesn't really scream next-gen anymore, but it still whispers it. You'd think that looking at games like Ghost of Yotei and Death Stranding 2, which have genuinely propelled PS5 exclusives into the stratosphere, one would think that a five-year-old title couldn't go toe-to-toe with those games, but Demon's Souls absolutely can, and does. Without any cinematic QTEs, live-service hooks, or social integrations, Demon's Souls makes you, your sword, and a punishing world the entire experience, and it makes it unforgettable.

Half-a-decade later, it still defines the PS5's identity, because it represents the kind of experience that transcends hardware cycles. This is pure craftsmanship that you can still experience only on a PlayStation 5 — not on PC, and not on Xbox. We're in a console generation where exclusivity lines are blurring, but even then, Demon's Souls stands as a relic of something far purer.

For me, Demon's Souls is still the PS5 game. It's the one that justified the console and still does, the one that aged gracefully, and the one that captured what PlayStation has always stood for: beauty, challenge, and soul.

Demon's Souls

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RPG

Systems

OpenCritic Reviews

Top Critic Avg: 92/100 Critics Rec: 99%

Released

November 12, 2020

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Violence

Developer(s)

Bluepoint Games

Publisher(s)

Sony

Engine

Proprietary Engine

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer

Franchise

Dark Souls

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Where to play

Close

WHERE TO PLAY

SUBSCRIPTION

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DIGITAL

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PHYSICAL

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One of the toughest games you'll play on the PlayStation 5, Demon's Souls is a classic From Software game.

Genre(s)

RPG

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Demon's Souls still justifies a PS5 purchase

The holiday season is right around the corner, and a fair share of my friends have been debating among themselves, trying to justify a potential PS5 purchase. After all, apart from a handful of major AAA first-party titles, every other PS5 game is also playable on PCs, which they do have. Demon's Souls, however, is one game that has no plans of making its way over to PC, which is simply not going to be the case for other 'exclusives'.

Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei, and even Wolverine and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. These are all games from studios or publishers that have already made their way to PC, but Demon's Souls, much like Bloodborne before it, might remain a true exclusive forever. And as long as it remains that way, there will always be a reason to pick up a PlayStation 5.