Which game is Harder Demon or Dark souls

Normally I don't like cheating, but in Demon's Souls the game is still fun, because it's still challengeing, if you limit yourself.

Here's the two things that made DeS easier than DkS: warding and second chance. Most bosses instantly became a joke when you had them. DeS was more annoying though, remember the boletarian soldiers with a ridiculous kick move that breaks your guard no matter how good your shield is, and don't even get me started on the pure bladestone...

Dark Souls is the more difficult game, purely due to refinement.
In Demons Souls, there is far too many ways to cheese things and become virtually invincible, such as pairing regeneration with second chance.

I'd like to note Demons Souls however is, IMO, the better game. I felt less restricted and more capable of doing whatever i like, so long as i had a clear goal in mind.

I personally found Deomon's Souls more difficult, as the enemies themselves were tougher (Think Black Skeletons and Red Eye Knights) than any enemies, or phantoms, in Dark Souls. I find the bosses were pretty even, with Flamelurker and Four Kings just about matching (Though I found Four kings easier), and The Storm King and Pinwheel almost matching (Though Pinwheel was undoubtedly easier).

The tall shadow men, the black skeletons, the watchers and the reapers in Demons Souls were all far more difficult than ANY enemy in Dark Souls, and that's not even counting at Pure Black world Tendency.

As regards Warding and Second Chance, doesn't Dark Souls have some very similar spells? I've never done the mage thing in Dark Souls but I've fought guys who were buffed with some spell and even backstabs only took a sliver of their hp.

Rynn wrote:Dark Souls is the more difficult game, purely due to refinement.
In Demons Souls, there is far too many ways to cheese things and become virtually invincible, such as pairing regeneration with second chance.

How do you mean pair them? You can't cast them at the same time as far as I know. And Second Chance wins out otherwise. Regeneration is fun to use with a faith build equipped with all the stacked regen gear but even then SC is better to use.

i played dark souls like i played demons souls with the item duplication glitch, i regrettably died more times in 4 hours than i ever did in demons souls through 1 playthrough.

now this just means 3 things, a) im a horrible player with no skills whatsoever and a dependent-on-glitches n00b (currently a fat-rolling knight) b) i believed in my demons-souls-playing skills too much and my ego got the best of me (walking with the bbs sword w/ matching light weapon miracle and dark silver shld in kick *** knight armor) or c) just plain old bad luck (fell off the aqueduct near the firelink shrine when suddenly a shield blocked my attack. twice. to the same monster)

now this doesnt mean dark souls is harder, i just feel like its harder because i glitched demons souls and it was pretty much a cakewalk for me. i would try the game without the glitch, but seriously, i wouldnt want to go through that hell again, especially that flamelurker, even with all the glitches i used on it (hiding in the bones), that thing is like 80% the source of my deaths.

The hardest boss of Demon's Souls was actually it's only hard boss. Flamelurker. Had to use the Thief Ring to kill that one in NG+.

It might be because I finished Dark Souls first, but Demon's Souls was the easier game for me. The Four Kings? Ornstein and Smough? Those guys still give me nightmares. On my first playthrough in which I couldn't parry a kid with a stick I had to try the Gwyn fight like ten times.

I found Dark Souls to be the harder game.

I find both games to be about the same in difficulty.

The bosses in Demon's Souls are fairly easy overall. Flamelurker is aggressive but with any ranged attack you can just endlessly roll backward and shoot until he dies with almost no fear of getting hit. Maneaters is a bit of a challenge if you don't kill the first one quickly but even then, they aren't all that aggressive. The biggest challenge I had in the Maneaters fight was not accidentally rolling off the ledge. Old Monk is the only one with real potential challenge as you can fight another player but it could also be real easy. The AI enemy is pretty easy.

As far as the levels go in Demon's Souls, they do force you to deal with the enemies much more than Dark Souls. In Dark Souls you can run past most enemies; in some cases, you can just keep sprinting until you get to the boss fog. Doing that was much harder in Demon's Souls as enemies often physically blocked your forward progression. However, when it comes to actually fighting enemies I think I have to give Dark Souls the upper hand. There are a lot more enemies in Dark Souls that take quite a bit of punishment before getting killed. For that reason alone, I'd say Dark Souls can be harder but not by much.

As an aside, I find the difficulty of the Black Phantom enemies in Demon's Souls to be highly exaggerated. I literally mash R1 to beat most of them, including that one in the poison swamp. It's so easy to keep Black Phantoms stunlocked that it takes almost all of the challenge out of the fight. Some of them, like Scirvir take a bit more caution but once I hit him I can just R1, R1, push, R1, R1, push until he's dead with almost any weapon.

But as I said in the beginning, I find them both to be about the same level of difficulty. They both require the same attention, precision, and caution. Although, I will say that Demon's Souls can get annoying with it's lock-on system not quite behaving as expected, some camera issues from time to time, and the input bug where you press an action (usually to use an item) and nothing happens.

I think people are talking about the regular spawning BPs at PBWT (the BP Giant Depraved Ones in 5-2 for example), not the named BP NPCs. And imo the only relevant experiences when it comes to difficulty are people's first and (at least somewhat) blind playthrough and the push lock is unlikely to be something you just stumble across in your first playthrough.

Maybe those of us who played DeS back when it first came out - we didn't even know how to make a proper build or how to upgrade weapons properly, never mind knowing what was on the other side of each fog gate and what equipment and strategy to use against them - seem to exaggerate the difficulty to others who came to the game later. In effect we played a much, much harder game than those who came after the wiki culture had developed. Almost no one played Dark Souls truly blind because this wiki culture was in place even before the release date and was even encouraged by the developers as an extension of the online experience of the game.

It's for that reason I'll always think of DeS as harder and never understand 'Flamelurker is easy'. But I can see how different my initial experience must have been extremely different to others so you can't really compare.

I just played through 5-2 on NG++ with PBWT. Those giant depraved ones are ridiculous. To me, nothing I've encountered in any of my Dark Souls playthroughs is as difficult as Demon's Souls pure black 5-2 (level only, not the garbage boss). I think Dark is the better game overall but Demon's will always seem harder to me.

Hurtlocker14 wrote:Wow im surprised that everyone thinks that Dark Souls is easier. Because the first time I done my demon souls I picked my magic class and used the moonlight great sword and I had no problem at all. The only time i really had concern was against garl vinland

I feel your pain.

MY two cents...

I heard about Demon's Souls, but never read up the wiki or anything, because I never expected to get the game. I eventually was allowed to play it because my father borrowed it from a friend of his. I started off as the soldier class (which is good for a melee build imo) and proceeded to Die. A lot. I eventually did a respectable Vit build once i discovered the power of fire weapons and the crescent falchion (dat weapon...), then went full Vit when i found the Northern Regalia. That made the game prett easy at some parts, but I still had difficulty. That was my "blind playthrough."

My Dark Souls blind playthrough, I have to say, was pretty much non-existant. It was partially blind, as I read parts of the wiki, and was therefore not a virgin to Dark Souls. Not to say that I memorized the whole damn wiki, I just read enough to get a small idea of the areas. I'd say that run-through was 75% blind.
Btw, i knew you could parry Gwyn... but parrying him is for *******. I killed him on my first attempt with a sl 90 using Occult Zwie +4 and a Black Knight Sword + 5... tough fight...

All-in-all... Demon's feels harder to me. Primarily because weapons are harder to get, and getting to Pure Black Tendency... f*cked you up. Real hard. There is no such penalty in Dark Souls.

Dark Souls is harder. Having played Demon Souls first, you would think I say that Dark Souls is easier, but it's not.

Demon Souls is considerably easier because, while weapons and upgrades can be hard to find, all weapons have some insane movesets. A lot of weapons have very fast movesets and even things like Ultra greatswords have their ridiculous 180 drag hit which is as fast as dagger moves! Great Clubs have hyperarmor and still had their plunge attack.

Dodge speed was fast below 50%, which let you carry a ton of stuff without impeding your evasive abilities. There were a ton of support of concentrated builds such as mages and their ring, their sword, their ring, their robe, their sword, their weapon, their magic, their spices, their ring, their helm, etc. you know what I am talking about!

Bosses were jokes, having even less options to deal with a variety of player tricks in between SAFE SPOTS, STEALTH, POISON, EXPLOITS, etc.

Players had more options for weapons since upgrade paths were very effective especially for specialized builds.

A lot of good things could be gotten early game (Crescent Falchion) (Thief's Ring) (Regenerator's Ring) (Cling Ring) etc.

Grass! Early game you can get plenty, Late game you have 99 full healing (practically) grasses...at all times. Spices! Magic just...what is this?

Second Chance. Do I need to explain this?

The only time I can say that Demon Souls was harder than Dark Souls were 5-2 while Mildred's sister was on her patrol...OF PAIN! That and all the Black Tendency events that could really only happen if you were looking to do them, which make them optional.

It must be whichever one you play first.

I played DKS first and used the wiki for the majority of it, and it was still brutal and outstandingly frustrating.

I just made a blind playthrough of DS recently, after hundreds of hours in DKS, and it was basically a cakewalk. I died maybe five times total throughout and didn't get stuck anywhere. Of course, by now I know how a Souls game works. I was cautious and took my time throughout the whole game, I upgraded and leveled up smartly, and I already knew all the nuances of the combat system. If I had played DES first, I think the difficulty would have been about the same as DKS.

Flubious wrote:I just played through 5-2 on NG++ with PBWT. Those giant depraved ones are ridiculous. To me, nothing I've encountered in any of my Dark Souls playthroughs is as difficult as Demon's Souls pure black 5-2 (level only, not the garbage boss). I think Dark is the better game overall but Demon's will always seem harder to me.

Go fight the NG++ BP bonewheels/bone dogs/chained prisoner.

From the perspective of a first time player, with no knowledge of the game, Demon's Souls is harder.

The bosses are easier in general, but the locations are harder and less forgiving. Boletaria and Stonefang are fine, but Latria starts to be a pain and Shrine of Storms is uber pain. Enemies attack you outside of your range, they're very strong and when you get past Adjudicator and have to deal with all that Reaper shenanigans it's outright terrible.
Valley of Defilement is actually easy, but extremely annoying to play, with most deaths due to the enviroment, than to mobs.

Everything is expensive and you get little Souls from killed enemies.
Unless you find the first 4-2 Reaper, who can be farmed for some 4-5k Souls, if I remember correctly.
Durability of your gear depletes very fast and repairs are costy.
Upgrading is very confusing and hard to understand at first and the ways to obtain nescessary items are unclear, while Dark Souls has much simpler system and just gives you all the stuff you need. Not in the desired numbers, but it does give it to you.

You have limited healing, especially if you don't have Heal, or don't know where to get a Talisman of God. Grass doesn't replenish itself at death, like Estus does and if you lose all your Souls, you'll eventually end up with next to no Grass to heal yourself. That is something very frustrating and can't happen in Dark Souls.
Also Spices. They're a must for any Sorcerer, yet farming them is difficult and they're also expensive. Thank Umbasa for the Fragrant Ring.

Tendency events are very confusing at first and one tends to feel cheated that he can't access some locations, NPCs and items, only because of some silly Tendency, which one doesn't even fully understands. If the rubble blocking Dragon Bone Masher could be destroyed if you attack it with high enough Str it would make more sense then to just change a colour of an icon in menu.

'From the perspective of a first time player, with no knowledge of the game, Demon's Souls is harder.'

Exactly.

Many of the posts above are from the perspective of someone who has already played through more than once and who has been reading wikis. Neither game is hard at that stage.

As regards healing, who ever dies from running out of Estus and/or grass anyway? I think it's happened to me once or twice but it's not often the cause of death in these games IMO.

I also have to say the cheesey tactics that supposedly made the DeS bosses easy are being discovered in DkS all the time - safe spots, throwing stuff through fog gates, etc. They're glitches anyway so I don't really take them into consideration when considering how difficult a boss is.

Straight up, Dark Souls is harder, I'd say. But 100%ing is way harder in Demon's Souls because of the world and character tendencies that you have to control and maintain.

in my view, there are things in Demon's that are harder and things in Dark that harder, depending on what you're looking at. i don't think i could just say that "yes, X or Y Souls is harder".

Dark had more trekking around and you had to constantly fight your way back and forth through the world to get anywhere, luckily you can run past pretty much every enemy in the game. in Demon's the levels are pretty much straight forward and you can go in and get what you want then move on, but you have to fight for every square inch of ground all the way through.

Demon's punished deaths allot more than Dark does. but i think you die more frequently in Dark, at least i do anyway. though i find my deaths in Dark are cheaper than in Demon's, like sliding off of terrain, or arbitrary and unavoidable deaths (Bed of Chaos or those friggen silver knight snipers for example).

Dark has tougher boss battles than Demon's does. yet the bosses seem like less of a threat in Dark because the game helps you out more. i know how to glitch past Flamelurker yet i dread going into that boss more than i do going into Toejam and Earl's boss battle.

Demon's is more densely packed with enemies than Dark. but there are more mini-bosses to get through in Dark (that don't re-spawn once dead, leaving huge vacant areas the next time you go through the same area).

grass vs estus is a moot point to me, i have never died in either Dark or Demon's because i ran out of healing.

i don't often rely on second chance or warding in Demon's, but i agree that they can throw the balance of the game out of wack. Dark has the same problem though, some of the offensive spells are just too damn good (i don't think it was possible to one shot a boss in Demon's). so in the end it sort of balances out, Demon's has OP defense and Dark has OP offense.

stacking HP regen in Demon's is the only thing that really shifts the balance of the games difficulty. if you rely on HP regen, Demon's becomes far too easy. Dark did the right thing by having HP stealing items rather than HP regen (i think those items in Dark could have easily been stronger though).